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Performing Artist
Haruka Sasaki & Ernst Bier
Berlin, Germany
Haruka Sasaki & Ernst Bier are Berlin-based artists whose collaborative performances bring together improvisational painting and experimental sound, creating immersive encounters that unfold in real time.
Born in Nagano, Japan, Haruka Sasaki is a contemporary visual artist whose practice is deeply influenced by the Japanese concept of Yaoyorozu no Kami; the belief that spirits inhabit all things. Through expressive brushwork, Sumi-e painting, and performative mark-making, she explores the relationship between nature, energy, mythology, and the unseen forces that connect all living beings. Since 2017, she has developed a series of live painting performances with musicians across Europe, transforming painting into a temporal and embodied act.
Ernst Bier is an internationally respected drummer and sound artist who studied with legendary jazz masters including Billy Brooks, Charlie Persip, Vernell Fournier, and Elvin Jones. Known for his sensitivity, inventive spirit, and remarkable musicality, he has collaborated with an extensive range of acclaimed jazz musicians throughout his career. Alongside his acoustic practice, Bier works with electronic percussion and live sound processing, creating richly layered sonic environments that bridge improvisation and experimentation.
Together, Sasaki and Bier engage in a spontaneous dialogue between gesture, rhythm, movement, and sound. Their performances emerge through attentive listening and mutual response, allowing painting and music to evolve as a single living process. Created entirely in the moment, each collaboration becomes a unique exploration of presence, connection, and transformation.
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Artist Statement
Improvisational Sound & Art Performance
For Underground Garden, Haruka Sasaki and Ernst Bier present an improvisational performance in which painting and sound evolve together in a shared moment of creation.
Through a continuous exchange between Sumi-e brushwork and percussion, the artists respond intuitively to one another, allowing rhythm, gesture, movement, and mark-making to unfold without a predetermined outcome. Brushstrokes, flowing ink, bodily movement, and the materials' subtle resonances become part of a living composition in which visual and sonic elements are inseparable.
Rooted in attentiveness, presence, and improvisation, the performance invites audiences to witness a process rather than a finished form. Within the space of Underground Garden, the work evokes the invisible forces that connect bodies, materials, sound, and environment, revealing a fleeting encounter that can exist only once, in that particular place and moment.