DVD"Performance / Myself (Or Video Identity)"
with Takahiko iimura and Akiko iimura

1972-1995, 7 pieces, 29min., NTSC/Region ALL
ISBN-13: 978-4-901181-38-9
Home use$70 (Institutional use US$300)

・Self Identity (1972, 1 min. extract)
・Double Identity (1979, 1.5 min. extract)
・Double Portrait ( 1973-1987, 5 min.)
・I Love You (1973-1987, 4.5 min.)
・This Is A Camera Which Shoots This (1982-1995, 5 min.)
・As I See You You See Me (1990-1995, 7 min.)
・I Am A Viewer, You Are A Viewer (1981, 4 min.)


This DVD is produced with "myself" as the sole object as well as the material of the performance except two videos with Akiko iimura. The video is not just a document of the performance but a work of video-art made specifically for video utilizing the video system including camera and monitor as a part of the performance.
The video also questions the identity of oneself in video having tense relationships between words and images, and asks who is "I" and what "I" means.


In the first, "Self Identity," I said in front of the camera, "I am Takahiko iimura," and "I am not Takahiko iimura," alternately. Does it sound like a ZEN-MONDO, a question and answer session of Zen monks? Yes, and no. The key of the piece is the former announced with the voice synchronized with the picture and the latter without synchronization, the voice only. Next, "Double Identity" is set in a similar context with two monitors, in which the same person in frontal view appears, facing himself. They both claim "I am T.I.," then yield to each other, at the end both denying the identity themselves. It is subtitled "On turning the Double Negative to the Positive." It suggests that only the viewer receives the positive, not the person in the monitor who is not able to hear what the other said. "Double Portrait" and "I Love You" are a paired piece with Akiko iimura. Both iimuras play individually and as a unit. In "Double Portrait" they are never together, but one by one in three points of view, front, side, and back, assigned to the words "I", "You" and "He"/"She" respectively. They identify their own names positively and negatively one after the other. The pronouns rotate with every repetition, for instance, in front view with "You," then "He/She" and back to "I." Often the words are destroyed acoustically, making them unintelligible. Are you confused? "I Love You" is not an expression of confession, but a series of words -- a linguistic practice using a sentence "I love you" in which pronouns alternate reference to subject and object (called a 'shifter' by linguist Roman Jakobson) based on the positions of speaker and listener. The reverberating effect in the sound multiplies the actors' overlapping words and the male and female voices are dubbed over the image of the other gender.

Two other companion pieces are "This Is A Camera Which Shoots This" and "As I See You You See Me." Both are set up facing two cameras and monitors and the performer walks between them while voicing the sentence of the title. Here the words "This" and "You" have the same form in the nominative and the objective cases, switching the roles of not only the signifier (word) but also the signified (object).

In the last, "I Am A Viewer, You Are A Viewer," made in film, the performer plays the double role of the performer and the audience simultaneously, talking to his own shadow. At the end, the performer suggests the audience members move into the light to see themselves in shadow. (T.I.)

DVD"ON TIME IN FILM/DVD"

1975-2007, 3 Films, 33min.. NTSC/Region ALL
ISBN-13: 978-4-901181-36-5
IISBN-10: 4-901181-36-5
Home use$60 (Institutional use US$300)


■"24FRAMES PER SECOND"　
(1975-78/2007, 16mm/dvd, b/w, 10min.35sec., sound.)
■"TIMED 1, 2, 3 (From MODELS, Reel 1)"
（1972/2007,16mm/dvd, b/w,10min.15sec., ,sound)
■"ONE FRAME DURATION"
（1977/2007, 16mm/dvd, b/w & color, 11min., sound.）

"Time is, as it has been said by John Cage on music, the most important issue in film".( Takahiko iimura)

In concentrating on this set of problems, often wrongly seen as 'minimalist', Iimura went much, much further than any other film artist in exploring a kind of art-science. This concern with the experience of time, its measured passage and the analogy between time and space, has been the main recurring theme at the centre of his work.
- Malcolm Le Grice（The author of "Abstract Film and Beyond", MIT Press)


