Over the years, the Mori Art Museum has presented many outstanding examples of film and video art, as part of major exhibitions, as well as in the more boutique MAM Screen program series by featuring single-channel
video works, and at occasional special screening events. Mori Art Museum’s permanent collection also includes a number of works on film and video. In the Screenings part of “MAM Digital” will showcase screenings of a
select works from the past MAM Screen screenings and the Museum’s collection in order, accompanied by detailed descriptions of the works, and artist comments, for added viewing enjoyment.
Banner image: Lu Yang DOKU - Hello World 2020 Installation view: MAM Screen 015: Lu Yang, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2022 Photo: Furukawa Yuya
Screening Period: Friday, February 18 - Sunday, May 29, 2022
MAM Screen is a series of exhibition programs where extraordinary works on video from around the world are showcased. The 15th edition of the series features the work of Lu Yang (born 1984 in Shanghai), where
he continues to be based.
Production documentary videos of a MAM Screen 015-featured work, DOKU - Hello World, will be available online, exclusively on the “MAM Digital” platform.
MAM Screen 015: Lu Yang
Exhibition Period: Friday, February 18 - Friday, May 29, 2022
Organizer: Mori Art Museum
Curated by: Tokuyama Hirokazu (Associate Curator, Mori Art Museum)
These are documentaries about the making of Lu Yang’s avatar, DOKU. He used the latest advances in motion-capture technology to encode the character with the movements of a professional dancer as well as the movements and
facial expressions of traditional Balinese dancers. The DOKU project has involved many collaborators across different fields and disciplines. Japanese Jomon tattoo master Oshima Taku, for instance, created several tattoo designs
for DOKU. The highly- renowned musician P*Light created music for DOKU’s first major work DOKU - Hello World, while Chinese tech company FACEGOOD backed it up with a support on the facial motion-capture technology.
Styles of the dance filmed in Bali and incorporated by using the motion-capture technology are also wide-ranging: among them are the pop dance by Japan’s kEnkEn; legong dance by Ni Kadek Sudarmanti; baris
dance (warrior dance) by Dewa Putu Selamat Raharja; and Rangda and kebyar duduk dance by I Wayan Purwanto. Lu Yang describes being reborn as various characters in a virtual space as “digital reincarnation.”
With an AI version currently in planning, DOKU will perhaps continue to reincarnate and evolve further as new technological innovations emerge.
Online Screening of Mori Art Museum Collection: Yuan Goang-Ming
Screening Period: Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - Monday, January 31, 2022
The fifth installment from the Mori Art Museum Collection will be a limited screening of Landscape of Energy (2014) by pioneering Taiwanese media artist, Yuan Goang-Ming.
Yuan Goang-Ming started making works on video in 1984, and, has since become a pioneer of media art in Taiwan and one of the most internationally recognized artists. In 1997, he earned his master’s degree in
media art from the State University of Arts and Design, Karlsruhe (Die Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe [HfG Karlsruhe]). Yuan’s works are triggered by the memories of his father who immigrated to Taiwan from
Mainland China in 1949, along with his own personal narratives - such as experiences, family, and home - of living in Taiwan. However, the symbolic landscapes and architectures that appear on the screen evoke more larger, universal
notions of nation, history, cultural identity, and finally what it means for us to live and reside in a particular location.
Yuan Giang-Ming Born 1965 in Taiwan. Lives in Taipei, Taiwan. Currently professor at the Taipei National University of the Arts. Selected exhibitions include the 50th Venice Biennale (2002), the
Liverpool Biennale 2004, the 7th Asia Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art (2012), the 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale (2014), Lyon Biennale (2015), Aichi Triennale 2019, and his solo exhibition Tomorrowland held at the
Hayward Gallery (London, England) in 2018.
Yuan Goang-Ming Landscape of Energy
Landscape of Energy 2014 Video, color, sound 7 min. 30 sec.
Production of Landscape of Energy began as Yuan Goang-Ming’s investigation into Taiwan’s nuclear power plants after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Incident of 2011, and the many scenes that appear in
the work were filmed in Taiwan. There are three nuclear power plants currently in operation, one of which is located only 19 kilometers away from the artist’s home. The elementary school in the work - located on Orchid Island
where the indigenous Tao community reside - has become the grounds for protestors demanding the removal of radioactive nuclear waste stored only within walking distance. In another scene, we see nuclear reactors lurking in the far
background of a crowded beach, and, further beyond the ocean in the distance, Tokyo’s Bay Area faintly appears and disappears. The conditions surrounding nuclear power plants in Taiwan is recorded in documentary format, while
at the same time, many of Asia’s large theme parks and residential areas left in ruins are beautifully filmed with the use of a custom made cable-cam. While the many motifs and scenes in the work capture the real and current
landscape, they also seem to foretell a precarious, dystopian future that lies ahead.
