Still from Idemitsu's video Hideo, It's Me, Mama, 1983. Courtesy Museum of Modern Art.

work, when seen as a whole, forms a kind of away from her cultured and traditional fam­ and friends, she began to develop compli­ mandala. ily to study film at Columbia University in cated scripts and to hire professional actors New York. She subsequently lived for eight and production crews. In the context of Jap­ A !though was short-lived as years in California, where she experimented anese video, her use of plots is her most Man organization-by the late 1970s the with both film and video, returning to Japan distinctive feature. group disbanded as its members pursued in time to be a founding member of Video Idemitsu spent nearly a decade creating radically different matters, from computer Hiroba. Her innovative video work began in videotapes on the "Great Mother" theme. In graphics to fiction to sculpture-several of California with her attempts to study the these she scrutinizes the emotional interac­ the original members are still important fig­ people around her, to penetrate their psy­ tions of mother-child relationships, reveal­ ures in Japanese video as artists, curators or chology and understand how they related to ing the underlying volatility of seemingly teachers. abandoned the others, by asking pairs of people to discuss placid households. Her fictive episodes form of political documentation exemplified spontaneously on camera their relationships might depict a spoiled daughter who inso­ by her Minamata videotape to concentrate or a specific psychological topic. When Ide­ lently picks up men but is incapable of leav­ on nonvideo "fog installations" that are mitsu returned to Japan she continued such ing her dispassionate professional mother, often used as settings for music and dance. video "studies" as part of an effort to come or a despondent artist painfully struggling In 1980 she founded Video Gallery Scan, to grips with her country's profoundly miso­ with identity, career and social conventions which has played a major role as a distribu­ gynist society. She explored women's con­ after she is forced into a marriage. In her tion service, an archive and a screening scious and unconscious behavior by record­ video Idemitsu investigates fami­ studio for video in . It has promoted ing their daily routines, taking advantage of ly discord to expose the constraints of social the medium through a newsletter, competi­ the you-are-there sense of reality that video conventions and the conflicts caused by liv­ tions and international festivals, most imparts and the apparent candidness of ing in a hybrid Japanese-and-Western cul­ recently in February 1992. people on camera. After first making low­ ture. She provides troubling observations, was a rebel who broke budget collaborative projects with family never solutions.

Art in America 125 Nakajima: L'Ame dubois, 1991, video installation at the Zekou Art Gallery, .

Idemitsu's videos take place in claustro­ psychological twist from the intruding pres­ planning large, world's-fair-like "expovi­ phobic rooms that represent ordinary urban ence of the monitor. sions," as was the case in in 1981, homes. In each room there is a prominently Tsukuba in 1985 and in 1989 and '91. placed television set; its screen, displaying ost early video works in Japan (as He has also been a prominent teacher. When close-up shots of various family members, is M elsewhere) concentrated on creating Japanese art colleges in Tokyo and else­ a window into her characters' minds. In perceptual dislocation or studying the video­ where began to offer video courses in the Hideo, It's Me, Mama (1983), a son away at making process itself. The work of the '70s '80s, the teachers were from the Hiroba college is shown only on the television set artists most often consists of real-life events generation (then in their 40s or 50s), while kept on his mother's kitchen table. Both go fragmented or abstracted into sequences of their students tended to be 20 years youn­ about their daily lives: he studies, listens to moments, or well-crafted, carefully com­ ger. For that reason video in Japan has music on earphones, she putters in the posed images concerned with the two­ sometimes been described as jumping a gen­ kitchen, makes dinner for her husband. The dimensionality of the TV screen. Katsuhiro eration. The students took up editing pro­ mother puts the son's meals in front of the Yamaguchi's work is typical. His 1977 Ooi cesses, which were central in the U.S. in the television and he consumes them on and Environs, a portapak stroll around his '70s but only became possible in Japan in screen. home neighborhood, is colorized in distort­ the '80s. 3 With sound tracks based exclusively on ing, sometimes cotton-candy hues. In his Among the younger, post-Hiroba artists dialogue and ambient noise, Idemitsu's vid­ recent video sculptures, Yamaguchi is still are Masaki Fujihata and Hiroya Sakurai. eotapes are more like documentaries than preoccupied with light and movement; Sakurai, who studied with Yamaguchi, was dramas. This merger of fact and fiction is a unfortunately his work tends to resemble one of about 20 young videomakers who familiar aspect of conventional docudramas the kinetic light shows of the mid-'60s on St. organized their own group exhibitions in seen on Japanese television, but Idemitsu's Mark's Place. 1984, '85 and '86, under the name Video work (shown only in the typical video milieu But Yamaguchi has been very influential. Cocktail. He makes installations that in­ of galleries, museums and festivals) gains a Japanese civic leaders turn to him when clude nonnarrative video and thus can be

