Akira Takayama
(Tokio)
Frankfurt, Mainz, Darmstadt, Offenbach, Hanau evakuieren
Rhein-Main-Gebiet
First escape- and rescue plan for the rhine main region
- 12.09.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 13.09.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 14.09.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 15.09.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 16.09.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 17.09.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 18.09.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 19.09.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 20.09.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 21.09.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 22.09.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 23.09.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 24.09.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 25.09.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 26.09.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 27.09.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 28.09.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 29.09.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 30.09.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 03.10.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 01.10.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 02.10.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 04.10.2014, www.evakuieren.de
- 05.10.2014, www.evakuieren.de
Evacuate Frankfurt is the First Escape and Rescue Plan for the Rhine-Main Region. Conceived by Japanese theatre maker and urban intervention artist Akira Takayama and implemented together with numerous other international artistic collaborators, the project reveals unfamiliar spots in the urban territory of the Rhine-Main region and lends new meaning to the term evacuation from 12 September through October 5. Via a simple and short questionnaire on the website www.evakuieren.de, visitors can ascertain their own personal degree of everyday frustration and urban fatigue in order to subsequently print out a customized escape route or download it to their smartphone as the starting point for a journey with unexpected encounters on unknown paths. The website also offers an overview of the more than 30 commuter and streetcar stations involved in the project and provides practical information, such as opening hours and any possible additional expenses. In most cases however, the only thing needed is a valid RMV ticket. The interactive platform blog.evakuieren.de gives daily updates on events and a chance to comment on the project. Evacuate Frankfurt begins on 12 September at 7 pm with a special event at Mousonturm featuring its mastermind Akira Takayama, Katsutaka Idogawa – mayor of the town Futaba near Fukushima, post-dramatist Hans-Thies Lehmann and many of the other participating artists.
In the project, students of Hessische Theaterakademie, Universities Mainz and Frankfurt, HFG Offenbach and Städelschule participate.
Biography
Akira Takayama
Akira Takayama (born 1969) founded Port B in 2002. He develops projects together with this collective that break the existing theatrical framework and interact collaboratively with other media. His work aspires to a contemporary form of the so-called “architecture of the theatre” in which he extends the practice of the theatre and the audience into society and the urban space. Takayama’s audience-focussed works are an attempt to experience a theatre that transcends the physical theatre space to establish itself as a new platform with an altered function in society. In recent years he has developed works in diverse genres including tourism, urban planning, art, literature, fashion and mass media. In these, he uses theatrical ideas to open up new potential across a broad spectrum of media and disciplines.
Akira Takayama created his first theatrical works as a stage director – these included the Japanese premieres of several pieces by Elfriede Jelinek. The projects that he develops in collaboration with the collective PortB are usually devised in close collaboration with prestigious cultural institutions around the world, such as the recent large-scale participatory project ‘Our Songs’ for the Biennale of Sydney in 2018 and the ongoing research project ‘Heterotopia’ for the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens and the Sharjah Biennial in Beirut.
In 2014 Akira Takayama / Port B developed the project ‘EVACUATE FRANKFURT’ together with the Mousonturm, in which 30 S- and U-Bahn stations across the entire Rhine-Main region became starting points for individual evacuation tours of a range of social communities and theatrical ready-mades. www.evakuieren.de
In 2017 Takayama, once again working in close co-operation with the Mousonturm to develop and produce a work over a long period, was able to realise his vision of a ‘McDonald’s Radio University’: people who had come to Germany as refugees shortly beforehand acted as “professors”, presenting a comprehensive programme of lectures lasting several weeks based on their highly diverse educational backgrounds, working and life experiences. www.mru.global
Then in 2019 in the ‘WAGNER PROJECT – Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg’ Takayama brought one of Richard Wagner’s most famous operas to the Mousonturm stage: ‘Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg’. Based on the fictional narrative of Wagner’s opera and its historical references – a competition between singers during the time of the Reformation – Takayama founded a School of Hip-Hop.
Akira Takayama has been Associate Artist at the Mousonturm since 2014.