Online Screening of Mori Art Museum Collection: Ho Tzu Nyen
Screening Period: Monday, August 2 - Sunday, October 31, 2021
In the fourth screening of works from the Mori Art Museum Collection, two works by Ho Tzu Nyen, Reflections (2007) and Newton (2009), both of which were acquired at the time of MAM Project 016: Ho
Tzu Nyen (2012) will be exclusively showcased online for a limited time.
Based in Singapore, Ho Tzu Nyen (b. 1976) has been presenting his works all over the world, and has gained prominence at numerous international Biennales and international film festivals as a representative artist from
Singapore. Ho, through works themed/based on history, folklores, stories, philosophy and so forth, has attempted to expose the fictitiousness and multilayered-ness in historical facts and reality. His modes of expression are
centered on video, however, they range from installations, theater, participatory projects, improvisational collaborations with musicians and VR works to curation. The poetic and theatrical visual world of his works provides us with
an opportunity to think about what reality is, while presenting the lessons and philosophies contained in history and stories. In recent years, particularly in Japan, Ho Tzu Nyen’s works have caused a buzz for Hotel
Aporia (2019) presented at the Aichi Triennale 2019, with the theme of potential connections among the Kyoto School Philosophers, Kamikaze SAC, Ozu Yasujiro, Yokoyama Ryuichi and others during the WWII, and Voice
of Void (2021), a VR work themed with the Kyoto School Philosophers featured this year at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM).
Ho Tzu Nyen His solo exhibitions to date include Art Space, Sydney (2011), Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2012), Guggenheim Bilbao (2015), Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong (2017), Ming Contemporary Art Museum
(McaM), Shanghai (2018), Kunstverein, Hamburg (2018), and Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM) (2021) among others. The Group exhibitions he has participated to date include the 54th Venice Biennale (2011) (as
representative of Singapore), Times Museum, Guangzhou, China (2013), Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2016), The Guggenheim, New York (2016), Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2017), Dhaka Art Summit,
Bangladesh (2018), National Gallery, Singapore (2018), Gwangju Biennale (2018), Sharjah Biennial 14 (2019) and Aichi Triennale (2019).
Ho Tzu Nyen Reflections
Reflections 2007 High-definition video, stereo sound 14 min.
Reflections can be considered an adaptation of an old tale about “mirror” by Koizumi Yakumo (Lafcadio Hearn). In this work, the protagonist bringing in a handheld mirror to an out-of-the-way village where no
one was aware such things existed causes an uproar, leading to serious consequences. On a minimal set, the roles of adults are played by children. The old tale by Koizumi also appears to have been inspired by the Mirror of
Matsuyama, a classic Japanese rakugo comic story, conveying a fascinating moral lesson. A mirror reflects light, and shows the world that is facing it. However, when someone holds a mirror and looks straight into it,
all that can be seen is the very mirror holder. Consequently, the image of the world becomes transformed into one’s own portrait. Mirrors are useful in formation of the ego at the stade du miroir - i.e. “mirror
stage” of child development as a French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan put it, but they are no use for observing one’s own positioning in the wider world.
In Reflections, the tale has become an anecdote about the Lacanian mirror-stage, as well as a critique of capitalist exchanges where the thing is exchanged for the money. In addition to that, the notion of a fairytale -
stories written by adults for the consumption of children, is reversed into the work with which the adults could reconsider about the modern society by the child actors who ‘play’ adults.
Ho Tzu Nyen Ho Tzu Nyen Reflections
NEWTON
2009 High-definition video, stereo sound 4 min.16 sec.
This work is based on the story of Isaac Newton discovering universal gravitation as a result of observing how an apple falls from its tree. The work is a minimal video theater featuring a cast of just one, presumed to be Newton
himself. The law of universal gravitation formulated and first presented in Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) in 1687, functioned as the paradigm of
classical mechanics for scientists until the quantum mechanics at the beginning of the 20th century, or until Einstein developed the theory of relativity. Furthermore, scientific mechanics including the law of universal gravitation,
states that natural phenomena are not caused by will or mind, but can be understood only by the deterministic causality of their constituent elements, particularly with the mechanical causal chain. However, in this work, a
“spark” of inspiration occurs in the protagonist’s head, representing the moment when a paradigm shift occurs. The repetition of such “sparks” questions the mystery of the law of causality regarding
their arrival and the lack of the scientific mechanism in this paradigm shift. In this way, the existence of human imagination/creativity and fortuitousness is revealed as a puzzling mystery that cannot be explained with a
mechanistic theory.
