Kanako Hayashi’s intermedia work can be located between performance, video art, sculpture and drawing. It is much influenced by intense experiences in competitive and synchronized swimming during her youth. Such frequent swimming and diving meant that Hayashi increasingly concentrated her perception on the specific conditions in and under water. The interplay between buoyancy and gravity, as well as the particular architectonic features of swimming baths flow permanently into Hayashi’s work.
In her latest video work the artist would like to make the reciprocal play of water, wind and movement visible to the viewer. Consequently, her new recordings were not made in swimming pools limited by their architecture, but in a river. Here, the water surface is like an empty sketch book, which records the energies and movements of bodies or objects. Hayashi’s practice aims to make the invisible visible, as well as stimulating the public to consider their own memories of, and experiences with water as an element. In Künstlerhaus Bethanien Hayashi is showing an installation with various parts, its central work being the aforementioned video piece.