Online Handout
RAW05 Bodies!! - Care × Art

Introduction

Tokyo Shibuya Koen-dori Gallery is presenting “RAW05 Bodies!! - Care × Art” as vol. 5 of the “RAW” performance series. Launched in 2021, “RAW” is a program utilizing the spaces of a gallery located in the heart of Shibuya to showcase “raw expression” arising from relationships between artists and audiences through music, dance, theater, and dialogue.
This time, we are presenting an experiential program led by artist IKEGAMI Keiichi, who views the stiffness occurring in one’s muscles and joints as a unique record of one’s life, and creates paintings and three-dimensional works exploring this view.

In the gallery’s Interactive Space, visitors can experience “Body memory performed on a hand-cranked organette” and “BODYPHONY,” two activities anyone can freely take part in alone. By recording their body’s “stiffness” on a card and passing it through an organette, each person can hear their bodily memory play as a short melody.
In Gallery 1, visitors can experience “‘Wear’ your bodily stiffness by displaying body memory on a T-shirt.” This involves seeing a white T-shirt as your body and placing red stickers on areas where you feel stiffness to visually portray your body’s sensations and memories. You can participate alone, but working in pairs is recommended for this program. If you desire staff assistance, please indicate this on the “Communication Sheet.” Please feel free to join us!

In Gallery 2, breathe deeply while viewing images projected on a wall and try to consciously feel the inside and outside of your own body. On the final day, a performance will be held with the many records of bodily memory gathered during this workshop as a backdrop. Performance scenes will be recorded in a video work and uploaded for viewing after the event ends. Please be sure to take watch it, as well.

We encounter the world through our bodies. For example, when we gently touch someone’s back with our hand, our hand is also being touched by that person’s back. When the gentle pressure of a touch is felt as the pressure of being touched, we simultaneously experience “touching” and “being touched.” Also, clothing is something worn to conceal but also show the body. In these ways, the body poses various ambiguities.
The tones of the T-shirts and organettes are devices promoting awarenesses prompted by likening one thing to another. Become aware of your own body, reflect on other people’s bodies, and reflect on yourself. Through this reciprocation of awareness, we can perhaps re-examine our relationships with others.

Each of us lives in a different body. Re-examining aspects of the “body” normally overlooked not only makes us aware of our own senses but also helps us notice how they differ from / overlap with those of other people whose bodies are different. We hope that your experience here will inspire you to think about our society in which diverse people live together. Please relax and spend an enjoyable moment “opening up your physical self with bodily stiffness as a clue.”

Tokyo Shibuya Koen-dori Gallery

How to Enjoy the Workshop

The workshop is open to everyone and does not require registration.
The organette cards and T-shirts displayed in the space capture the body memories of the people who have visited this workshop. We invite you to explore the traces of memory they leave behind and discover what kinds of body memories remain.

Body memory performed on a hand-cranked organette

An organette is a small musical instrument that makes sounds when you crank its handle. When a punched paper card is inserted, metal tines are plucked by the holes in the paper, producing sounds.

1. Mark where you feel stiffness in your body

Take one card. Each card has seven human figures. Starting from the left, use one figure to record your stiffness each day, going back one week from today. Think back to how your body felt that day, and use a pencil to mark the places where you felt stiffness.

2. Punch holes in the card

Use a hole punch to make holes in the places you have marked.

3. Play your card on the organette

Insert the card into the instrument and crank the handle.
Your body memories will form a little melody.
You can take your card home with you, but we hope you will leave it at the venue.

Listen to Other People’s Cards

You are welcome to play and listen to the cards left at the venue.
What might other people’s body memories sound like?
Enjoy the little melodies, each one unique to its maker.

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“Wear” your bodily stiffness by displaying body memory on a T-shirt

A white T-shirt becomes a representation of your body, on which you can record where you feel stiffness.

1 set: 1 T-shirt, 3 types of stickers (large, medium, small)
The T-shirts cannot be taken home. T-shirts created in the workshop will be displayed at the venue.

1. Fill out the communication sheet

When you have finished, please give the sheet to a staff member.
If you need assistance, please indicate so on the sheet or speak directly to a staff member.

2. Pair up and record each other’s bodily stiffness

Talk with your partner about where they feel stiffness in their body, and place stickers on the T-shirt accordingly.
The size of the sticker represents the intensity of the stiffness.
Large = very stiff
Medium = stiff
Small = slightly stiff

3. Exchange and wear the T-shirts

Exchange the T-shirts you have created.
Look at your own stiffness, feel your partner’s stiffness on your own body, and talk with each other. Take some time to freely explore the theme of bodily stiffness.

