"Spectator", "fragment", "media" and other elements of visual in art of the Japanese cinema/video-artist Takahiko Iimura.


・General Idea of the Project＞＞＞
・Ideas of each event＞＞＞

(The Performances of Takahiko Iimura take place in Russia after several screenings and exhibitions in France. We add the schedule in France also for your reference.　Events both in France and Russia became possible with a grant from the Japan Foundation.)

FRANCE
・17 October 2007 (Wednesday), 19:00, Centre Pompidou, Paris
"Film Poems" Screening with discussion＞＞＞
・18 - 22 October 2007 (Thursday), FIAC (Art Fair),
Cour Carree du Louvre, Rue de Rivoli, Paris
The booth of The Film Gallery
Installation: "Loop Seen As A Line"＞＞＞
・19 October 2007 (Friday), Muse des Beaux-Arts, Tours
Participation in "Extensions" Festival
Video Installation: "AIUEONN Six Features" ＞＞＞
・24 October (Wednesday), 19:00, Centre Pompidou, Paris
Screening/Conference＞＞＞
・25 October (Thursday), 19:00, Muse des Beaux-Arts, Tours,
Screening/Discussion＞＞＞

RUSSIA
・30 October 2007 (Tuesday), 20:00, Actzal 　
"Cine-Dance. Iimura and Hijikata"
Screening with discussion＞＞＞
・31 October 2007 (Wednesday), 20:00, CineFantom Club, Fitil Cinema Theater
"Experiments and Concepts"
Screening with discussion＞＞＞
・2 November 2007 (Friday), 20:00, National Center of Contemporary Art
"Japanese Concept: frame, interval, repetition"
Screening with discussion＞＞＞
・4 November (Sunday), 18:00, Freud's Dream Museum
Lecture by Rodion Trofimchenko "Sense and significance of media in art and psychoanalysis"
・4 November 2007 (Sunday), 20:00 Freud's Dream Museum
"Identities and phenomenological experience"
Screening with discussion＞＞＞
・6 November 2007 (Tuesday), Smolny University of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Lection by Rodion Trofimchenko "Subject of Seeing in Japanese Art Looked from Psychoanalytical view point"
・6 November 2007 (Tuesday), Smolny University of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Master-Class. Selected cinema and video works of Iimura Takahiko of different periods and discussion＞＞＞

Throughout the 20th century western theoreticians argued that the visual is perceived not in so-called "natural" way but is shaped according to cultural and psychological features of historical moment and place. The term "visuality" eventually came to signify a field of seen reality constructed according to work of psychological apparatus of those who look at this reality. In other words, the spectator no longer acts as passive mirror whose retina reflects the outside image, but as an active "seeing machine" that sorts through, scans and formats. Moreover, the imaginary position of see is also installed in definite way; his imaginary place in relation to perceived object is set by the language, culture and history that precede the onlooker. Thus, there is definite Installation of Vision, strict psychological setting of what is going to be perceived and "I" is part of this installation, "I" is a cinema-eye, which is fixed in the structure of seeable. This Installation of Vision, which gives one oneself as Subject of seeing and visible world, which is registered by this self, is the main theme off this project. The analyzes of the western structure of perceiving and its distinction from Installation of Vision in radically different Japanese culture is its aim.

According to numerous historians, the European art of the past 5 centuries is nothing but variations of Alberty`s ideas, the pioneer theoretician of linear perspective of the Renaissance. It is the perspective, based on scientific spirit and mathematical calculation that became the dominative scopic regime of modernity. Forming not just illusion of 3 dimensions and effect of depth, but the structure of the European "I" itself, it evolves into a broader notion of " Cartesian perspective " and is defined by the following characteristics : Subject fixed in one point and given imaginary absolute/objective character ; Object of vision deprived of time dimension and change ; hermetic cone with climax on the Object of seeing, which sets frame and seal up visual field ; absence of corporeality of onlooker and time register of observing and so on. This structure of vision is not limited by art, but is dominant in scientific, religious, political sphere as well as in daily life. Moreover, these characteristics of perception are not conscious for the subject; they are treated like something natural or universal. To grasp the western Installation of Vision we should cause a clash between Western Subject with visual field, which is formed by drastically different laws. This radically different visuality can be Japanese art, and in particular works by pioneer of the Japanese cinema/video-art Takahiko Iimura.


