Breath In This World
2026
Title: Breath in this World
Performance of spoken words, sung voice, and body
Poetry and performance by Aine Nakamura
Premiered at Indexical, Santa Cruz
Since the premiere of the work on March 6 2026 at Indexical, I have been showing the work at UCSD Music Spring Festival, ZK/U Berlin, Baiju Theatre near Beijing, and UrBANBUILD in Kyoto. The work has been evolving through my performances and time shared with audience members, and I continue to learn and find meanings of seeing.
As I see the moon in the night's darkness which receives the light from the sun, the earth changing the light's shape with its shadow, I continue to think about light and darkness, lines and shape. Two years ago, I started to consider the shape of the moon as a membrane between stories and between in and out. After some projects, the swaying line and rings of moonlight make me think about soul and wounds, and humans' eyes.
photo by Florian Rosier/ZK/U Berlin
photos by Zhang Ping at Baiju Theatre
love is the song
August 30, 2025
Title: love is the song
Performance of voice and body
Listening Biennial Singapore x Singapore Night Festival
Presented at 42 Waterloo Street
Duration: 17:02
“Can love be a song? Through a nuanced interplay of voice and movement, artist Aine Nakamura engages listening as an embodied act of care. Her performance draws on attunement to depth and the site to cultivate a space for mutual recognition, gesturing toward the potential for collective healing and relational repair.”
Upon an invitation to The Listening Biennial Singapore, which focused on aural diversity, social repair, and ecological attunement, I presented this solo performance. My preparation included reading The Other Shore by Thich Nhat Hanh, learning about the idea of "interbeing," which was one of the themes of the Biennial—how we are interconnected and not separate from each other, and my listening in Singapore I began a year before the Biennial. In relation to WWII and Japanese occupation, I walked historical sites and listened to intergenerational stories. My practice led me to the positionality of love and recognition of personal wounds. During this time, Deborah Chen guided me to the standpoint of love. With the limits I have, still, can I perform from love? In order to attend to the space that is not linear in exploring memory and wounds, I participate in the collective repair of historical and personal wounds to see ourselves in relation to each other—as “interbeings.”
In the daytime, composer Chong Li-Chuan's soundwalk, On Any Given Day: A Soundwalk at Hong Lim Complex, was held. Upon the evening event, before this performance, eco-feminist poet Esther Vincent read her poems from Womb Song, focusing on mothering, grief and departure through her loss of her pet. I read these poems in advance as a part of my preparation. The incense and bowl were set by Esther Vincent.
Upon this occasion, I also made public of my experience of vocal injury I had in 2017.
The Listening Biennial Singapore Edition was co-programmed by artist Alecia Neo and publisher Ng Kah Gay of Ethos Books.
Photography by Poh Yu Khing. Courtesy of The Listening Biennial Singapore