Online Screening of Mori Art Museum Collection: John Wood and Paul Harrison
Screening Period: Friday, April 30 - Sunday, August 1, 2021
The “Screening” of MAM Digital features a limited period online presentation of the video works Photocopier and 1%, which were both exhibited in MAM Project 005: John Wood and Paul
Harrison in 2007, and thereafter added to the Mori Art Museum Collection.
John Wood and Paul Harrison (Wood b.1969, Harrison b.1966) began producing works together in 1993, and currently continues to work internationally while based in Bristol and Liverpool, UK. Their work takes on various
forms including video, sculpture, prints, and drawings, many of which are minimalistic yet witty and full of humor. While their work explores aesthetic elements, they also appear to be projections of comical events that are hidden
within the real world. In their video work, various small items, props, and the artist’s own body move, stop, and undergo changes, however the artist’s attempt is not always successful, and even the small errors and
mishaps that occur are presented. Such could be regarded as expressing the joys and troubles experienced in the production of works and in their everyday life.
The video works screened on this occasion each bring focus to mundane things such as a photocopier and ball, however though means of visual illusion, permeate with a sense of suprise and unpredictability. These two
works, which are simplistic yet bring smiles to those who view them, perhaps arouses our imagination and conveys to us the possibility of such scenes occurring within the context of our daily lives.
John Wood and Paul Harrison John Wood and Paul Harrison began working together in 1993. Their major solo exhibitions include shows at the Museum of Modern Art, Queens (New York, 2004), the Museum of
Fine Arts, Houston (Texas, USA, 2011), NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] (Tokyo, 2015), and Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (Canada, 2016), among others. They have participated in group exhibitions such as, The British Art
Show 5, Stills Gallery (Edinburgh, UK, 2000) which toured to venues across the UK, the 4th Gwangju Biennale (Korea, 2002), Private Utopia: Contemporary Art from the British Council Collection, Tokyo Station Gallery
(2014) and other venues across Japan, and Mere Constructions, KANAL - Centre Pompidou (Brussels, 2019).
John Wood and Paul Harrison Photocopier
Photocopier 2007 DVD 2 min. 56 sec.
This work presents straightforward footage of pieces of paper coming out one after another from a copy machine. A straight line representing the horizon is printed on the paper, upon which an image of a yacht can be seen, but
strangely, the position of the yacht changes each time the paper is printed. It appears to look a like a flipbook of sorts, produced due to a malfunction of the copy machine. Would we feel angered and frustrated if this happened
when we were trying to make a photocopy? Or would we simply just laugh?
John Wood and Paul Harrison 1%
1% 2007 DVD 8 min. 11 sec.
In this work, the hand of a person wearing a black long-sleeved top is seen against a white wall in the background. The person throws the ball up in the air and catches it when it comes down, yet curiously enough, the white ball
gradually turns black, and then once completely black, gradually turns back to white again. As the title suggests, the color of the ball changes in 1% increments through editing, however no CG techniques are used. Behind the work is
the meticulous and painstaking effort of actually repainting the color of the ball a hundred times.
Online Screening of Mori Art Museum Collection: Tromarama
Screening Period: Monday, February 1 - Thursday, April 29, 2021
The “Screening” of MAM Digital features two video works, Zsa Zsa Zsu and Serigala Militia, exhibited at MAM Project 012: TROMARAMA in 2010. They both entered the Mori Art Museum
Collection.
Tromarama is an art collective founded in 2006 by Febie Babyrose (b. 1985), Herbert Hans (b. 1984) and Ruddy Hatumena (b. 1984), based in Jakarta and Bandung, Indonesia. Since participating in the Singapore Biennale
2008, Tromarama has been active internationally.
Engaging with the notion of hyperreality in the digital age, Tromarama’s projects explore the interrelationship between the virtual and the physical world. Their expressions range from video, installations,
computer programming and to public participation work, depicting the influence of digital media on the society perception towards their surroundings.