Iimura picks up the camera in the 60ies and films garbage and dust on the coast of the Pacific Ocean: thrown on the shore fish-bones, women's shoes and flies accompanied by "Noise" soundtrack ("Junk", 1962). That same year he makes a film, in which photos and images from zoological education materials illustrating animal copulation are quickly changing on the screen. However all places were genitals of zebra, elephant or hippopotamus can appear are hidden by a small white spot: Iimura punches holes in all "dirty" places in the already developed film. ("On-eye rape", 1962). Lastly, that year he films two bodies caressing one another (Yoko Ono makes the sound-track), shooting it at such close distance, that it becomes impossible to say, what part of the body is on the screen and to whom it belongs: body as a whole is hidden because of too close distance (organs without body), in result the lens of the camera, screen and filmed skin merge into one dimension, skin-screen-film surface. ("Ai/Love ", 1962) The three films watched in retrospective give an incomplete but comprehensive formula of Iimura`s art. In "Junk" a solid mass of garbage and sea silt totally washed away the contour, volume and identity of object; junkness of the object invades onlooker himself, junk-object turns into junk-subject. In " On-eye rape" Iimura intrudes in media (in this case it is film-strip, which will come one of the main object of his subsequent works), making it visible and even artistically expressive. Closing of the intimate parts of animals is achieved through its radical openness (holes in the film-strip). The literally censored (cut out) is not seen because in what was censored light (of projector) is freely flows. In "Love " recognizability, significance and sense of object seen depends merely on place, distance, 　position (of looking subject/camera). The author demonstrates that not only signification, but also sensibility or arousal depends on position, setting.

Thus, Takahiko Iimura is an artist, who pushes the spectator from self-confident structure of seeing to visual confusion, psychosis; an artist, who gives to cinema-medium (camera, screen, film) substantial and artistic autonomy, "meta-mediumness"; and finally, an artist, who develops the Topology of Sense.
One of Iimura`s` most recent major work is "MA: Time/Space in the garden of Ryoanji" (1989) and a subsequent video-work with the same theme titled "MA: The stones has moved" (2003). Here Iimura, armed with conceptual apparatus of Zen, continues to think about place of the subject of seeing and relationship of this place with meaning or, maybe, meaninglessness (the film is shot, by the way, at the point, from which hundreds of years meditating monks were observing the stones). Very Japanese and even religious Zen garden becomes the space in which key problems of art and theory of (post)modern are raised : figure-ground, time-space relationship, repetition, fragment, split, frame.
What was between "Junk" and "MA"? What was between garbage and Zen, 60-ies and 2000-ies? Iimura explores cinema-and video-media and its influence on vision, which is re-played on screen ("White calligraphy ", film, 1967 ; "Structure of Seeing/Hearing", performance, 1983), and gets aquatinted with main cinema/video artist of his time (Warhol, Brakhage, Vanderbeek and so on) exploring their visual realities ("Filmmakers", film, 1969). By means of the camera and monitor he analysis identity and self-referentiality (" Observe/observed ", video, 1998; "This is the camera that shots this", installation, 1980) and, finally, produces a voluminous series of cinema/video-reflections on ontological themes in (post)constructivist context ("Speaking/Hearing/Seeing ", video, 2001; "Talking in New York ", video, 1981-2001).

Iimura has almost half century long history of collaboration (artist Yoko Ono, founder of the contemporary Japanese dance Hijikata Tatsumi, cinema director and theoretic Jonas Mekas and others) and long list of exhibitions and screenings (Whitney Museum, New York ; Louvre Museum, Paris ; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo ; Mandial do Minuto, San Paolo and so on).
In the end of October - beginning of November 2007 Takahiko Iimura will be in Russia, on his way from France, following screenings at the Art Center of Pompidou and exhibition of instillations at the University of Tours. The "University-gallery" best defines the space encompassing the body of works by this conceptual artist: academism coupled with creativity, thought with feeling, analysis with art-hallucination. In Russia this principle of installation of Iimura`s art will be preserved: from centers of art-life(NCCA, "Actzal", "CineFantom Club") in Moscow to academic and analytical circles of Saint Petersburg (Smolny Institute of Liberal Art and Science, "Freud's Dream Museum"). Takahiko Iimura, whose art began with an interest in the early Soviet Cinema, specially of Dziga Vertov, Iimura says, "as a heir of Kino-Eye, he made Observer/Observed," in the end of almost half a century of creativity path comes to Russia for the first time to observe with us the beginning and evolution of his own art and cinematograph in general.

