Adam LEWIS JACOB “_____”

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The exhibition unfolds as an installation that speaks to both the built architecture of capitalism and the more intimate, domestic spaces it encloses. Shifting between expansive, external structures and inward, often hidden interiors, the piece explores how bodies move through, are shaped by, and sometimes resist the systems around them. The visual language of the work reflects a fascination with structure and improvisation: the grid-like layouts of cities, the claustrophobia of narrow streets, and the maze-like sprawl of urban design that limits perspective while promising order. Through performance, gesture, and cinematography, the installation invites reflection on how capitalism imprints itself onto the body through architecture, routine, and restriction.

Period	Nov 22 (Sat) - Dec 7 (Sun), 2025
Closed	Monday (except Nov 24), Nov 25
Time	11:00-19:00
Admission	Free
Venue	Tokyo Arts and Space Hongo: Space C (3F)

Related Event 

Performance & Talk

 

Date	Nov 29 (Sat), 2025 16:00-17:30
Content	- Performance by Ryosuke Kiyasu - Artist talk by Adam Lewis Jacob Ryosuke Kiyasu A pioneering snare-drum soloist who has redefined percussion since 2003. He drums for noise-grind duo SETE STAR SEPT and the Kiyasu Orchestra. From Überschlag—the world’s largest classical-percussion festival—to Finland’s Outsider Art Festival and Dr. Martens Fest, Kiyasu’s 2022-24 itinerary placed him on premier stages across Europe. With 200-plus releases spanning solo work and band discographies, Kiyasu continues to tour globally. http://www.kiyasu.com/
Language (Talk)	English / Japanese
Admission	Free - Booking required, all seats are unreserved. - Booking opens from 14:00 on Sep 12 (Fri), 2025. - Booking will close if seats are sold out or at 17:00 the day before the performance.
Venue	Tokyo Arts and Space Hongo: Space C (3F)

Ticket bookings available from 14:00 on September 12 (Fri)!
Go to the booking website (Peatix).
*Peatix account required to book tickets.

Profile

Adam Lewis Jacob is an artist and filmmaker based in Glasgow. His work explores the structures that govern our lives and the countercultural figures who question them, using improvisation, performance, and sound to reinterpret research and reactivate histories. Recent exhibition: “Idrish,” LUX, London, 2022. Recent award: “Special Mention” from Jury at Glasgow Short Film Festival 2022. Participated in Edinburgh-Tokyo Exchange Residency Program 2022 and stayed at TOKAS Residency.

Catalog

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Review

Regulated Landscapes, Transgressive Bodies

UEDA Kaoru (Tokyo Arts and Space)

Adam Lewis Jacob, who stayed at the TOKAS Residency as an invited creator in the Edinburgh-Tokyo Exchange Residency Program, is concerned with the social structures that govern everyday life and with people who call those structures into question. His practice is grounded in an interest in forms of cultural practice that push back against forces such as commercialism and authoritarianism. This exhibition centers on a video work that weaves together research on left-wing activism carried out during his residency, footage of Tokyo’s urban landscape filmed at the time, and an improvised performance by snare drummer Kiyasu Ryosuke.
　　As visitors climb the stairs toward the third-floor gallery, they encounter a video work shown on a cathode ray tube television installed on the landing. The video combines vivid imagery with an intense vocal delivery, and includes narration based on a text written by Andrew Black in response to research that Lewis Jacob conducted in Tokyo. Through the fragmentary presentation of proper nouns and historical events, the work conveys the layered conditions of political violence, urbanization, and countercultural movements in Japan around 1968, articulated through the speaker identified as “_____.”
　　This work draws on Japanese New Wave cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. As Lewis Jacob began working with experimental approaches that disrupt the act of seeing itself and compositions that slice across the screen, his research led him toward an interest in landscape theory, which frames landscape in relation to culture, society, and politics. In this context, he was strongly influenced by Adachi Masao’s film A.K.A. Serial Killer and by the thinking of film critic Matsuda Masao. He also took the rich visual texture of Nakahira Takuma’s black-and-white photographs, marked by stark contrasts and blurred contours, as a reference point for his visual language. The narration is delivered by Tony Morris in a forceful vocal register. Lewis Jacob has said that after reading Suzuki Izumi’s Terminal Boredom, published by a British press in 2021, he was struck by the tension and sense of disquiet in her writing, which in turn influenced his determination of the tone of the narration.
　　Upon entering the gallery, visitors are met by a two-channel video projected onto freestanding screens placed side by side within an expansive space. The work builds on a video first presented in Edinburgh in 2023, in which Kiyasu’s improvised performance is combined with structural montage techniques influenced by the experimental films of Matsumoto Toshio. For its presentation in Tokyo, the work was expanded through the addition of new performances by violist Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh and sound artist and dancer Bianca Scout. Throughout the piece, the rhythm of the performances reverberates across the space, as depictions of the cityscape and the movements of performers through the city respond to one another. Interested in the state of the body within urban space, and sensing that our actions are unconsciously shaped by forms of urban design informed by capitalist agendas, Lewis Jacob perceives a stance of resistance in Kiyasu’s unrestrained performance and the free movements of his body in response to sound, and the video is structured around this dynamic.
　　As Scout moves back and forth between the two screens, she appears at times to be fleeing from someone, and at other moments to be pursuing something herself. As the viewer’s gaze follows her wandering through the city, she suddenly returns that gaze. Through the video, and through sculptural elements that intermittently appear and disappear behind the screens, the work foregrounds the conditions of seeing and being seen.
Scattered throughout the venue are sculptures made from found objects sourced at markets and charity shops, including record sleeves, plastic champagne glasses, and electrical plugs. The objects’ original functions subverted, chance is incorporated into the process of making, and the sculptures are positioned in ways that respond to the site, energizing the space much like a musician’s improvised performance.
　　Within this space, where video, sound, and sculpture interact, viewers find themselves between the rhythms of control embedded in the city and the free movement of bodies that respond to them. Drawing on research into historical modes of thought and expression, Lewis Jacob asks how our ways of seeing and acting in today’s urban environments are formed, and how they might be liberated from constraints.

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OPEN SITE 10

Participating Creator

Adam LEWIS JACOB