Featured video works this time, their early works, are the animation works fully taking advantage of their backgrounds in design and printmaking, and can be described as unique to the post-internet generation. An array
of commonly-found objects such as a number of woodblocks, a huge quantity of buttons and beads are reborn as something completely new through their meticulous hand work. Tromarama’s works, which combine an exceptional sense of
design, rough finish and low-tech sensibility while using stop-motion techniques, are highly original, while they evoke a sense of nostalgia.
Tromarama Founded in 2006.Tromarama has had solo exhibitions at the Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, 2010), National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, 2015), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, 2015), the Liverpool
Biennial Fringe (2016) and among others. The group exhibitions they have participated to date include The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2012), Frankfurter Kunstverein (2015), 11th Gwangju Biennale
(2016), Singapore Art Museum (2017), the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design [MCAD] Manila (2018) and NGV Triennale, Melbourne (2020).
Tromarama Serigala Militia
Serigala Militia 2006 Video installation (Stop-motion animation with 402 pieces of plywood woodblock) 4 min. 22 sec. Music: Seringai
The three members of Tromarama, while university students, took part in a series of music video making workshops held in Bandung, Indonesia. This video was then produced for a charismatic, Indonesian trash-metal band called
Seringai. They captured the sequence of their gradually-changing movement by carving 402 pieces of woodblock, and made up an extremely unique, stop-motion animation video. The work required tremendous amount of time and work, to the
extent where the experience was almost “traumatic” - which became the basis of the artist collective’s name, “Tromarama.” This work with craftwork-like, low-tech sensibility, suggesting new
possibilities for video, have caught much attention worldwide ever since the work was presented at the 2nd Singapore Biennale in 2008.
Tromarama Zsa Zsa Zsu
Zsa Zsa Zsu 2007 Stop-motion animation (of buttons and beads) 4 min. 54 sec. Music: R.N.R.M. (Rock n’ Roll Mafia)
This is the second music video by Tromarama, after Serigala Militia. They used 12 kg of buttons and 1 kg of beads, with the same stop-motion technique. With the usage of everyday material, Tromarama created a pop and colorful
animation video piece.
Online Screening of Navin Rawanchaikul Tales from the Land of Six Trees
Screening Period: Monday, January 4 - Wednesday, March 31, 2021
For the first installment of the Collection lineup, we are screening Tales from the Land of Six Trees by Navin Rawanchaikul, a video work originally produced and screened at the “Ok no Matsuri” event
held as a part of Roppongi Art Night 2017 and added to the collection of the Mori Art Museum thereafter.
Based in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and Fukuoka, Japan, Navin Rawanchaikul (b. 1971, Chaing Mai) has led a number of projects in Japan and all around the world that actively engage with local communities. Since establishing
Navin Production Co., Ltd., in 1994, he has produced works as a collective, together presenting large-scale installations combining painting, photography, sculpture, and architecture.
Rawanchaikul’s father was of the Indian diaspora who migrated to Thailand during the tumultuous period of the India-Pakistan Partition, and had run a fabric shop in Warorot Market in Chiang Mai. A number of
Rawanchaikul’s representative works to date concern his own family’s ancestry that lies in the Punjabi communities of present-day Pakistan, in addition to those that draw inspiration from his father’s shop. In
Japan, he has produced numerous works that are based on local communities such as Chojamachi Textile District in Nagoya City, as well as Niigata City and Hirosaki City.
Rawanchaikul interweaves the everyday lives and memories of ordinary people that are not included within the framework of public history to create rich narratives. Such narratives not only harbor a sense of compassion
towards individual lives and connections between people, but also illustrate critical perspectives on various social issues including immigration, as well as declining birthrates, aging populations, and depopulation in local cities.
Navin Rawanchaikul Major exhibitions include Cities on the Move (Secession, Vienna; traveling to six other locations, 1997-1999), 4th Asian Art Show (Fukuoka Art Museum, 1994), Yokohama
Triennale 2001 and Yokohama Triennale 2005 (Yokohama Museum of Art and other venues), and the Thai Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). At the Mori Art Museum, he has participated in the exhibition SUNSHOWER: Contemporary
Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now, Roppongi Art Night 2017, and Roppongi Art Night 2019.
Navin Rawanchaikul Tales from the Land of Six Trees
Tales from the Land of Six Trees 2017 Video 39 min. 41 sec.