Ideas of each event

Moscow
・30 October 2007 (Tuesday), 20:00, "Actzal"
"Cine-Dance. Iimura and Hijikata"Screening with discussion
Works:
"Anma/Masseur ", film/DVD, 1963, 20 min, b/w
"Rose Color Dance", film/DVD, 1964, 13 min, b/w
"A Dance Party in The Kingdom of Lilliput", film/DVD, 1964, 12min, b/w

What if usually fixed in one place cinema-apparatus (camera or projector), which film or project art-action, will be made mobile and instead of being instruments and means will turn in art-objects, as if artist/eye becomes a part of picture ? What if we make cinema-apparatus a part of performance?
It is these questions set forward the art movement of 60-ies- "Expanded Cinema" -and the idea behind Iimura's experiments of combining cinema with performance, subsequently termed "Cine-Performance". Taking these ideas further Iimura makes "Cine-Concert", where a working cinema projector is used as a musical instrument. The idea is also applied to a camera. Iimura participates in a Butoh Dance of Hijikata Tatsumi`s group to film the dance: "Choreography Holding The Camera", resulting in a "filmography" rather than a documentary. This genre of visual art Iimura labels "Cine-Dance".
Thus there are two goals in showing the works of "Cine-dance". The first is to illustrate how cine-eye can be a participant in the performance. And the second to present the Butoh dance performance itself. Cinema and Dance. Iimura and Hijikata. The subject of seeing and the object of seeing.


・31 October 2007 (Wednesday), 20:00, "CineFantom Club ", "Fitil" Cinema Theater
"Experiments and Concepts" Screening with discussion
Works:
60s Experiments, Film/ DVD, 1962-64, 42min
Observer/Observed, DVD, 1975-1998, 22min


The phrase "psychological apparatus" itself implies that the human psyche has a lot in common with a machine. Thus, Sigmund Freud uses instruments of registration and telescope for description of memory function. Jacque Lacan builds optical models to illustrate narcissism and formation of the human "I". Mario Perniola analyzes the functions of media to pinpoint the peculiarities of contemporary sensibility.
"Concept tapes" by Takahiko Iimura is a series of works which rely on the video and its two inalienable devices, a camera and a monitor, to illustrate the attributes of the "psychological apparatus": identity, marked or absent Subject in linguistic and visual practices, splitting of the Subject of Seeing and its alienation in the outside image, paradoxes of logical chains, particularities of the Japanese language and its differentiation from European languages as well as its influence on visual perception.
Iimura's Concept tapes represent a video-semiology, which demonstrates the complexity of a video-system and structural limits of the media; shows a connection between the video and the structure of human psyche; and presents a vivid comparative video-analysis of Asian and European languages.


・2 November 2007 (Friday), 20:00, National Center of Contemporary Art
"Japanese Concept: frame, interval, repetition" Screening with discussion
Works:
"MA: Space/Time in stone garden of Ryoanji", film/DVD, 1989, 16min, color
"New York: Day and Night ", DVD, 1989, color, the time off complete work is 55 min., but only first part" Day "will be shown, 25 min


Why take interest in the Japanese Culture? It is to encounter something radically different and than from this radically different place to look at oneself and one's own culture. One discovers something new (e.g. a new body part, as the Japanese distinguish body parts in a different manner, thus allowing one to discover something not registered in the Russian language, a missing part) and this gives him/her a possibility to understand how his/her "usual" is organized. Here we talk about seeing and it's Subject, about perception of time and space.

"MA" is an idea, concept, a concept that is truly Japanese. "MA" means "space" or "interva"...nothing new, but "MA" is interval in the same time of time and space. In "Ma-interval" time and space are identical; it is both the spatial distance between two bodies and the temporal distance, time, which is necessary for spectator to pass from one body to another. In martial arts, for example, "Ma" is a distance between partners, but distance which describes not only empty space, but also the time that is necessary to approach and strike.
This Japanese way of time/space perception becomes the topic of a number of Iimura`s work, namely "MA: Time /Space in garden of Ryoanji". Poems for this film are written by Arata Isodzaki. Takehisa Kosugi, composer whose works focus on the silence between sounds (interval, distance) as much as the sound itself, created music.