Take a commemorative photo and share it!!
#RAW05BODIES!!　#TokyoShibuyaKoenDoriGallery

Please be mindful of other people appearing in your photos. Please check with each other before taking and sharing photos.

Video

Message (3 min 37 sec)

Artist: IKEGAMI Keiichi

Video Direction: YAMASHIRO Daisuke (Twelve Inc.)
Cinematography: YAMASHIRO Daisuke, SUGA Ryohei (Twelve Inc.)
Organized by: Tokyo Shibuya Koen-dori Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture Recorded in May 2026

Interview (ca.8 min)

Artist: IKEGAMI Keiichi

Video Direction: YAMASHIRO Daisuke (Twelve Inc.)
Cinematography: YAMASHIRO Daisuke, SUGA Ryohei (Twelve Inc.)
Organized by: Tokyo Shibuya Koen-dori Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture Recorded in May 2026

*Workshop scene: KYOTO RECORDS (ROHM Theatre Kyoto, Jan. 2026)

Message

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Ikegami Keichi.
Welcome to my studio.

I am an artist who creates art works of all kinds.
For example, here we have a man’s back.
Spreading a clay membrane on his back,
I applied finger-pressure massage through it.
The clay gradually hardened,
and when the man stretched
saying “Oh, that felt good,”
the clay mold popped off,
and I made a bronze of it, just as it was.
This is a painting that resulted from
applying paint to my hands and using
finger-pressure massage on someone’s body.
Then also, a very large painting work,
which I created wondering it would be like
to massage a Great Buddha.
Such painting works and so on, I am creating.
Then, for our workshop this time,
I am going use this T-shirt.
These white T-shirts everyone wears, right?
On their back side,
TA-DA!
Forming pairs in this way,
there are three kinds of red stickers.
Large stickers,
medium-size stickers,
and small round stickers.
“Where do I feel stiff? Stiff and hard here, maybe?
Soft and pliant here, maybe.” Such places will get
a large sticker if “Oh, really stiff and hard here”
and a medium round sticker if medium stiffness,
and a little round one for places “just a little stiff.”
In this way, I want you to draw on your back.
For this, you will form pairs
and alternately take turns
confirming where each other has stiffness.
Such a workshop I would like to do.
Using paper like this with human figures on it,
if you think “Oh, this place is real stiff today”
you put a mark there, I like this,
then punch a hole with this hole puncher.
PUNCH
PUNCH
Then, this paper with little holes,
you pass through a music box called an “organette,”
and the holes pluck metal prongs to make sounds comes out.
(♪The organette plays part of a melody)
(♪Sound of the organette)
Every day, like this,
you keep a “stiffness diary”
and open holes where you have stiffness and listen to them.
I have been doing this diary for about 10 years,
and by now the paper strip has gotten this big.
By listening to this, I can basically tell
in what months my body condition is down,
or “My body was doing pretty well in this period”
the sound might let me know.
This kind of thing I am doing.
To everyone, this time,
I will distribute these so that
you can punch holes
and listen to the sound of
your body when its tired
or the sound when its stiff.
When I was small,
I was a very sickly child.
At that time,
being a child, I didn’t know my illness was, but
it was a kidney illness,
and my movements became very slow,
so that I couldn’t keep up with the others.
Such was how I spent my kindergarten years.
My father and mother, by saying,
“That’s your body trying its best.
It’s responding and doing what it can for you.”
Thereafter, the body became my theme,
and now, I’m doing these activities.
I hope this will be a chance for us all to
mark our stiffness on these T-shirts
and have fun listening to sounds of our tiredness
and think together about our bodies.
I’m looking forward to seeing what we can do together.
Thank you.

Interview: Artist IKEGAMI Keiichi

Ikegami’s Activities

Well, I would say that I am an artist, but I do many different things.
I paint and create sculpture and pottery as well.
I also hold workshops.
But all considered, without workshops and chances to make discoveries with other people, my art production could not exist.
I say that I am an artist, but it’s a little embarrassing to call myself an artist whose theme is stiffness or who explores stiffness or loves stiffness.
Ha-ha.

