Eiko Otake: A Body in Laurel Hill

This performance by Eiko Otake is connected to The Politics of Mourning IV by DonChristian Jones. 

Eiko Otake is a movement-based, interdisciplinary artist who worked for over 40 years in the collaboration Eiko and Koma. In 2014 she started her site specific solo project A Body In Places–a site-specific series of solo performances–at more than 80 sites, including at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. In a layered exploration of time, season, landscape, architecture and culture, A Body In Laurel Hill continues this series and Eiko’s longtime work on the theme of death and dying.

“In a cemetery, I think of the recent dead, and the dead from the past centuries, including many whose graves were never built. When I enter the cemetery, I try to leave my/our current upsets at the gate but make sure to pick those up on my way out.” This site-specific work interrogates existence and non-existence: who, and what, is present or absent.