A.A.Murakami

A.A.Murakami is the collaborative practice of partners Azusa Murakami and Alexander Groves, working between London and Tokyo. Their work can be described as ‘ephemeral tech’ projects. Having coined this term themselves, it aims to describe a way of thinking about technology not as a screen-based interface, but as a set of conditions: atmosphere, moisture, electricity, scale, sound, and light. In that framing, installations are not objects to be viewed from outside, but lived situations that form and disappear in real time. And that’s exactly what they create.

A.A.Murakami’s installations treat impermanence as a material choice. They have the desire to escape screens, because technology sits in a dimension that can’t age when it remains on-screen. Their installations pull the encounter back into the visitor’s bodily time: fog that drifts, bubbles that burst, air that changes the room. This can literally be seen in projects such as Beyond the Horizon (2024), which sends large mist-filled bubbles overhead before they rupture into clouds. This is a demonstration of engineering used to produce something impermanent, focussing on the specific moments of experience – with no ‘burst’ ever being the same.

Selected institutional and large-scale presentations include the Museum of Fine Arts Houston; the Grand Palais, Paris; M+ Hong Kong; Copenhagen Contemporary; venues in Seoul; and large public and museum-scale settings in Japan and Europe. Alongside museum contexts, A.A.Murakami have realised major commissioned projects with partners such as Hyundai Motorstudio, where their work operates at the intersection of engineering and spatial design.

Their immense technical productions show us that contemporary technology can be something you sense – humid, luminous, fragile, temporary – rather than something you merely watch. A.A.Murakami’s installations are built around that reversal, using scientific apparatus and theatrical staging to create environments where the most advanced element is often the least durable.