Akina Yoshitake Lopez - Non Linear Narrative 2022 -

The Non Linear Narrative master programme at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) merges investigative methods of journalism and forensics with processing technologies of computer science and visual arts into a contemporary, progressive design approach: the non-linear storytelling. It takes the entanglement of relations in the global information society as a starting point, in order to identify and interrogate complex socio-political issues and communicate them to a broad audience.

The programme repositions the graphic design discipline in the changing professional landscape and extends it with new responsibilities towards society. This year’s graduation show presents under the title Please Elaborate, the final projects of 12 young and emerging designers. To elaborate means ( ) to interpret, to experiment, to comment, to expand, to develop, to work out, to compare, to amplify, to improve, to enlarge, to complicate, to specify…

Spanning a range of media, exhibition formats and disciplines, the showpieces cover a multitude of subjects in order to unravel and demonstrate their complexities. As such, Please Elaborate is not only the title of the exhibition, but also the question the recent graduates often asked themselves in the process of making their works. In doing so, they responded with thoughtful and engaging comments to contemporary issues of gender equality, post-truth politics, sound pollution, global warming and neurodiversity. If you aren’t able to see the show in person, the exhibition will be also translated into a digital experience on nln.allinthistogether.online and a series of video interviews. Stay tuned via nln.kabk.nl.

Sound pollution, global warming and neurodiversity.If you aren’t able to see the show in person, the exhibition will be also translat-ed into a digital experience on nln.allinthistogether.online and a series of video interviews. Stay tuned via nln.kabk.nl

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Akina Yoshitake Lopez - Whistle Whistle: Resonate Until Tongue

Can we interpret translations as a form of walking, if language could be imagined as a landscape?

Departing from my relation to the Uchinaaguchi language, from what today is called Okinawa in Japan, the project focuses on a possible negotiation between presence and intelligibility of languages. It is a three-part installation contemplating the opacity of this language I can not speak through imagined cross-sections on a photograph using this same language as method. This method draws from the idea that words are somehow able to delineate or contour things. What kind of spaces could be opened then? The lack of linguistic articulation becomes visible as the unsettling power of making rooms, but still some traces remain, trembling and waiting for a word (as if it is a language that remains in the ear, not coming through the throat). The project is contextualized within the diasporic flows of families who migrated from Okinawa to Brazil pre-WWI, creating a relation between landscape and language. Uchinaaguchi and a photograph taken at a shoreline in Okinawa are a study case from which I can start, as my interest is in their relation with other languages and imaginaries. Through a collection of videos, audio, and images, I look for resonance with whispers and other unsorted phonemes that linger in one’s ears.