126 May 1992 .-- Hiroya Sakurai: TV Terrorist, 1987; installed at the second Australian Video Festival. Courtesy Video Gallery SCAN, Tokyo. viewed at the observer's own pace. One of Nakajima's objective is to heighten viewers' his best-known works is the 1987 installa­ awareness of ecological dilemmas, and tion TV Terrorist, shown in video festivals in Japan and Australia. At a time of terror­ there is conscious irony in the fact that he ism in Europe and the Middle East, Sakurai does so through high technology. raised questions about the mass media's manipulation of information and represen­ tation of violence. Of this work he wrote, "Why must I kill? Television told me. The other projects. In March of this year he in Japan has been produced by "visitors" to media as fiction blinds me, robs reality from presented an installation commissioned by the medium. Recognized abroad as one of me. . . . I want to make everything blow NTT (Japan's AT&T); shown in Tokyo's the best Japanese videotapes ever made is a apart like a time bomb in my path." Spiral Building, the work was designed to 1982 collaboration between two men who Fujihata also showed with Video Cocktail; have the impact of virtual reality. Viewers had previously worked only peripherally he is known for his elegantly realized high­ experienced Fujihata's spatial environment with the medium. Shuntaro Tanikawa, a tech computer graphics rather than instal­ wearing infrared headphones, hearing poet, and Shuji Terayama, a playwright, had lations with political implications. In 1985, pleasant and unpleasant sounds triggered been working for more than 30 years with while working for the Sedic computer design by an invisible grid contained in a sloped an interdisciplinary group of artists· in group, he directed his whimsical and sophis­ vinyl floor. His intention was to create a Tokyo. Surrounding themselves with diverse ticated Maitreya, which combines a Bud­ fascinating aural and physical experience, talents, these longtime friends had taken up dhist text with images of proliferating geo­ and his work makes fun of technology at the various artistic means, both popular and metric objects. He then formed a small same time that it makes fun for the view­ underground, before they tried video. design company to integrate video and com­ er. In their Video Letter, made with the aid puter graphics, but now has moved on to Some of the most interesting video work of the artist-run video center Image Forum,