This work, which was produced for Roppongi Art Night 2017, is based on the Roppongi community where the Mori Art Museum is located. The work describes the current nature and appearance of the city of Roppongi seen through
the eyes of Rawanchaikul in the form of a letter addressed to the people of the future. The Roppongi community consists of a wide range of people, from those who have lived in the area for many years to those who work in the
offices of Roppongi Hills, and the tourists visiting the cinema and museum. Through carefully interviewing these various people, Rawanchaikul envisions the past, present and future of Roppongi.
Online Screening of MAM Screen 008: Kondoh Akino
Screening Period: Tuesday, December 1, 2020 - Sunday, February 28, 2021
The seventh edition of “MAM Screen” Encore Screening features three works by Kondoh Akino for a limited time.
New York-based Kondoh Akino (b. 1980 in Chiba) has employed a diverse range of techniques
including manga, animation, drawing, oil painting and essays to construct a highly original expressive realm. Kondoh’s take on the world feels dreamlike; a mixture of fact and fiction based on her own experiences, memories and
sensations. Suffused with a kind of dubious allure that seems to expose the subconscious - atavistic memories, physical changes unique to women, environments in which humans and nature join to form a harmonious whole, sensations
that lie between curiosity and fear - her works have earned high acclaim both at home and abroad. Already a published manga artist, while studying at Tama Art University Kondoh began producing animations with the idea of
“making manga move.” The technique of combining music and motion expanded the range and scope of her art. It is hoped that you will enjoy Kondoh’s unique animations rooted in manga.
Kondoh Akino Graduated from Department of Graphic Design, Tama Art University in 2003. Kondoh has been living in New York since 2008. At the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, she participated in
Go-Betweens: The World Seen through Children (2014). Her major solo exhibitions include KiyaKiya at Mizuma Art Gallery (2011), and her major publications include Usual Stories (Seirinkogeisha, 2008), Akino
Kondoh 1998-2013 (Nanarokusha Publishing Inc., 2013), Thinking in New York #1 and #2 (Akishobo Inc., 2015/2018), A-ko’s Boyfriends #1-#7 (KADOKAWA, 2015-2020) among others.
Commentary by the Artist
I completed The Evening Traveling in 2001 while I was a university student. Ladybirds’ Requiem produced between 2005 and 2006 is a remake of my graduation work, and KiyaKiya is a work
that I began working on in New York. I moved to New York in the fall of 2008. At the time I had come with the intention of only staying for a year, so I didn’t really consider it a “move.” Since I still live here
though, you could say that I have ultimately “moved” yet I myself perceive it as something more like “being on a different tectonic plate.” I suppose I had come to think in this way after feeling somewhat
of a guilt for “being on a different ground” in my New York apartment that remained completely unshaken when the Great East Japan Earthquake struck in 2011. At the time, I happened to be working on the
KiyaKiya.
I’ve always thought that my work was something introspective, or what you could describe as events of “a small world” inspired by my childhood memories and so on. However, having moved I once again
was reminded of the obvious, that what encompasses this “small world” is a “larger world” that includes my entire surrounding environment from the place where I live, to the people I meet, and the various
things that are happening in the world. Furthermore, by living as a minority in an unfamiliar place surrounded by unfamiliar language, I also learned how the influences of the “larger world” manifest in concentrated
form in none other than this “small world.” It is as if a concentrated extract of sorts suddenly dripped from the ceiling one day.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continued to wreak havoc across the globe, in April this year I found myself in the midst of a disaster. A small fire broke out on one of the upper floors of the building, and my apartment on
the second floor was flooded from the water used in fire extinguishing efforts. At the time, hundreds, and on some days even over a thousand people were losing their lives in the State of New York alone. I was thus confronted with
the worst-case situation of losing my own home as a place to stay during this period of being instructed to self-quarantine at home. I indeed found myself caught up in this “small world,” while the “larger
world” became hidden in its shadows. At times the “smaller world” can become much larger than the “larger world” itself.
As of November 2020, I am still unable to go home and am living in temporary accommodation. It’s been more than half a year since I moved into this temporary abode, so for better or worse I have completely
adjusted to these circumstances, and now my “small world” seems to have rightly found its place within the “larger world.” I suddenly sense myself drawing connections between the aforementioned image of
“a concentrated extract dripping from above” and the water seeping through the ceiling after the fire was put out. I do remember waking up that night to the pitter-patter of water droplets.
Incidentally, in November 2008 when I had just arrived in the United States, New York was jubilantly celebrating Obama’s victory. Twelve years later, I’ve experienced my fourth US presidential election.