The film consists of three parts. Throughout the film the camera stays low to the ground and moves slowly along the meditation site of one of the most famous Zen gardens in the temple of Ryoanji focusing on stones and intervals between them. The intervals between the stones is ﾒMaﾓ. It is at the same time the visible distance between the objects, the distance that the camera covers from one stone to another and the time the camera takes to move to the next stone. This piece of observing stones and blank spaces repeats twice changing the apprehension of the perceived time and space.

What would the image and space be like if a "Japanese Subject" looked at it, the Subject to whom the concept of "Ma" is inherent? What, for example, would New York look like ? New York as seen by the Japanese Subject is the focus of the second work (" New York: Day and Night") succeeding the screening of the "MA": Manhattan and its skyscrapers where spaces, intervals, fractions and silence are as relevant as separate image-objects. What is the key difference between these works? If in the first film the Japanese Subject looks at the Japanese Object (stone garden), in the second, the Japanese Subject sees something that is in no way Japanese (New-York). Thus the Japanese Subject of seeing presents itself in a more pure form, it can not hide in the Japanese Object. And it is the Subject of Japanese Culture (not the Object), that is the aim of our research.


Saint Petersburg

・4 November (Sunday), 18:00, "Freud's Dream Museum "
Lecture by Rodion Trofimchenko "Sense and significance of media in art and psychoanalysis "
The lecture presents an analysis of the "media", discussed both in the broad sense (media as something that takes an inter-medium position, mediator, medium, etc.) as well as in the narrow sense (media as devices and means that record, contain and project visual data): From the analysis of the etymology of the media concept in the Japanese language ("baitai") to "medium/media" in Latin; from features of camera and projector position in the western cinema and similar structures of seeing in the art of the Renaissance to devices of the Japanese video and particularities of vision in the ink painting; from the screen as a white transparent sheet in the western cinema to features of screen as an inter-face in the Japanese visuality.


・4 November 2007 (Sunday), 20:00 "Freud's Dream Museum"
"Identities and phenomenological experience" Screening with discussion
Works:
"This is the camera that shoots This", DVD, 5min video performance, 1980
"As I see you you see me", DVD, 5min, video performance, 1990
Three works on "Seeing/Hearing/Speaking" DVD,33min, 1978-2002

French psychoanalytic Jacque Lacan who dedicated his work to the analysis of the complex structure of the Identity of the human being was referring to the Japanese as those who gain their identity through the "principle of constellation". The Japanese find their identity through the multiplicity (of the social roles, for example). The works of Iimura, especially his video performances, show not only the obstacles of self-identification in general, but these constellation, multiplicity of seeing and other phenomenological experiences as hearing/speaking/speaking. These works aim not at achieving a beautiful balance and giving the spectator a comfortable feeling, but, the reverse, at shaking his/her state of mind, making him/her doubt the conventions of perception and pushing one to analyze imaginary.


・6 November 2007 (Tuesday), Smolny University of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Lection by Rodion Trofimchenko "Subject of Seeing in Japanese Art Looked from Psychoanalytical view point"


The Japanese culture is a culture of adoption, but, whatever the idea or invention imported by the Japanese, they see it and use it in a radically different autonomous context. Formally the western idea in Japan remains unaltered but its significance and function is completely different. The linear perspective presents a good illustration. Invented in the Italian Renaissance, it captured attention of the Japanese artists in the 18th century. However, the Japanese saw this European technique of illustrating reality through their own lens and gave to this invention, originally based on dry mathematical methods, a corporeality, openness, indeterminacy and time. While analyzing alternate ways of usage of the linear perspective in the Japanese paintings one can not only better define the features of the Italian perspective, but also understand the aspects of the contemporary cinema and television in Europe and Japan, whose visuality is rooted in the technical and psychological characteristics of the linear perspective.


・6 November 2007 (Tuesday), Smolny University of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Master-Class. Selected cinema and video works of Iimura Takahiko of different periods and discussion.
Works:
60s Experiments, DVD, 1962-64, 42min.
Observer/Observed, DVD, 1975-1998, 22min.


Master class by the pioneer of the Japanese cinema/video artist dedicated to the epistemological significance of the video and the cinema of the last 50 years, its connection with the epoch and the way of thinking, that belongs to particular times, about the possibilities of cinema/ video usage in different genres and outside of usual limits of styles, about future of the cinema and video and the new technologies of 21 century.