24 FRAMES PER SECOND

Both in terms of its examination of time and space, of light and darkness, of visuals and sounds; and in terms of its demands and potential rewards for an audience, 24 Frames Per second is a quintessential Iimura film. The film alternates between one-second passages during which the viewer sees one of a series of fractions and [with] one-second segments of black and clear leader. As the film progress, the fractions grow from 1/24 to 24/24. "1/24," for example, is followed by one second of film in which one frame is clear and 23 are black or[then] one is black, 23 clear.
-Scott MacDonald


TIMED 1, 2, 3 (From MODELS, Reel 1)

My favorite section of Models - "Timed 1, 2, 3" - is a particularly effective interweaving of visuals and sounds. Visually, each section of the film is composed of 10-second spans of clear and dark leader, arranged in a progressive fashion so that at first there is more and more light and less darkness, then vice versa. During "Timed 1" a sound "bip" scratched directly onto the soundtrack is audible each second; in "Timed 2" the sounds are audible every 10 seconds; and in "Timed 3" we hear them every 100 seconds, or at the halfway point and at the end. ..All in all, the number of interesting filmic explorations in the eight section of Models makes it one of Iimura's most impressive films.
- Scott MacDonald

DVD "DVD Art of Takahiko iimura"

2006, 12min. color&b/w, sound, NTSC/Region ALL
ISBN-13: 978-4-901181-35-8
ISBN-10: 4-901181-35-1
Home use. $30 (Institutional use US$200)

DVD "FOR FILMIC MEDITATION"
"IN THE RIVER" & "SHUTTER"
1969-2007, 2 Films, 42min., color&b/w, sound, NTSC/Region ALL
Home use : US$60 (Institutional use US$300)
ISBN-13: 978-4-901181-34-1
ISBN-10: 4-901181-34-3

■IN THE RIVER
(1969-70, 16mm, color, 12min., Sound)
■SHUTTER
(1971, 16mm, B&W, 30min, Music by Keijiro Satoh)"

Iimura analyzed some footage he had made in Katmandu of a man taking a bath in a sacred river[In The River]… A meditational experience is, thus, presented in a film whose minimal action and quiet pace can create meditational possibilities for viewers
-Scott MacDonald (Afterimage, April, 1978, N.Y.) .

All in all, the variety of effects Shutter creates makes for one of the more interesting of those many works of recent years which have attempted to explore the visual potential of film processes and materials.
-Scott MacDonald (Afterimage, April, 1978, N.Y.)

DVD"Experiments in New York"

1967-1984, 3films/videos, 31min. , b&w/color, NTSC/Region ALL
ISBN-13: 978-4-901181-29-7
ISBN-10: 4-901181-29-7
Home use : US$50 (Institutional use US$200)
Collection of the Donnel Library, N.Y and Bobst Library, New York University, N.Y.

■ New York Scenes, 1967, 10min. color & b/w
■ New York Hot Springs, 1984, 11min. b/w
■ Talking in New York, 1981, 8min. b/w

A collection of videos in various different styles which concerns with New York as the object and/or the subject responding to the request by the Donnel Library in New York.

"New York Scenes" (1967) is sketches of certain scenes and portraits including, a famous filmmaker, Jack Smith with his film "Flaming Creatures." Made with one scene per chapter, consisting of five chapters. "New York Hot Springs" (1984) is scenes of steam coming out of various streets of New York, a typical scene in winter, in repeated cycles of short shots. Though the scenes are shot at the same locations, the timings are differed slightly in every cycle. "Talking in New York (Realizing the words of Jacques Derrida)" (1981) is a kind of first person cinema in which iimura voices and listens to himself on the streets of New York speaking a same sentence by French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, what he calls "phenomenological essence," in Japanese and English. （T.I.）

DVD"NEW YORK DAY AND NIGHT"
-A Journey Through Light and Darkness

1989, 56min. color
Music by Takehisa Kosugi
Played by Michael Pugliese and Takehisa Kosugi
NTSC/Region ALL
ISBN-13: 978-4-901181-32-7
ISBN-10: 4-901181-32-7
Home use : US$70 (Institutional use US$300)

This is not a sight seeing film but a poetic journey through light and darkness reflected on the city of New York where I often found empty spaces and times like Ma in Japanese . You do not often see the people walking on the streets or in the buildings. But you may feel the air and the light are coming and going. It's not a deserted city, but full of energy that is there even without the people. You see the wind is blowing as the bubbles are floating over Wall Street, then up, up to the sky. The Sun sets under the Washington Bridge where all the cars are running slowly like ants shot from afar. The night falls down among the skyscrapers yet the horizon is still light. Suddenly people are….. (T.I.)