Four years ago, it felt as though the entire city was at a loss for words. This time, I was exhausted by the overly prolonged and tumultuous course of events, and despite the fact that this “divide” will continue even
after the election, the city was filled with joy and relief when the results were assured. What are the prospects for the future, and what will happen from here on forth? I suppose it will be some time before its influences will
become apparent in my work. I must wait for that something to come dripping down from above.
Kondoh Akino November 9, 2020
Kondoh Akino The Evening Traveling
The Evening Traveling 2001-2002 Animation 3 min. 56 sec. Music: CHIKU Toshiaki
Kondoh’s first attempt at animation, prompted by the class assignment of animating to a favorite piece of music during her time studying graphic design at Tama Art University. The resulting images were inspired by the music
from the track The Evening Traveling by the band Tama, of which she was a fan. Kondoh’s animation practice thus started with the idea of “making manga move.”
Kondoh Akino Ladybirds’ Requiem
Ladybirds’ Requiem 2005-2006 Animation 5 min. 38 sec. Music: CHIKU Toshiaki Collection: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
Repeated images of ladybird-like buttons and a girl sewing them to the inside of her skirt are manifestations of Kondoh’s guilty conscience after accidentally killing a ladybird. Images of the girl divided and multiplying,
and the viscous liquid enveloping the ladybirds, hint of a mental state of young girls peculiar to puberty.
Kondoh Akino KiyaKiya
KiyaKiya 2010-2011 Animation 6 min. 39 sec. Music: John Zorn Collection: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
In an essay on childhood experiences published in Shibusawa Tatsuhiko’s Shojo Korekushon Josetsu (Introduction to a Collection on Girls) (Chuokoron-Shinsha, 1985), Kondoh encountered the term kiyakiya. This
expression for a “mood hard to explain, tinged with nostalgia, disturbed by something” or feeling of déjà vu resonates with the realm portrayed by Kondoh. KiyaKiya is suffused with latent desire and
vitality, and the flexibility and power of a young girl moving back and forth between multiple dimensions.
MAM Screen 008: Kondoh Akino
Period: 2018.4.25 [Wed] - 9.17 [Mon]
Organizer: Mori Art Museum
Curated by: Araki Natsumi (Curator, Mori Art Museum [Current Associate Professor, Tokyo University of the Arts / then Curator, Mori Art Museum])
Online Screening of MAM Screen 005: Niwa Yoshinori
Screening Period: Thursday, October 1, 2020 – Sunday, January 3, 2021
The 6th edition of “MAM Screen” Encore Screening features four works by Niwa Yoshinori for a limited time. Setting his work in the streets and other public spaces of various countries, and locations with
political connections, Niwa stages social and historical interventions by engaging in what at first glance appear to be meaningless and absurd acts and schemes, and presents on video a portion of these happenings in their entirety,
including the unexpected outcomes resulting from the negotiation, its failures and reactions from others. In the MAM Screen, we presented a special edition of Niwa’s four-part “Communism” series which is in the
Collection of the Mori Art Museum: Tossing Socialist in the Air in Romania, Looking for Vladimir Lenin at Moscow Apartments, Proposing Holding up Karl Marx to Japanese Communist Party, and Celebrating Karl Marx’s
Birthday with Japanese Communist Party, newly re-edited for the showing. Through “nonsensical” actions and sense of humor that emerge from the series of attempts made by the artists (as indicted by the titles),
Niwa’s will have us reconsider the various value systems and significance in our society.
Commentary by the Artist and Curator
Some fifteen years ago, I was a recent college graduate and working as an irregularly-employed, manual laborer. My intention then was that this would serve as a minor act of resistance to capitalism and our
subordination to it. The majority of my wages went on paying the rent for my makeshift apartment in Tokyo, and I went into arrears with the utility bills, resulting in my electricity, water, gas, and mobile phone all being cut
off. Though I was clearly living in poverty, I had the misconception that this would give me spiritual release. Notwithstanding that I could do nothing about it by myself, I feared if the world would radically change after 9/11.
