Sights and Sounds: Japan
Sights and Sounds: Japan features new work by Ishu Han, Daisuke Nagaoka, Genki Isayama, and Tadasu Takamine, selected by Yukie Kamiya.
In 2011 Japan was shaken to its core when an immense earthquake and the tsunami caused a nuclear accident in Fukushima. We realized that, despite having experienced the devastation of nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki some seventy years earlier, we had grown increasingly indifferent to the environment and placed too much emphasis on modernization and economic development. For the subsequent five years the country has grappled with the huge question of where to go from here. Overwhelmed by the crisis at the outset, local artists gradually faced the reality of the situation and the challenges it posed. They began to reconsider history and embrace social and political subjects. The moving image functions as a mirror, reflecting their urgent, critical pursuits.
The artists shown here examine history and other grand narratives with a focus on familiar, personal events in a human scale. Their approach, whether documenting a performance or the process of artistic production itself, is rooted in their own bodies. The works are not defined by a declarative, regional framework, but are instead abstract and expansive, so that anyone can share in the experience, triggering the viewer’s imagination. They are imbued with a transnational perspective that resists closure.
Yukie Kamiya
Curator
Yukie Kamiya (b. Kanagawa Prefecture, 1967) is Gallery Director of the Japan Society, New York. She was previously Chief Curator of the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan (2007–15) and Associate Curator of the New Museum in New York (2003–5). Kamiya has also served on the advisory boards of the Yokohama Triennial 2014; Parasophia 2014, Kyoto; and Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong (2011–13). Her writing has appeared in Creamer (Phaidon, 2010), among other international publications.
About Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video
This long-term series offers a rotating selection of vigorous film and video works by contemporary artists from around the world — with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.
Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video is a long-term presentation of new film and video works made in the sphere of the visual arts. The series offers a rotating selection of vigorous works by contemporary artists from around the world. It introduces New York audiences to the latest developments in filmmaking within the art context and underlines the Jewish Museum’s holistic and global approach to the understanding and presentation of art and culture.
Sights and Sounds takes advantage of the straightforward way film and video travel: shipped on discs or streamed online, these works provide an instant connection to new creative practices from even the most remote locations.
Twenty-five international curators have selected new film and video work from their respective regions of the world—ranging from Argentina to Vietnam, Nigeria to Romania, New Zealand to China, and many places in between. Their picks are screened for one month each in the museum’s media center, which has been turned into a miniature cinema for the occasion.
The works in Sights and Sounds touch on themes significant to both Jewish culture and universal human experience: spirituality, exile, language, conflict, family, humor, history. The series creates a broad network of artistic expression and curatorial perspectives that takes stock of what is happening in film and video art at this moment in time across the globe—with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.
Sights and Sounds will culminate with a selection of highlights from the series. One work from each country will be presented in the gallery from February 5, 2016 to June 30, 2016.
Jens Hoffmann
Deputy Director
Exhibitions and Public Programs
Installation view of Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video in the Goodkind Media Center. Photo by David Heald.
Exhibition highlights
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Ishu Han, still from Return, 2011, video, sound, 5 min., 39 sec. Artwork © Ishu Han
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Daisuke Nagaoka, still from The fire that has been burning for 1000 years and the star that has gone out 8 minutes and 19 seconds ago, 2014, video, sound, 4 min., 59 sec. Artwork © Daisuke Nagaoka
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Genki Isayama, still from Chair, 2012, HD video, 7 min. Artwork © Genki Isayama
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Tadasu Takamine, still from Japan Syndrome (Yamaguchi Version), 2012, video, sound, 13 min., 55 sec. Artwork © Tadasu Takamine