Art in America 127 Dumb Type's 1987 performance/installation transformed into an electronic environment of karaoke bars, 4 fast-food restaurants and Pleasure Life is a hypothetical view of celebrity talk shows. the near future, while its 1990 pH looks at As Pleasure Life evolved and was pre­ impersonal, repressive aspects of megacity life. sented at various performance spaces, its original set-a white platform that also served as a screen for slide and video pro­ jections-was replaced by a more developed they used rudimentary consumer video at current popular culture. The group, now and larger set that resembles an integrated equipment to update a venerated literary consisting of architects, engineers, graphic circuit suffering from urban sprawl. It is a form, the collaborative renga (linked designers, choreographers, musicians, ac­ bristling grid consisting of 36 metal-frame verse). They exchanged electronic "let­ tors, painters, video artists, sculptors and pedestals supporting ordinary household ob­ ters"-monologues composed directly in computer programmers, was formed in 1984, jects such as room fans or glasses of water front of the recording camera with a thea­ when the founders were students at art along with TV sets depicting images of sky trical sense of timing and a poetic command school. Free-lance design work by members and grassy fields. In front of video images of calendar pages, the performers silently move among the pedestals to the accompaniment of mel­ lifluous yet commanding voices and TV­ jingle music on the videotape sound track (the production's lights, projections and sound are operated by computer). The set itself seems to actively participate as the white neon light-rings within the pedestal frames switch on and off. The performers repetitively mime such actions as going to work, relaxing and having a picnic, brush­ ing their teeth, changing the channels. Dumb Type's new performance/installa­ tion, pH (1990-91 ), contemplates the imper­ sonal and repressive aspects of megacity life; it examines the way we regard our electronic tools as status symbols and how we pay little attention to who controls the programs we see on them. The title is meant to imply a measurement-a litmus test-for modern life. Collaborating with writer I translator Alfred Birnbaum, Dumb Type constructed an opaque text based on a mix­ ture of English and Japanese words. The words lead one to think that the text has a coherent meaning, yet they actually consti­ Film still from Go Riyu's Zaze, 1989. Courtesy Japan Society. tute only a flow of sound. In this work Dumb Type is looking at Japan's changing rela­ tionship to the United States. The use of nostalgia-provoking '60s pop music from of language (Japanese, with English subti­ of the group supports their collective activi­ America subtly suggests the fleetingness of tles). Speaking spontaneously, they consid­ ties. Dumb Type is based in calm, historic success-and hints that Japan's recent ered words, values, images. Each ruminative , which was the capital of Japan for a financial power might well prove to be pre­ "letter" reflected the reality of a particular thousand years. The city is still governed by carious. moment, yet each was connected to the pre­ time-honored ways and a strong sense of the Viewers of pH sit on high, narrow bleach­ ceding one. Video Letter has a particular past-to which the group responds creative­ ers along the periphery of the stage. The poignancy because of Terayama's fatal ill­ ly. action occurs around a menacing set of ness, which brought the project to an end. Dumb Type's performance/installation metal frames that aggressively sweep over His death is acknowledged in the last "let­ Pleasure Life ( 1987 -88) is an ironic, hypo­ the rectangular, boxlike performance area ter." The work, subsequently edited by Ta­ thetical view of the near future, a melange like the light-emitting bars of an enormous nikawa, became a powerful mourning poem of new and old Japan. The English title photocopier. Projected from the uppermost for Terayama. conjures up both the dispassionate routines moving frame onto and across the white of daily life and the refined culture of Kyo­ stage floor are such generic yet politically ideo is central to an unusual interdisci­ to's geisha houses. That antiquated pleasure charged symbols as dollar, pound and yen V plinary arts collective called Dumb world, where music, poetry, conversation signs. Type. Internationally known for its perform­ and cuisine were relished as sophisticated ances, Dumb Type takes an irreverent look conventions, has today been diluted and continued on page 157

