- Workshop
- Sanpo
Nalaka Wijewardhane | Silent Walk Workshop: Contemplating the Unthinkable
EXHIBITIONS
Installation
Video
Venue
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Etoile Kaito Living Bldg.
1-15-15 Higashikanda, Chiyoda-ku
Date
11:30–18:00 (Fri until 19:00)
Closed on Mon. and Tue.
*Open Nov 3 (Nat’l hol.) and 24 (Subst. hol.).
Nalaka Wijewardhane is a Sri Lankan filmmaker, visual artist, and academic whose work explores postcolonial memory, representation, and the sensory power of moving images.
Contingent Footsteps: Mapping the Unthinkable in Tokyo is a multi-channel video art installation that transforms urban spaces into speculative terrains, exploring themes of contingency, absence, and the non-human Real. Drawing from Quentin Meillassoux’s concept of “hyper-chaos,” the work unfolds across five interconnected installations : In the Absence of Cause, Ontological Debris, The City That Forgets You, Echoes Without Origins, and Unthinkable Intervals.
Through asynchronous projections, site-specific soundscapes, and sensor-triggered interactions, the project dismantles linear narratives, inviting audiences to experience Tokyo as a city unbound from memory, causality, or human centrality. Everyday spaces, objects, and sounds are reframed as autonomous presences, resisting interpretation and dissolving familiar meaning.
The installation creates a continuous spatial experience, where shifting light, dislocated sound, and fractured imagery immerse visitors in an unstable perceptual field. It is both a meditation on the unknowable rhythms of the city and a call to reimagine our relationship to the urban environment beyond anthropocentric narratives.
Special Cooperation: Etoile Kaito & Co., Inc.
* Nalaka Wijewardhane is one of the participating artists in the international open-call project SOCIAL DIVE.
Map
2 min walk from JR Sobu Line Bakurocho Sta. (Ex. 4)
6 min walk from Toei Shinjuku Line Bakuroyokoyama Sta. (Ex. A1)
Photo by Anuruddhika Padukkage
Nalaka Wijewardhane is a Sri Lankan filmmaker, visual artist, and academic whose work explores postcolonial memory, representation, and the sensory power of moving images. A lecturer at the University of Colombo and a doctoral researcher, his focus on colonial-era ethnographic films informs his practice. Nalaka’s poetic, experimental works combine archival footage, soundscapes, and non-linear narratives to challenge inherited gazes and evoke unseen histories. Rooted in South Asian and Buddhist contexts, his films and installations investigate how cultural identities are constructed and mediated, offering new ways of seeing, remembering, and imagining the past.
Nihonbashi/Bakurocho Area
Etoile Kaito Living Bldg.