JAPAN VIDEO WINDOWS
MAI YAMASHITA and NAOTO KOBAYASHI
Candy, 2005, single channel video, 19'22'', DVD/loop/PAL, color, silent
It's a small world, 2004, single channel video, 3'30'', DVD/loop/PAL, color
MEIRO KOIZUMI
Human Opera XXX, 2007 single channel video, 15', DVD/loop/PAL, color
Art of Awakening, 2005 single channel video, 9', DVD/loop/PAL, color
CHIKARA MATSUMOTO
Climbing Universe, 2006 animation video / video animacija, 5' 23''
DAISUKE NAGAOKA
Dreaming, 2006, video, 10', DVD/loop/PAL, color
Utopia, 2004, video, 7' 51", DVD/loop/PAL, color
YUKI OKUMURA
Can't Get You Out Of My Head, 2007, video, 4'50'', DVD/loop/PAL, color
Rainbow Release, 2006, video, 2'30'', DVD/loop/PAL, color
THE WINDOW THROUGH WHICH
WE ARE LOOKING OUT
Contemporary Japanese video art is, to the world wide audience, still unknown; or rather the public is not updated with the current accomplishments of it (forgetting for a moment extreme provocative Japanese video activity, which is well-known in the art industry). This lack of awareness is unlikely to be due to lack of interest in this particular medium, but more likely due to the rare opportunities for the display of video works by young Japanese visual artists world wide. JA PAN VIDEO WINDOW is an initial project of DADADA Association for Contemporary Art Sarajevo, run in cooperation with Japan Foundation, Kyoto Aeroport, French Embassy and Japan Embassy in Sarajevo, and MIA CA Moving Image Archive of Contemporary Art Japan. The aim of this project is to promote contemporary Japanese art; engender more attention to the new identity of video medium and its association with other media, and its artistic, social, as well as cultural and political responsibility. This project will include video exhibitions of young Japanese visual artists, while lectures and video workshops will be run by professor/artist Yoshiaki Inatsugi and will take place in the gallery for contemporary art; DUPLE X/10m2 Sarajevo.
JAPAN VIDEO WINDOW is a continuation of the existing partnership made by the first cultural exchange three years ago, when several Bosnian artists exhibited their works at Video Salon 2006 in Shiga. The present show in Sarajevo exhibits several Japanese video artists, exemplifying different expression and video aesthetic, and includes Mai Yamashita, Naoto Kobayashi, Meiro Koizumi,Yuki Okumura, Chikara Matsumoto and Daisuke Nagaoka. Today it’s almost impossible to see contemporary art exhibitions that don’t include video art. In order to understand the tendency of Japanese contemporary video art and appreciate its works, it is important to acknowledge the possibilities of video as an artistic medium. Video art defies attempts at definition because of its essential eclecticism. It has also been associated with television, which uses many techniques that have been appropriated by video artists - addressing viewers directly with the fact that meaning in language is always mediated. By using different techniques, selected Japanese artists in Sarajevo explore a new perspective in video art, elaborating on radical forms of video with the tendency to include the viewer’s experience from the observation process.
Video art in Japan has always blended artistic approach with traditional culture, cultural heritage and religion to produce its new form in which the past, present and future harmoniously coexist. The poetic complexities of video have been identified as having a strong influence from traditional media and other artistic genres, especially literature such as haiku poetry. Moreover, philosophy – the spiritual presence in an ordinary life – as well as Buddhist concepts, where all things in the universe are interconnected, increase awareness of communication issues. With the assumption of interconnection, artists start to build video narrative, creating an artificial world, where art redefines values of human existence. During the 1970s and 1980s, Japanese artists explored both the formal dimensions of the live-feedback system and its impact on social and political instruments, but at the same time continued to experiment with the technological and communicative capabilities of video. Visual experiments in their works were initiated by the influence of western conceptual art, but with a different focus. Video activism became indistinguishable from other media. Furthermore, most likely as a result of this circumstance, most reference abstract works that deal specifically with special visual effects, and satisfy themselves with the use of new software, recognizing the importance of a clear delineation of its significance.
In his works, Meiro Koizumi explores notions of the self and others, of the limit between the private and the public, where everything that has been recorded can be shown in public, and can easily be manipulated and used for different purposes. He is intrigued by human behavior in general; the relation between the internal world of perception and the external world of human nature; its interaction with others, but also with society and its development. Koizumi uses video to illustrate authority or the control of electronic media on ordinary people, their willingness to share their personal experience (such as in Human Opera XXX) and not thinking of possible consequences. The artist employs confession and story-telling to open up timeless issues having to do with the temporary memories and the persistent problem of the outsider in society. In Art of Awakening, Koizumi generates specific viewer’s feelings and state of mind, trying to disturb him/her and make them react as a response to displayed images.
Chikara Matsumoto and Daisuke Nagaoka deal with animation in their video. Their works are marked by a changed approach to classical medium; drawing as a main expression. One can see a fluid border between production process and final product - video work. Within Dreaming or Utopia, Daisuke plays with his motions, constantly repeating actions creating some kind of rhythm, an imageless pattern. Matsumoto’s Climbing Universe is not only a study of hand-drawn images, but also image and sound synthesis in which music by organ-o-rounge is soundless support to visual content of video. These works reveal a long video tradition from the late 1960s, when Japanese artists began incorporating video imagery and technology into psychedelic and animated films.
Similar to previous works, Mai Yamashita and Naoto Kobayashi combine production process with the concept of work itself. It is also a study, but a different one; they do not examine the cause nor the meaning of the process of the creation. Nevertheless, in Candy their tension is to capture a segment of time, transform it into moments and show them as a chronological timeline. It’s a small world brings similar concepts; cutting the large unit into small pieces and making a new one. In both videos, the artists question their perspective, what is involved in the observation process and its meaning.
In Yuki Okumura’s works, Can’t Get You Out of My Head and Rainbow Release are two parallel stories in the present. He explores two different worlds: the one we can see directly that happens in front of us; and the second one, the secret one which contains symbolic meaning and mystical connotations. The artist tries to discover the effects of self-reflexiveness, of visible and invisible acts on consumers’ eyes and judgement. The title of the project, as well as the title of the exhibition, is used to show the symbolic meaning of the word window. It represents passage between two cultures, it is a kind of artistic exchange between two distant worlds – but in fact when one opens the window that “frontier” of diversity doesn’t exist anymore. Through technological development and cultural globalization, today we are closed to Japan more than ever.
This exhibition introduces us not only to Japanese contemporary video art, but also to today’s significant young Japanese visual artists. Observing these video works will help us know more about Japanese contemporary video art, and might help us to change our prejudice to Japanese culture.
Silvija Dervisefendic
Pierre Courtin
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