How Stiffness and the Body are Related

Stiffness tends to be viewed as a bad guy . . .
And yes, when your stiffness turns painful, you need to treat it.
However, the stiffness daily building up in your body is like evidence that your body is trying hard.
Your body is fighting for you, as when it fights against external bacteria with its immune system.
That’s what it does. You really feel like praising your body and telling it, “Oh, you're doing your best, thank you,” when the stiffness appears.
So, your stiffness is not a bad guy.
You might not even realize you have stiffness, but what's happening in your body every day is, like, I have to live! I have to live! That’s how your body is making an effort.
So, if you can, somehow find this kind of feeling in you.
If you try converting it to sound and listening to it, or try writing it down, you will become aware that your body is working really hard.
Then, when you wake up in the morning, you’ll think, “Ah, it’s working hard for me.”
And though normally taking it for granted, you’ll begin to feel moved by how your body functions independently like it does.
Through each other’s stiffness, when we’re together in the workshop, I hope people will feel moved that way and think, “My body is interesting.
Stiffness may actually be a good thing.”

About My Two Workshops

Firstly, concerning the T-shirts and organette this time, a T-shirt is something we wear every day, right?
By applying stickers or drawing on a T-shirt, we become able to see our own stiffness. When doing this in turns with your pair partner, you will think, “Oh, I didn't know I was stiff there. I didn’t realize!” In pairing with a partner and doing this action on their body, you will think that “Oh, actually, I am also stiff in that place sometimes.” Looking back, you’ll remember how good it felt to have someone massage it, and think, “Let me do it that way for this person.” In this way, you can transcend time and space, and via the other person's body, it also promotes your own pressure point massage. So, by seeing this T-shirt as your body, your unique body memory, which is like a resume or diary of your past, will take a form you can see and enjoy. And then, the organette enables you to convert the stiff parts you recorded on paper into sound.
Using it, you can actually hear and enjoy your history of stiffness as sound.
Whether with T-shirts or an organette, it would be nice if everyone could enjoy traces of their body memory and the fight to overcome they have lived, until now, in the form of an artwork.
So, I hope it becomes a good workshop allowing you to enjoy these two main themes.

Giving Care Via Stiffness

I was often sick when I was little and couldn’t go to school often.
I couldn’t go to school because it was hard to keep up with the other children.
My kidneys were weak, so when going to school in the morning, I always arrived last, and by the time I got there, I was so exhausted I was about to collapse.
So, I wondered, “Why can’t I move about like the other kids? Why do I always end up late?”
When I asked my parents about this, they said, “It’s because you have an illness and your body is trying very, very hard to overcome it.” Hearing that, I thought, “Oh, I see. The body gets this way when it’s working hard, trying to heal.” Though very small, I was deeply moved.
Immunity is the same way.
Lots of germs enter your body, and by repelling them, your immune system keeps you from getting sick.
But that immunity also undergoes stress and is held back, and your body’s function to fight and overcome gradually slows down.
There are all kinds of stresses. I think it’s okay to feel stress from nature, like “Oh, it’s hot” or “Oh, it’s cold.” To be born in the world and feel stress from nature in our times is good, because our immune system goes to work, trying hard to overcome the heat or cold.
As for other stresses unrelated to nature, there all kinds.
Human relationships and so on. Of course, there are also problems with things in food such as additives, but that can’t be avoided.
But, with all those different ways of thinking or believing, we really get drained, and our function to fight and overcome declines, and we wonder what to do.
So, it’s really important after all to help out your body’s function to fight and overcome.
I myself, by drawing pictures of my stiffness and converting it to music and enjoying it this way, feel like I can help out my body’s function to fight and overcome.
So, if you think about it, human relationships are relationships between yourself and other people.
Stiffness meanwhile is something that happens to everyone.
Yet, by doing things like exchanging sensations of stiffness with others and being conscious of such things, you can think, “Ahh, I am different from other people, but if I do this, I can relieve that other person’s stiffness and help out their function to fight and overcome, can’t I?” By sharing our awareness in this away, I believe, our ability to respond to such stresses will also begin to change, won’t it?.
I myself, using an organette, have compiled 10 years of records of my shoulder stiffness. By converting it into music, then, if I listen and the same little melody plays about once a year, I can know that, “Oh, in that month, I don’t feel so good” or that I am prone to injury or catch cold easily.
At such times, by creating and listening to this analog organette device, I have become able to guard against such things or, to the contrary, realize that in such a month I need to give special care to other people.
Thinking how wonderful it would be if everyone could experience these ideas of mine with me, I am delighted to be able to hold a workshop this time.