Japan: teamLab Opens Unique Sauna Experience

The international art collective teamLab, which is known for its digital exhibition experiences such as the Mori Building Digital Art Museum: teamLab Borderless (cf. EAP 1/2020), has just opened another unique visitor experience called “teamLab & TikTok, teamLab Reconnect: Art with Rinkan Sauna Roppongi” in Tokyo this past Monday, which combines digital art and a sauna session, which is inspired by an ancient sauna and tea ritual called rinkan-chanoyu. Using alternating cold and hot baths – a five- to ten-minute sauna session, a one- to two-minute cold bath, followed by a rest period – guests are meant to enter a trance-like state of mind, allowing the art to affect all their senses.

In seven different saunas, which offer everything from mild and humid to dry and hot air, both sauna beginners and regular sauna visitors are able to enjoy the offer. Various infusions as well as sound elements complement the sauna experience. Stepping out of the sauna, visitors enter one of the two “Cold Bath” rooms, cold water is pouring down on guests both from the shower heads on the ceiling and at shoulder level. The water serves as a projection element for digital art, offering visitors an art experience that guests can immerse their entire bodies in. In three other quiet rooms, visitors can then relax and take in the large-scale digital art projections. teamLab Reconnect is a temporary installation and can be visited until August 31st, 2021.

As the first European project, a “teamLab Borderless” digital art experience is to be created in a 5,000 square meters building in the HafenCity in Hamburg. (eap)