Beyond the Frame Intermedia And
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BEYOND THE FRAME INTERMEDIA AND EXPANDED CINEMA IN 1960-1970S JAPAN Julian Ross Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Modern Languages and Cultures Centre for World Cinemas January 2014 2 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. 3 To my father, mother and sister, with love and gratitude. 4 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I want to express my deepest gratitude to the principal supervisor of this thesis, Lúcia Nagib, whose academic breadth and intellectual rigour has been a source of inspiration and her friendship and enthusiasm a constant support. My thanks extend to staff and research students at the Centre for World Cinemas, University of Leeds, whose consortium I had the privilege to join in 2009. The workshops, seminars and conferences that I participated in or had the honour of organising set the foundations for my academic experience. The devotion to interdisciplinary research and passion for intellectual exchange I found in the Mixed Cinema Network, whose White Rose Research Studentship fully supported my doctorate, also greatly assisted in shaping my research. During my stay in Japan, I encountered a community of academics, archivists and artists whose commitment and passion for the arts I have modeled in my approach to research. I thank Shigeru Matsui, Jelena Stojkovic, Yuriko Furuhata, Michael Raine, Steve Ridgley, Ann Adachi, Mika Ko, Hiroko Tasaka, Yasuko Imura, Hirofumi Sakamoto, Kenjin Miwa and Sen Uesaki, Yu Homma and Takashi Morishita at the Keio University Art Center. I am also indebted to Ayako Saito and Yomota Inuhiko for their support at Meiji Gakuin University. Personal thanks goes to Takashi & Rei MaKINO for their friendship and Stephanie & Hideki Fukui, Takashi & Misako Nakamura and Midori Uesawa for their hospitality during my stay. My deepest gratitude goes to Go Hirasawa and Roland Domenig whose comraderie and insights I could always rely on. I am indebted to a number of filmmakers and artists whose artistic vision provided me with ongoing stimulation. I had the privilege to converse with the following artists, many of whom shared with me private material –– Masao Adachi, Katsu Kanai, Rikuro Miyai, Shuzo Azuchi Gulliver, Michio Okabe, Yoshihiro Kato, Jun'ichi Okuyama, Nobuhiro Kawanaka, Toshio Matsumoto, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Masahiro Shinoda, Hikaru Hayashi, Eikoh Hosoe and Herikku Morisaki. I also had the pleasure of speaking with Koichiro Ishizaki, Kinshiro Kuzui and Emiko Namikawa, whose support for artists during the 1960s provided space for dialogue between the arts. My deepest gratitude goes to Takahiko Iimura for the many conversations and for making his personal archive available to me where I made many significant discoveries. During my project, I had the pleasure of sharing my research with a wider public thanks to the commitment to film and art from the following people –– Damien Sanville, Josh Siegel, Jed Rapfogel, Joel Shephard, Jasper Sharp, Kathy Geritz, Geoff Andrew and Stuart Comer. My gratitude also goes to the Japan Foundation, who not only supported the public events and academic symposia I had the pleasure of organising but also financed my 10-month stay in Tokyo that this thesis could not have done without. I extend my thanks also to the Worldwide 5 Universities Network who supported my visit to the University of Sydney and the first academic event I convened as well as the Arts & Humanities Research Council who provided for the workshop I co-organised in Tokyo. Special thanks goes to Michael Smith and Oliver Dew whose friendship and collaboration as co-convenors formed the core of these academic events. I would like to thank my partner Stefanie Kolk (and her family) not only for her personal and intellectual support but also for believing in me through some difficult times I went through on this journey. Without her loving care, I would have been lost. Finally, I would like to offer my deepest gratitude to my father for his endless support and good humour and my mother for giving me the courage and teaching me the language that have made this thesis possible. 6 ABSTRACT This thesis examines what intermedia meant for artists and critics in 1960s-70s Japan in order to investigate the intermediality of Japanese expanded cinema. While demonstrating the ability for mediums to interact, intermedia highlights the particularities of a medium through the process of juxtaposition. The historical theorisation of medium interactions are outlined in Part I, which addresses the distinctiveness of intermedia from others and provides an overview on the ways Japanese artists and critics responded to intermedia in the 1960s. While proposing a discourse on medium interactions pre-existed intermedia's arrival as a term in Japan in the form of synthesis arts (sōgō geijutsu), I will delineate the meaning of intermedia in 1960s Japan using three events that incorporated the word in its titles: Intermedia at Runami Gallery; Intermedia Art Festival; and Cross Talk Intermedia. Performances with projections, projections onto bodies and projections onto balloons are analysed in Part II as recurring tendencies in Japanese expanded cinema to demonstrate the ways the potential for performative action inherent in the apparatus of film projection was accentuated through staging an interaction with performance. Seeking alternative surfaces for projection, the works revealed the amorphous qualities of light projection usually concealed in the experience of film. Part III discusses relations between film, audience and space that are established in the spatial projections of Japanese expanded cinema. I will analyse film emancipated from the prescribed codes of the cinema space in the pavilions of Expo '70, psychedelic shows in underground discotheques and early film installations, to discuss how film projection participated in the critical turn to environment (kankyō) in Japanese contemporary art. Through its historical overview, the thesis will show the intermediality of Japanese expanded cinema was demonstrated by its performative and spatial approaches to film projection that staged an opportunity to compare film with other mediums. 7 Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 10 Part I Intermedia ............................................................................................................ 21 1.1 Intermedia as a Theoretical Framework ................................................................. 22 1.1.1 Intertextuality / Intermediality ...............................................................................................22 1.1.2 Interartiality / Intermediality...................................................................................................26 1.1.3 Multimediality / Intermediality...............................................................................................27 1.1.4 Mediality / Intermediality ..........................................................................................................30 1.2 Japan Before Intermedia ............................................................................................... 33 1.2.1 Synthesis Arts (Sōgō Geijutsu) ..................................................................................................33 1.2.3 Jikken Kōbō (Experimental Workshop) ...............................................................................36 1.2.4 Three-Person Animation Circle................................................................................................39 1.3 Japan's Response to Intermedia.................................................................................. 44 1.3.1 Intermedia introduced to Japan................................................................................................44 1.3.2 Intermedia at Runami Gallery...................................................................................................50 1.3.3 Intermedia Art Festival................................................................................................................53 1.3.4 Cross Talk Intermedia ..................................................................................................................63 1.4 From Sōgō Geijutsu to Intermedia............................................................................... 78 Part II Performance in Japanese Expanded Cinema........................................... 80 2.1 Projections with Performance..................................................................................... 81 2.1.1. Angura................................................................................................................................................81 2.1.2 The Body and its Shadow............................................................................................................84 2.1.3 Kanesaka Kenji ................................................................................................................................90 2.1.4 VAN Film Science Research Centre.........................................................................................93 2.1.5 Angura