Shinboku
Shaped by pianist–composer Erika Dohi* with Metropolis Ensemble and Forgotten Futures (in participation with Figure 8 Studios), Shinboku** explores the power of slowness in a culture of acceleration. Invited artists work with Forgotten Futures’ electronic and electro-acoustic instruments as process-driven tools—where experimentation, instruction-scores, and iterative making become the performance.
Rooted in Fluxus ethics—art fused with everyday life; DIY, anti-commercial, and “intermedia” practice—the series privileges process over product and radical audience access, echoing George Maciunas’s cooperative Fluxhouse spirit that reframed art as social practice.
The title Shinboku refers to a sacred tree in Shinto: a vessel where spirit (kami) resides. These vintage machines feel similarly alive—temperamental, time-bearing, never the same two days in a row. (During sessions on the Fairlight CMI for Myth of Tomorrow, Erika often joked that if left overnight, it would greet everyone with a different soul in the morning.) We create—and in that slow, attentive process, presence dwells—inside human-made instruments that carry history like rings in wood.
Together, these concerts form a living laboratory for invention over imitation, and radical listening — right in downtown Manhattan where that countercultural spirit first took root.
Events in this Series
Series Partners
Series Performers
*2025-6 Metropolis Artist-in-Residence at Rivington
“Shinboku” is presented by Metropolis Ensemble in collaboration with Erika Dohi and Forgotten Futures, with special thanks to Candice Madey, and Marinaro.