It was around then that, watching TV late one night, I chanced upon a documentary about the Romanian Revolution, sparking a fascination with the revolutions of Eastern Europe that followed the fall of communism in
the region. It was an intense interest, almost an obsession, and which led me to believe it was my destiny to go to Romania. I was not there during the revolution, nor was I Romanian, and neither had I even properly experienced
the Cold War between the capitalist and communist blocs. Now I think of it, what had so gripped me, who was born in Japan in 1982 and was still in elementary school when the Cold War ended, was a powerful obsession that attempted
to make up for my own lack of such experience. Even though everything in the world is interconnected and joined together, isn’t it bizarre that we are so divided by ideologies and history? What kind of role could a total
outsider from the generation who experienced communism, someone from the time after the end of the Cold War, serve? How is it possible to share the past? Such discursive questions appeared in my mind one after the other,
subsequently forming the motivation behind the four-part “Communism”series of works I made.
I live today in the Austrian capital of Vienna, which functioned as a buffer zone between the West and the East during the Cold War, and can now travel to the former Eastern Bloc in as little as an hour.
Coincidentally enough, this city was where I came initially on the very first trip I ever took overseas. The communist nations collapsed and everything was thrown into a single global market, and then subsumed under the capitalist
principle of competition. We remain unable even to imagine the end of capitalism. It is said that the COVID-19 pandemic will cause capitalism to change, though it might well spark a new struggle for economic and political
hegemony, while the disparities produced by capitalism have actually increased the risk posed by the virus to the economically vulnerable. What is wealth? What is freedom? What does being democratic offer to the human society?
Here in Vienna with its former communist neighbors, what should we now do to resist a world in which the standards we have for all our values are centralized?
Niwa Yoshinori
Niwa Yoshinori has a sharp perspective, always penetrating simultaneously both what seems most familiar and what seems remote. This acuity lies in how its examination of wealth and freedom - the things that we
unquestioningly extol and pursue on a daily basis - does not overlook where they came from or what they bring us. The actions that Niwa makes in his work initially appear humorous or even nonsensical, but they vividly reveal past
social systems and how these have changed within people’s lives. Today, we face the threat of the proliferation of COVID-19. What impact will it have on our future lives or on political and social structures? What is being
done and what is being overlooked? Reading Niwa’s statement, I once again felt a sense of the growing necessity for perspectives that observe these.
Being a somewhat long work, people may not have been able to watch it all when it was screened at the Mori Art Museum. I hope that you could take advantage of this opportunity to enjoy viewing it online at your
leisure.
Kumakura Haruko (Assistant Curator, Mori Art Museum)
Niwa Yoshinori Tossing Socialists in the Air in Romania (single-channel version)
Tossing Socialists in the Air in Romania (single-channel version)
2010
Video
25 min. 24 sec. Collection: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
This first work in a four-part series about communism was made in Romania, where revolution brought about the collapse of a socialist republic in 1989. Niwa Yoshinori saw a documentary on television in 2005 about the fall of the
Nicolae Ceaușescu regime. Shocked by the raw footage of amateur cameramen capturing the actual scenes of a revolution, he started his own research. During the process of this he exchanged emails over several years with Pavilion, an
art center in Bucharest, which then led to Tossing Socialists in the Air in Romania in 2010. After the revolution brought down the dictatorship of Ceaușescu, who was executed along with his wife, Romania became a democracy
and the Communist Party was made illegal for some time. From this it is easy to see the trauma left behind by the Socialist Republic, under which so many suffered. The film shows Niwa suggesting to various Romanian politicians and
activists the absurd act of bringing together young people from the generation that did not experience the revolution to toss into the air people who continue to believe in communism even today.
Niwa Yoshinori Looking for Vladimir Lenin at Moscow Apartments (single-channel version)
Looking for Vladimir Lenin at Moscow Apartments (single-channel version)
2012
Video
22 min. 32 sec. Collection: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
For this second work in his series about the Communist Party, Niwa Yoshinori went in search of images of Vladimir Lenin left behind in people’s homes in Moscow some 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Niwa looked
for portraits, photographs, propaganda posters, newspaper articles, flags and badges depicting Lenin, the first leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in order to exhibit them at Moscow Museum of Modern Art. He gave out
leaflets at train stations, asking people: “Is Lenin in your home?” The reactions of people in Moscow varied widely, from anger to nostalgia. In his search of regular households, Niwa perceives how these portraits of
Lenin, which were ideological symbols of socialism, had come to change over the course of the 20 years into objects connected to personal stories or memories. In this way, he depicts how Russian society today memorializes the failed
utopia of socialism.
