R a g – T a l e s R e – P u r p o s e d : A B o r o T e x t, Installation, Re-writings & Readings by Adrian Nichols
R a g – T a l e s R e – P u r p o s e d : A B o r o T e x t explores the idea of how mending and re-purposing shape and re-shape clothing and language. In northern Japan, those responsible for clothing themselves and others in their families and communities developed a practice of mending and re-purposing textiles that emphasized the dignity of the wearers, using often tiny scraps of found or recovered fabric. In so doing, they produced a patchwork of astonishing complexity visible only on the interior of the garment. This approach to constructing and repairing textiles is called Boro.
Adrian Nichols, currently writer in residence of the World Shibori Network Foundation, has taken two vintage samples of boro textiles from the collection of Yoshiko Wada and hung them as figures in the Kala Gallery. A series of texts, on paper and in a four-channel playback of voice recordings, along with Nichols’ live voice and found local sounds, will animate the figures. The texts, in English, German, and Arabic, analogously to the boro fabrics, represent a more or less fleeting embodiment of words, ideas and feelings read and recycled or processed from writings of John Cage, Felix Rückert, Ibn Arabi, and Al-Hariri of Basra.
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A d r i a n N i c h o l s was born in New York City and lives in Berlin. His writing has appeared inter alia in Po&sie, Fence, Abwärts, La mer gelée, The
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Ping Pong, Hotel Amerika, and The Ballet Review. Nichols has presented works as performance, theatre or installation at the Hoffmann Collection, Ortstermin Moabit, Studio Niculescu, and Hopscotch in Berlin; the UM Festival for landscape art in Fergitz (Brandenburg); the John Cage Festival in Halbertstadt; the Goethe Institut, Washington, D.C.; the Maison de la Poésie and the Maison Heinrich Heine in Paris; and most recently at the theatre of the Kulturfabrik Moabit (Berlin). He is currently writer in residence of the World Shibori Network Foundation in Berkeley, California. His wordbook of anarchy and other poems in accordance with john cage in his manner of operation was published by Moloko Print in Fall 2025. Some elements of his performance at Kala Art Institute will be drawn from a work in progress, Abu Zayd : the Berlin Maqamat.
Event Details
Date: December 18, 2026
Time: 5:00 pm–7:00 pm
Kala Gallery
2990 San Pablo Ave