tamanaramenJP
tamanaramen is a sister audiovisual duo based in Tokyo and London. Blending whispered vocals, abstract sound, and visual expression, they create immersive live performances.
They have appeared at festivals in Japan and abroad, including SXSW, and performed live and DJ sets in London, Berlin, and New York. In 2025, they delivered a DJ performance in Turin, Italy, in conjunction with Chiharu Shiota's solo exhibition at the Museum of Oriental Art. In summer 2026, they will perform at Summer Sonic on the DIM MAK stage, led by Steve Aoki. They were named to Forbes JAPAN's 30 Under 30 in 2023.
tamanaramen — DANCE IS BREATHING
This work is an audiovisual performance exploring dance, breath, and the memory of the ever-changing body.
As expressed in the Japanese concept of “banbutsu ruten” — the idea that all things are in constant flux — everything continues to transform over time. Emotions, memories, bodies, and the landscapes surrounding us continuously shift and reshape themselves. I am deeply drawn to the ambiguous boundary between what disappears and what remains, between what changes and what continues to live on within the body.
In this work, the body is perceived as a temporary vessel for memory and emotion. Feelings and memories constantly transform, yet through breathing, feeling pain, and moving our bodies in response to sound, we continue to recognize ourselves as existing beings. Over time, wrinkles and sagging slowly appear on the skin, and the body that once continued breathing will eventually stop functioning and grow cold. Still, it is only through this unstable and ever-changing body that we are able to experience and perceive the world.
The visual work draws from the physicality of plants that bloom, decay, and wither, as well as organic imagery that continuously mutates like liquid. Skin, flower petals, water surfaces, waves, and flickering light — these elements oscillate between beauty and unease, dissolving the boundaries between them. Within these images exists a primitive longing for a sensation resembling the memory of floating in amniotic fluid before birth.
The work also incorporates fragmented footage recorded while moving across Europe, layering together landscapes of transforming cities, bodies, and memories. Through sound that traverses ambient, IDM, and techno, alongside fluid visual expressions and repetitive rhythms of dance and movement, the performance attempts to disrupt the audience’s perception of time and bodily awareness, creating moments where personal memory dissolves into collective ecstasy.
This work is conceived as an audiovisual ritual for bodies that continue breathing within an endlessly changing world.
