Toward the end of his life, Ryuichi Sakamoto spoke of wanting to make “music freed from the constraints of time.” As the musician told the Asahi Shimbun in 2019, “I guess it is similar to how I long for ‘eternity.’”
It was natural for him to look beyond the limitations of audio recordings or live performances, a search that led him to the gallery. From the mid-2000s onward, Sakamoto created a number of installation works, often in collaboration with Shiro Takatani, of multimedia art collective Dumb Type. In a museum setting, Sakamoto was able to expand on existing works or explore his varied philosophical, scientific and aesthetic interests. There, the music could keep playing — if not for eternity, then at least for the duration of the venue’s opening hours.
Rather than do a conventional tour for his 2017 album, “async,” Sakamoto presented it as an exhibition at Tokyo’s Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, where it was complemented by video pieces from Takatani, Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul and the artist duo Zakkubalan. Visitors could listen to the album in surround sound while watching images generated by Takatani in real-time, an example of what Sakamoto called “installation music.” As he explained in an interview with Bijutsu Techo magazine: “I want people to immerse themselves in the sounds in an environment that is the same as the one I had while listening and creating.”
“Is Your Time,” another Takatani collaboration that was shown at NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC) in Tokyo later that year, folded deconstructed elements from “async” into a cavernous installation that also featured multiple LED screens and a piano recovered from a school devastated by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake tsunami. With no clear beginning or end, visitors were left to experience it at their own pace. I went with some friends and ended up spending over an hour there, gently mesmerized.
Woe betide anyone who goes to “Seeing Sound, Hearing Time,” on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) through March 30, in a rush. The first comprehensive overview of Sakamoto’s installation work presented in Japan, it’s a show that’s best taken slowly. Give yourself a few hours if possible. Ideally, you should also have the entire museum to yourself, though obviously that isn’t going to happen. Even on a recent weekday morning, it was sufficiently crowded to require attendants to intervene to prevent bottlenecks from forming.
Sakamoto had apparently envisioned the exhibition prior to his death at age 71 in March 2023, and there’s substantial overlap with an earlier show of the same name that was held at Beijing’s M Woods Museum in 2021. It’s considerably more satisfying than the hastily curated “Tribute to Ryuichi Sakamoto” mounted at the NTT Intercommunication Center in late 2023. We’re also spared a repeat of that show’s ungainly centerpiece, “Generative MV” (by Daito Manabe, Rhizomatiks and Kyle McDonald), in which video footage of Sakamoto playing piano was superimposed over AI-generated backdrops based on text prompts from the audience. (Perhaps as penance, Manabe’s sole contribution here has been relegated to a courtyard at the rear of the museum, though it’s worth seeking out.)
The first piece that visitors see, appropriately, is titled “Time Time.” It’s a new installation based on Sakamoto and Takatani’s theater piece, “Time,” which premiered in 2021 and was staged at the New National Theatre, Tokyo last year. Elements from the performance — including footage of dancer Min Tanaka and shō player Mayumi Miyata, and excerpts from Natsume Soseki’s “Ten Nights of Dreams” — play across three large screens, reflected in a mirror-like pool of water akin to the one that was used in the original staging. The music is sparse and nonlinear: a cyclical string figure here, a singing bowl or shakuhachi there.
Given that the stage production was already pretty minimal to start with, it doesn’t lose too much in its transition to an installation format. “Time Time” certainly avoids the problem that plagued Dumb Type’s “Actions + Reflections” exhibition at MOT in 2019, where archival video footage of the group’s performances was more engrossing than any of the works on display.
The wall text speaks of different kinds of time intersecting in the piece: “a moment and an eternity, a fleeting sleep and 100 years of time lived in a dream.” That’s the feeling conjured by “async-immersion tokyo,” a revamped version of an installation Takatani first presented at Ambient Kyoto 2023, shortly after Sakamoto’s passing. While tracks from “async” play over 14 speakers, an 18-meter-long LED wall shows visuals generated using Takatani’s signature “Toposcan” process, in which images slowly emerge from and dissolve into arrays of horizontal lines.
I’ve seen Takatani use the technique in other contexts, but it’s particularly effective here, giving a sense of single moments stretching into infinity that fits with the themes of the album. That said, it’s hard to shake the suspicion that Sakamoto’s “installation music” is just a sophisticated version of the album visualizers that proliferate on YouTube. It’s an optimal environment for experiencing the music and looks good in Instagram videos, but it doesn’t really offer any fresh angles on the original work.
Having already spent an unhealthy amount of time listening to “async” when it was first released, I was more intrigued by Zakkubalan’s “async-volume.” Wall-mounted iPhones and iPads display static videos taken in Sakamoto’s home and studio during the making of the album, creating a portrait of the artist in his absence. Maybe it’s because the man himself is no longer with us, but the sight of an empty bedroom, with family photos adorning an antique dresser, moved me in a way I hadn’t expected.
There’s also a strange poignancy to “Music Plays Images x Images Play Music,” a pleasingly chunky 1990s throwback in which a holographic Sakamoto appears to play a MIDI piano. Created in collaboration with multimedia artist Toshio Iwai, it shows that the composer was getting in on the digital avatar game long before ABBA or Hatsune Miku, finding ways to keep playing into eternity.
An updated “Is Your Time” strips out the “async” elements to focus attention on the tsunami-damaged piano, which now stands in a pool of water, under a tilted screen displaying softly falling snow. The austere setting evokes a sense of hovering between realms: heaven and earth, here and the hereafter. Every so often, the ruined instrument sounds a note, triggered by real-time earthquake data from around the world. As a piece, it’s both more focused and less engrossing than the version shown at ICC in 2017; most people only linger long enough to confirm that they won’t be able to get a good photo on their smartphones before moving on.
Sakamoto’s music also provides the soundtrack for video works by Weerasethakul, which held my attention, and Carsten Nicolai, which didn’t. The most immersive work on display, surprisingly, is the one in which the composer’s contribution plays the least essential role. “Life-Well Tokyo, Fog Sculpture #47662” created in collaboration with Takatani and artist Fujiko Nakaya, floods the museum’s sunken terrace with artificial fog so dense that it briefly obscures the apartment blocks nearby. Lost in the white-out, the constraints of time seem to slip away. It’s a remarkable experience and worth the price of admission alone. On a practical note, though, you may also want to consider bringing a raincoat.
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