DVD"MA / 間, A Japanese Concept"
Four films by Takahiko iimura

1977-1989, ４ Films/Videos, 46 min., b/w & color, NTSC/Region ALL
ISBN-13: 978-4-901181-21-1
ISBN-10: 4-901181-21-1
Home use : US$150 (Institutional use US$500)
Collection of Smithonian Hershorn Museum, Washington D.C.


MA: SPACE/TIME IN THE GARDEN OF RYOAN-JI
1989, 16mm, Color, 16min. Sound
Produced: Program for Art on Film, New York, with support from Metropolitan Museum for Art, New York, & J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles
Music: Takehisa Kosugi, Text: Arata Isozaki

THE MAKING OF <MA> IN RYOAN-JI
1989, Video, B/W & Color, 10min., Sound

MA: THE STONES HAVE MOVED
2004, Video, B/W & Color, 10min., Silent
Co-produced: Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, Ca., USA

MA (INTERVALS)
1977, 16mm, B&W & Color, 10min.(Auto Play),22min.(Single Play)

Ma appears to apply itself to an infinity of cases, figures, occurrences, it comes from an elementary structural strategy that defines the ideogram's double emblem well enough, a sun in the embrasure of a door.
- Daniel Charles (John Cage interviewer and author)

Original, personal..to integrate a philosophical agenda with a visual one.
- Nadine Covert ed. Art On Screen

'Architecture' Award of UNESCO International Festival of Film on Art, 1991

Four films related to the concept of Ma, a Japanese word for space in between, and intervals of space/time inseparable. Ma is an indispensable factor of Japanese aesthetics as well as everyday life. Starting from an experimental film of the famous Zen Garden of Ryoan-ji, MA: SPACE/TIME IN THE GARDEN OF RYOAN-JI (1989), the documentary of the making of this film, THE MAKING OF <MA> IN RYOAN-JI (1989), the animation tracing the outline movements of the first film, MA: THE STONES HAVE MOVED (2004), and a totally abstract film using only four elements: a scratched line in the positive and the negative, and black and white spacings (leaders), MA (INTERVALS) (1977) (T.I.)

DVD"Seeing / Hearing / Speaking"
- Realizing the words by Jacques Derrida

A multimedia DVD/video with text, video(33min.), graphics, and animation, 2002
ISBN-13: 978-4-901181-06-8
ISBN-10: 4-901181-06-8
Home use : US $120 ( Institutional use$500)

Award: Honorable Mention, Video, NAP Video Biennial, Lehigh Valley and Berks, USA.

A multimedia/interactive DVD: "Seeing / Hearing / Speaking" has two parts； a new video, "Seeing/ Hearing / Speaking"(2002), and three "Other Related Videos：" Talking to Myself" (1978, revised in 2001),"Talking in New York"(1981, revised in 2001) and "Talking to Myself at PS1" (1985). The total, 33min., which may be seen continuously by clicking "Autoplay" on the menu.　

　 Based on a sentence taken from a seminal book by the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, "Speech and Phenomena" (translated by David B. Allison), I produced the first video "Talking to Myself" in 1978 (revised in 2001). The video was highly appreciated as "the strongest, most effective statement one could make from the work of Derrida" by Professor Allison. The sentence I quoted, that Derrida calls "phenomenological essence," appears in the translation as I hear myself at the same time that I speak. (T.I.)

After coming back from New York in 1969, Takahiko iimura began video production in Tokyo. Working in experimental film since the early 1960s, he first combined the art of film with video, thus making a kind of flicker effect in video in two pieces: "A Chair " (1970) and "Blinking" (1970). These videos are experiments in perception, and are very minimal formally, consisting mostly of a single object. "Time Tunnel" (1971) is an attempt at time travel in a very conceptual sense. The video combines a repetition of the countdown leader of film, which runs the numbers 10 to 1 , with the feedback effect of video. The result is a tunneling of the numbers in time.
"Man and Woman" (1971) shows the full body of a man and a woman shot from above, in the posture of the drawing of a man by Leonardo Da Vinci, without movement. They are shown alone as well as together one over (or under) the other, narrating in words their positions at the same time. "Visual Logic (and Illogic)" (1977) shows the visual logic (and illogic) of various signs in letters and simple forms on paper combined with limited camera movement and　 voice-over narration. These early videos constitute the very early experiments of a particular "conceptual video, " that almost no other video artists had ever tried at that time. Furthermore, this is an important collection to use for study of later developments in the art of iimura's video. (Most of the works are excerpted.)(T.I.)