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that ambiguous area where reality and fic­ Yoichiro Kawaguchi, are experimenting Electronic tion blur. He uses video to examine society's with "high definition" video computer continued from page 128 subtle but pervasive controls and the rela­ graphics, creating imaginary underwater tionship of the individual to the group. He worlds. Although Kawaguchi's well-crafted, The stiff actions of five performers con­ looks at the stark difference between peo­ exquisite images are rather innocuous, he vey their obedience to strictly codified social ple's social facades and their genuine has opened corporate doors for others. A behavior. Three women, clad in beige slips motives, as well as the male and female number of artists, improvising with cruder and moving in unison, make unemotional aspects of every human being. tools, are trying to direct viewers' attention grimacing smiles and utter primal cries as Last year his film Zaze (1989) was pre­ back to nature. Atsushi Ogata, for example, they repeat such routine actions as sitting sented in New York at the Japan Society's juxtaposes indoor views in a farming village down or placing provisions in supermarket Young Japanese Cinema Festival. Zaze is with outdoor shots, as if to compare culture carts. They submit to the forceful, almost the leader of a popular rock band who and nature, but he switches the sound brutal, actions of two male performers who "drops out" after his group achieves tracks for the two settings. shove them against the walls, push them extraordinary success. Seen by his buddies Video artists in Japan have had to be down into chairs. The men put on and take as a mystic with emotional strength, he is resourceful, given the limitations of their off similar suits and shoes, as if portraying fawned over by all kinds of assertive and venues and markets and the restrictions the same character. A grainy, unstable vid­ beguiling young women. But he is overcome imposed by traditional definitions of art. eotape transferred to film is projected in by feelings of emptiness. He picks up a Vid­ They have eked out livelihoods by teaching black and white onto one end of the set. eo-S camera and stares into his soul. Zaze, or free-lancing in industry. Today a few Consisting of alternating close-ups of staring with a striking detachment, tapes himself visionary souls recognize the extraordinary eyes and dreamy, indistinct urban scenes, and his friends along the Tokyo waterfront potential video and computers have to­ the video is a kind of stream-of-conscious­ and then withdraws to his nearby dilapi­ gether, and they are persistently exploring ness landscape that provides insight into dated loft with his VCR and simple camera. new opportunities beyond mainstream mass the mentality of the male characters. This For Zaze, video is both an honest companion entertainment. Perhaps these artists will work has already been seen in Europe as and a kind of Zen meditation device. point to new possibilities somewhere be­ well as Japan, and last July, Creative Time Riyu represents the transitional Japan: tween Eastern and Western esthetics. 0 presented it at New York's cavernous he came of age amid affluence and post­ Anchorage space beneath the Brooklyn modernism, conversant with Jinglish5 and I. The catalogue : Video Sculpture Bridge. surrounded by examples of American­ (New York, American Museum of the Moving Image, 1991) was edited by Mary Jane Jacob, with a foreword The media-conscious Dumb Type group influenced pop culture such as the Elvis and by Rochelle Slovin and essays by Brooks Adams, Moira operates in several genres. The foremost is James Dean look-alikes of the '70s and '80s. Roth and JoAnn Hanley. The exhibition was on view at live performance, but the sets also ' function As a child he acted professionally for televi­ AMMI Apr. 26-Sep. 15, 1991. as sculpture. The Pleasure Life set was sion. He has appeared in a number of recent 2. Another group, the Video Information Center, was founded in 1974 by Ichiro Tezuka to tape Butoh per· shown as an installation in the exhibition movies, playing the adolescent part in Paul formances and other cultural events for archival pres· "Against Nature: Japanese Art in the Eight­ Schrader's Mishima. He went to an "arts" ervation. Around the same time, experimental film· ies," which toured the U.S. between 1989 high school in the Kichijoji section of Tokyo, maker Nobuhiro Kawanaka and organizer Katsue Tom· and '91 [see A.i.A., Apr. '90]. Moreover, the where he started making Super-8 films. Also iyama founded a media workshop called the Japan group has documented its work in a sche­ an accomplished scriptwriter, in 1980 he Underground Film Center, which introduced such fig. ures as Stan Brakhage and Paul Sharits to Japan. The matic book and a videotape that provides a won first prize in the annual Pia award for organization's name was a reflection of the difficult bird's-eye view of their brisk actions on emerging talent6 for his own film, Lesson and avant-garde situation of media arts at the time. stage. Sophisticated about technology and One. Now known as Image Forum, the group also publishes a quite serious about articulating a vision, the As a playful sort of hobby and as a favor serious art magazine of the same name. members of Dumb Type belong to a self­ 3. Editing equipment was not available to Japanese for his rock-musician friends, Riju has been artists in the '70s. But in the '80s, school facilities were confident and generally pleasure-loving gen­ making low-budget music videos about augmented by corporate offerings. Companies such as eration that is less restricted by conventions alienation. Spoofing film noir and sci-fi JVC, seeking to expand consumer video, organized fes­ than its war-traumatized parents and more styles such as that of Blade Runner, he tivals of home videos and set up "post-production cen­ comfortable with moving back and forth freely experiments with equipment and con­ ters" so that amateurs could edit their festival entries. Artists were quick to take advantage of these cen· between the fine arts of the West and centrates on spontaneity. His rough promo­ ters. Japan's 1992 "high-tech" definition of tional sketches are shown in clubs and on 4. Patrons of these popular "hostess" bars select a song itself. music stations. They have the same energy title from the bar's library of laser video disks and sing and hip stylization found in video games, their favorite pop songs into a microphone-the lyrics scrolling across "soft porn" video images-as musical ow that film and video are so inter­ commercials and trendy magazines with backup bellows from a heavily amplified sound sys­ N changeable, there are artists who seek names like Garo (girl) and Brutus. tem. to combine the effects of both mediums in 5. The English words used in advertising more for one production. They also alternate between xperimental video has now existed sound than for sense. filmmaking projects, which require sharply quietly on the fringes in Japan for 20 6. Pia is a biweekly magazine guide to cultural events E in and around Tokyo. Founded in 1972 by former mem­ detailed images and a large projection sys­ years. In the '70s it could be said that Jap­ bers of university film clubs, it sponsors an annual tem, and video works, which take advantage anese videotapes were clearly Eastern in festival for up-and-coming filmmakers. of the sense of immediacy and intimacy of sensibility, having a particular kind of con­ the small screen. One of these new-era art­ centration, a flowing sense of time and lyri­ ists is 28-year-old Go Riyu. An actor, film­ cal use of color; today, with Japan's increas­ maker, scriptwriter and sometime music­ ing internationalization, such distinctions Author: Barbara London is video curator in the video creator, Riyu, like ldemitsu, works in are harder to make. Some artists, such as Museum of Modern Art's film department.

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