Fuyuki Yamakawa

In the winter of 2020, Yamakawa performed a major work, DOMBRA, on a grouping of boats in the Tokyo Bay. The performance combined his throat-singing with the sound of seagulls, waves and passing boats. This work produced in the early days of the COVID-19 crisis, placed the pandemic within a "historical context while demonstrating the potential to open up new avenues into tomorrow." Boats carried the audience into the bay while another boat held a sound stage on which Yamakawa and others performed. The content of the spoken word portions of the piece referred to the movement, commerce and other impacts of humans on the natural environs of Tokyo Bay.

In 2015 Yamakawa received the Yokohama Cultural Award; In 2003, Yamakawa received the Avant-Garde Award from the "4th International Khoomei Festival", Republic of Tuva, Russia (sponsored by UNESCO)

Yamakawa is also known for his installation work, Atomic Guitars (2012), in response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, after which his work took on aspects of social criticism. Atomic Guitar, Mark I & Mark II, is an automated "guitar playing system operated by radioactivity." Nick Richardson of the London Review of Books has described the work as: "Two canary yellow stratocasters, mounted on stands to face each other and wired into squat black amps, buzz with a tentative open string drone. Next to the guitars hangs the shell of a radiation-proof suit." Each of the guitars was wired up to a geiger counter and a tactile transducer. A pot of soil collected from sites in Tokyo sits beneath each guitar on an empty stage. The soil was contaminated from the plume of air-borne radiation from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdowns that occurred 118 miles from Tokyo. As each geiger counter clicks from detecting radioactive isotopes that are emitted from the soil, the tactile transducers cause a vibration in the guitar strings to play a dissonant soundscape.

Yamakawa completed a master's degree in video art and graphic design in 1999 at the Tama Art University. While at university he played electric guitar in rock bands. He later developed an interest in club music and began creating computer drum 'n bass work.

Fuyuki Yamakawa (山川冬樹) (born 1973) is a performance artist, sound artist and musician who lives in Yokohama and Tokyo, Japan.