Koki Tanaka: Precarious Tasks #15: Exchange of Our Clothes and Books as Exchanging Our Body and Thoughts (Reconfiguration)

28 April – 18 June 2016

Exhibition visitors are invited to participate in this collective act by bringing a favourite possession to exchange for another.

Clothes and books are related to our body and thoughts. Just as the clothes we wear carry our personal history through the way that our body fits in them, the books we read carry our personal history through the thoughts we form from their reading. Because of that, we like to talk about what we read, and we take care of the clothes that we wear.

Bring your books and clothes here to exchange with someone else’s. Not the clothes you don’t like but the ones you do. Not the books you don’t read anymore but those you like to read again and again. Your favourite things will be gathered here temporarily, and distributed to others to share in your body and thoughts. In taking home someone else’s belongings, their personal history will become your own.

Koki Tanaka, 5 October 2015

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Proposal:

1: Bring your clothes and books here.

2: Take away anything you like from the stall.

3: Take care of these clothes and books as if they are your body and thoughts.

Part of Koki Tanaka’s commission Provisional Studies: Action ## 5 Conceiving the Past, Perceiving the Present, which is in the third and final round of How to work together commissions.

The first configuration of this collective act took place at the Transformation Marathon, Serpentine Gallery in October 2015.

How to work together is a shared programme of contemporary art commissioning and research organised by The Showroom, Chisenhale Gallery and Studio Voltaire, and is supported by a capacity building and match-funding grant from Arts Council England through Catalyst Arts, with additional funding from Bloomberg and Jerwood Charitable Foundation. With additional funding for the 2016 commissions from Cockayne – Grants for the Arts and The London Community Foundation.

The commission is also supported by Vitamin Creative Space, The Japan Foundation, The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation and the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation.

Liverpool Biennial and The Showroom are working in partnership on the commissioning of Koki Tanaka’s work in 2016.