Practical Programme
May 2022
May 2022
May 2022
May 2022
Kaaistudio's

For Cifas and Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Japanese artist Akira Takayama invites food deliverers to create unexpected rap performances in the city.

Delivery

Participants in the project Delivery by Akira Takayama (photo:Cifas).
Participants in the project Delivery by Akira Takayama (photo:Cifas).

During the pandemic, food delivery services have seen far more demand as people, those having the possibility of quarantining, sought ways to have the outside world brought to their homes.

Japanese artist Akira Takayama infiltrates the city in collaboration with the people who deliver this food. In their daily lives these modern flex-workers, many in particularly precarious circumstances, are often not considered. Their flashy uniforms and company logos are highly visible, yet their working and living situations remain unseen by most of society.

As some of them have a hip hop background, Takayama invited them to create rap performances. In sharing their poetry and lyrics on the working conditions, they come to affirm a new kind of connection between delivery person and customer.

For one week the Kaaistudio’s becomes a base and rallying point for their work with the artist. As a result, their poems and songs are not only disseminated in the city, but in this new space where the attention contrasts with the fleeting reality of the outside world.

Credits

Presentation

Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Kaaitheater

Concept, direction

Akira Takayama

Riders, performers

ABL, FALNAO, La Chaumière, Moïse, Ruskov

DJs

Yves-Henri Defalque & Leandro Saiombo

Musical supervisor

Hiroshi Egaitsu

Staging assistant

Saki Tanaka

Coordination

Nora Nqi

Filming

Moïse, FALNAO

Video edit

Kota Abe

Production

Kunstenfestivaldesarts

Coproduction

Cifas