Rei Kakiuchi

Study Drawings for the Film
“Escape into 16-inch Battleship Barrels”

2025
ongoing project

I intend to make a film about the September 2, 1945 the ceremony of Japanese unconditional surrender on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. I start to make drawings which are a kind of storyboard for the film. The film interweaves two parts: actors making a 1/700 scale model of the Missouri (now in Pearl Harbor as a museum), and stop-motion puppetry depicting the actual surrender ceremony. These parts will alternate, shifting between scales with extreme close-ups of the model.

Perhaps model-making serves as escape from heavy history, as the focus on details allows one to temporarily forget the historical significance behind the object. The title refers to the place that is simultaneously one of the safest and most dangerous places to escape, which might be understood as an existence representing both death and life at the same time.

Escapology - ver2
01/12/2023-27/12/2023
Grope exhibition “Other Entanglements”
Het Archief, Rotterdam

installation / performance
conch shells, metal shelf, carpets, audio equipments
size variable

photo 1/2/3/4/5/6/7 : Sander van Wettum
8/9/10/11 : Jan Andriaans

The performance weaves together my ancestor's immigration story from China to Japan and his collection of Edison's wax-record player and conch horns, both sharing rotational structures. I demonstrated playing the conch horn, featuring John Cage's "Inlet." Throughout the performance, I introduced my "Japanese Pervert" persona, which became an unexpected but significant artistic character that will continue to appear in future works.

The performance creates a sense of vertigo for the audience, offering no stable narrative pathway. This disorientation potentially mirrors the experience of our time, combining research elements with personal history in a humorous yet unsettling presentation. The persona represents someone people might avoid yet embodies a unique artistic charisma and a reluctant point of contact between people.

Slippery Caligraphy
16 & 17/09/2023
Groot Rotterdam Atelier Weekend
Drievriendenstraat, Rottedam

video / installation
03:34

Watching someone else write feels like a guilty. It seems glimpsing their true nature. Awkward emotion we have when we see the ugly handwriting of a beautiful person. Names of the four living organisms appears in the screen cut in quoter. A boy draw name of animals on papers. These name of the living organisms are damp and slimy, moving with a repulsive, sluggish motion, despised and nocturnal, active where no eyes can reach.

This video was captured in night vision mode. We can not see the nature clearly without tech? Let’s go to a space colony there is only man-made environment. It would be upside down world as you can see in the video.

No Sound in the Shell
17/04/2023-30/04/2023
Growing Space Rotterdam

installation
conch shells, woods
4000 x 2500

“Ghost in the shell”

“No ghost just a shell”
“No sound in the shell”

Escapology - ver1
01/09/2022–27/01/2023
Goethe Institute Rotterdam
(Artist Residency)

presentation / performance

photo 3/4 : Sander van Wettum

The performance weaves together my ancestor's immigration story from China to Japan and his collection of Edison's wax-record player and conch horns, both sharing rotational structures. I demonstrated playing the conch horn, featuring John Cage's "Inlet." Throughout the performance, I introduced my "Japanese Pervert" persona, which became an unexpected but significant artistic character that will continue to appear in future works.

The performance creates a sense of vertigo for the audience, offering no stable narrative pathway. This disorientation potentially mirrors the experience of our time, combining research elements with personal history in a humorous yet unsettling presentation. The persona represents someone people might avoid yet embodies a unique artistic charisma and a reluctant point of contact between people.

Rziq - The Gift Shop
29/10/2021-29/01/2022
When the Site Lost the Plot
Amsterdam

handmade wood spoons

Rizq رزق is an Arabic word that can mean livelihood, blessing, income, or work. It is used in different ways and for different reasons; rizq can be about money, but also about love and care. Rizq is a participatory gift shop initiated by Yazan Khalili, with affordable non-art objects by artists on sale. Through this platform we will discuss the current structures of the economy we work within, and produce an economy based on collective practices and sharing of resources.

Archaic Slurp
25/10/2021
Zaagmolendrift 12
Rotterdam

spoon making performance at studio window gallery

photo : Sander van Wettum

Eel Bar
24/05/2018 - 25/05/2018
Kaus Australis
Rotterdam

wood counter, ceramics, cocktail, wall drawing
finger cup ceramics made by Micha Zweifel >>
cocktail “Electric Eel” made by Matthew Stadler
7000 x 4000

4-meter wooden counter set against an transcript large scale wall drawing from 18th-century New Zealand watercolor, featuring a cocktail station where Matthew Steddler creates the "Electric Eel" cocktail (sake, blue curaçao, lemon, nori) inspired by Japanese ingredients encountered in rural Mexico. The counter displays three object types: borrowed ceramic schnapps cups from Micha Zweifel symbolizing friendship, unfired clay ofinner shape of my palm, and tiny sake cups from Japan.

This social gathering space creates a deliberate tension: elements related to fingers, prints, and hands are juxtaposed with the eel's slippery nature that refuses fingerprints and conceals its origins. This paradox invites reflection on the unstable nature of relationships, especially in a space where drinking may blur memory.

Finger Cap
Kunstlerhaus Dortmund
(Artist Residency)

5 holes on a glass

Is Technology Spectrum of Intimacy? ver.2
Kyoto Print Triannual
Kyoto Japan

installation