DVD"60s EXPERIMENTS"

Anthology of films made in 60s,and Tokyo. "JUNK,1962,10min.,B/W,Music by Takehisa Kosugi; Ai(LOVE), 1962,10min., B/W, Music by Yoko Ono; ON EYE RAPE,1962, 10min., B/W/color, Co-Pro.Natsuyuki Nakanishi, A DANCE PARTY IN THE KINGDOM OF LILLIPUT, 1964, 12min., B/W Total 42min.


1962-1964, 4films, B&W&C, 49min., NTSC/Region ALL
ISBN-13: 978-4-901181-09-9
ISBN-10: 4-901181-09-2
Home use : US $150 (Institutional use US$500)
Collection of The Donnell Library Center, New York.

From early sixties, though Japanese, Iimura was well known as one of the first generation of the New York Underground ... For many years, Japanese experimental film was Takahiko Iimura.
- Malcolm Le Grice, Time Out, London.

LOVE is a poetic and sensuous exploration of the body...fluid, direct, beautiful.
- Jonas Mekas, Village Voice, New York.

DVD"Fluxus Replayed"

1991, B&W, 30minutes, NTSC/Region ALL
Camera: Phill Niblock, Takahiko iimura
ISBN-13: 978-4-901181-24-2
ISBN-10: 4-901181-24-6
Home use : US$100. (Institutional use US$400)
Collection of Reina Sofia National Museum, Madrid


In Fluxus Replayed also released in 2005, Iimura documents an event in 1991 held to reproduce historical performances by NYC-based Fluxus artists of the 1960s. The S.E.M Ensemble together with some of the Fluxus artists themselves, perform works by Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, Dick Higgins, George Brecht, Allison Knowles, Ben Patterson, Jackson Mac Low and Emett Williams…Though much of this work was sound-based, produced collaboratively for group performance using chance determinations and framed with a sense of the aesthetics of noise, the written scores or instructions for each piece may well have satisfied many members of the audience.
-Mike Leggett, Leonardo Digital Review, MIT Press,Feb.,2007

DVD"FILMMAKERS"

1966-68, 28min., color., NTSC/Region ALL
Home use : US$80. (Institutional use US$300)
Collection of Anthology Film Archives, New York.
ISBN-13: 978-4-901181-23-5
ISBN-10: 4-901181-23-8

iimura creates a short self-portrait as well as brief portraits of five of his peers: Brakhage, Vanderbeek, Smith, Mekas and Warhol. In each portrait, Iimura attempts to copy the styles and traits of each artist (Vanderbeek's constantly moving camera; Mekas' experiments with film speed; Warhol's use of flashes of white against a black background), while briefly commenting on the images being shown. The film serves effectively as an introduction to the film styles of these artists.
Trent Daniel, art house/international (USA)↑Top

DVD"Yoko Ono : This Is Not Here"
with Yoko Ono & John Lennon
1971, 18min. English and Japanese versions on the sound track, ,NTSC/Region ALL
Home use : US$150. (Institutional use US$400)
ISBN-13: 978-4-901181-26-6
ISBN-10: 4-901181-26-2

A document of the Yoko Ono retrospective art exhibition with John Lennon as guest artist, "This is not here" held at Everson Museum, New York, 1971.

The film begins with Yoko's speech at the press conference that continues throughout the film as she talks about "radical art", a non-violent one, and advocates "total communication". Many important art objects and installations of Yoko's are seen as the camera goes along with Yoko and John through the installation.
Allen Ginsberg and George Maciunas were two of the many other guest artists who participated in the exhibition.

At the end a "piano piece"by Yoko in which people including John and Yoko are just hitting continuously the surface of a closed piano, replying to John Cage's "silent" piano piece, is overwhelming. (T.I.)

Takahiko Iimura is not an ordinary artist. He is undoubtedly one of the first Japanese artists, along with Yoko Ono and Ryuichi Sakamoto gain substantial international reputation... An emotionally moving film documentary of Yoko Ono and John Lennon.
Carl Eugene Loeffler, Artcom, President, San Fransisco

DVD"JOHN CAGE PERFORMS JAMES JOYCE "

1985, 15min., color, NTSC/Region ALL
Home use : US$100 (Institutional use US$400)
Exhibited at "Rolywholyover: A Circus by John Cage", Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Mito Art Museum, Mito, Japan
ISBN-13: 978-4-901181-31-0
ISBN-10: 4-901181-31-9

A private performance by John Cage realizing his "Writing For The Fifth Time Through Finnegans Wake" in three ways: reading, singing, and whispering using I-Chin chance-operation: Chinese fortune-telling.

Roaratorio is one of the classics of Cage's oeuvre and in Iimura's 15-minute recording, John Cage Performs James Joyce, Cage presents the core of the spoken part of the work. Its composition, like many of his other works, is aided by the I-Chingﾉ Like so many of his[Cage's] initiatives, the line between the artwork and its making is blurred, a statement aided and amplified by Iimura's collaboration in its making.
- Mike Leggett, Leonardo Digital Review, MIT Press, Internet.

DVD"AIUEONN SIX FEATURES"

1994, 5 Videos, 15min., color, NTSC/Region ALL
ISBN-13: 978-4-901181-28-0 ISBN-10: 4-901181-28-9
Home use : US$50. (Institutional use US$300
CD-Rom version: US $70. (Institutional use US$350)

Awards:"Rusting Ear Prize"at WRO Sound Basis Visual Art Festival, Wroclaw Poland. 1993 . Best Five selected at Festival mudial do Minuto, Sao Paulo (video), 1993. Dircotor's Citation Honor at Athen Film/Video Festival, Ohio, 1994. Third Place award at Short Attention Span Film/Video Festival, San Francisco, 1994. Finalists Award, New York Festival. 1995 . "Honorable Mention" Award, Columbus International Film / Video Festival, Colombus, Ohio, USA, 1996. Grand Prize, Rough and Ruined Int'l Film Festival, Vancouver.1997.

Combining the comical with the absurd, I created six funny faces to animate the images of Japanese vowels while differentiating between 'Image', 'Letter', and 'Voice'.( T.I.)

Iimura deconstructs our coherence as he shifts between the English Roman alphabet and Japanese characters, interjects spoken Japanese, and manipulates the computer images of his features. The images often take on geometical shapes, others recall the classical images from Japanese woodcuts of Samurai warrior grimace.
- Robert West, Curator, Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC, USA.

DVD"OBSERVER/OBSERVED
and Other Works of Video Semiology"
1975-98, 3 Videos, 22min., B&W, NTSC/Region ALL
Produced in co-production with the Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff, Canada.
Home use : US$70. (Institutional use US$300)
CD-ROM version: Home use : US$90. (Institutional use US$350)　
ISBN-13: 978-4-901181-20-4
ISBN-10: 4-901181-20-6

Awarded: Director's Citation Award, Edison Black Maria Film & Video Festival, 1998. Honorable Mention Award, Columbus Intﾕl Film & Video Festival,1998.
Flagstaff Int'l Film/Video Festival, USA, 1999. Bronze prize, New York Expo Film Festival, New York,2001. Thaw 01 Festival, Iowa, and NAP Video Festival, N.J, 2001

This video trilogy of "Camera, Monitor, Frame", "Observer/Observed", and "Observer/Observed/Observer" creates a semiology of video as a work on video rather than a written text. Its main purpose is to study the structural relationships between video and language, in this case using the English language. I designed a system depicting the relationship between the observer and the person being observed using words such as "I" and "YOU" through a video feedback system as the basis. What concerns me is the structure of "seeing" involving both the observer and the observed through such devices as the sentence "I see you" being posited by a closed-circuit video system. This trilogy of "Camera, Monitor, Frame", "Observer/Observed", and "Observer/Observed/Observer" is a remake of my 1975-76 version; it is shorter in length, but its original concept has not been changed. The CD-Rom version is a multimedia piece with text (English & Japanese) and CG animation in addition to video. (T.I.)