Niwa Yoshinori Celebrating Karl Marx’s Birthday with the Japanese Communist Party (single-channel version)
Celebrating Karl Marx’s Birthday with the Japanese Communist Party (single-channel version)
2013
Video
22 min. 56 sec. Collection: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
Niwa Yoshinori Proposing Holding up Karl Marx to the Japanese Communist Party (single-channel version)
Proposing Holding up Karl Marx to the Japanese Communist Party (single-channel version)
2013
Video
18 min. 27 sec. Collection: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
The third and fourth works in his series were made in Japan, focusing on Karl Marx, whose thinking formed the origins of communism, and the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), which has a history of over 90 years. Niwa explores how
Marx’s ideas have been received across the ages and in different countries, and the meaning of Marx today for the Japanese Communist Party, which is now a non-revolutionary party and has essentially abandoned the realization
of a communist society. In Celebrating Karl Marx’s Birthday with the Japanese Communist Party, Niwa goes to the branch office of the JCP in Aichi Prefecture and proposes organizing a “195th birthday party” for Marx,
while also asking them about the so-called “scientific socialism” that the party upholds. Having heard that the photographs of Marx displayed by the JCP at the time of its founding in 1922 were no longer to be found in
the party’s facilities, in Proposing Holding up Karl Marx to the Japanese Communist Party Niwa goes to the Central Committee of the Japanese Communist Party and some of the JCP regional committees to suggest that they once
again display the portrait of Marx in their offices. Through this seemingly absurd proposal, Niwa is attempting to re-interpret the current state of the Japanese Communist Party in the 2010s.
MAM Screen 005: Niwa Yoshinori Selected Video Works
Period: 2017.2.4 [Sat] - 6.11 [Sun]
Organizer: Mori Art Museum
Curated by: Kumakura Haruko (Assistant Curator, Mori Art Museum)
Screening Period: Tuesday, September 1 - Monday, November 30, 2020
The fifth edition of “MAM Screen” Encore Screening features five works by Hsu Chia-Wei for a limited time. All of these five works were previously presented at MAM SCREEN 009: Hsu Chia-Wei.
Hsu Chia-Wei (born 1983 in Taichung, Taiwan) is known for his highly refined video works and installations depicting complex narratives that cannot be read from the histories of various Asian countries that have been conferred the
status of official history. Based on a process of meticulous research, these narratives cast light on the histories of individuals who have been at the mercy of the mercurial currents of political and social eras, as well as
neglected fragments of history.
This screening program, with three short films - Drones, Frosted Bats and Testimony of the Deceased, Takasago, and Nuclear Decay Timer - seeks to unravel various hidden narratives that lay concealed within the
Industrial Research Institute of the Taiwan Governor-General’
s Office during Japanese rule, through the perspectives of industrial policy, ecosystems, and geology. And the other two works, Huai Mo Village and Ruins of the Intelligence Bureau, examine the stormy fate of a man who
lost his nationality as a result of the Chinese civil war, and subsequently with the advent of the Cold War had to lead multiple lives as a spy, director of orphanages, and priest in a village located near the border between
Thailand and Myanmar, revealing turbulent history of this region.
By collecting regional memories and scattered materials that have been lost to industrialization, urbanization, and the aging of those who were key witnesses to these events, Hsu prompts in his audience an awareness of the
complexity and diversity of this world, as well as the uncertainty of one’s memory.
Hsu Chia-Wei graduated from the National Taiwan University of Arts, Taipei, Taiwan. From 2014-2016 he studied filmmaking at the Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains, in France. He was a finalist for the
HUGO BOSS ASIA ART Award in 2013, and the Grand Prize winner of the 15th Taishin Arts Award in 2017.
Comment by the Artist Analysis on the Works as well as Current Project under the Current Circumstance
Hsu Chia-Wei
The pandemic this year has dramatically changed the way we live, and it looks like we will have to live with the virus for a long time to come, which has driven a transformation of work patterns and industries. Take
me, for example, as an island country, Taiwan implemented pandemic-prevention policies quick and strict at the beginning, so the current daily life in Taiwan has not been impacted that much. While the relevant international plans
have all been suspended, many exhibitions have been postponed, or held online. I couldn’t go abroad for months, but it gave me some time to collect my thoughts, get to know more and think deeper about Taiwan. During this
time, I devoted myself to more art projects about Taiwan. I went to two islands, one is Green Island near eastern Taiwan, where they had taken in many political prisoners during the Cold War, and I produced a set of works related
to “White Terror.” The other one is in Heping Island in northern Taiwan, where I worked with archaeologists and filmed an archaeological site from the 17th century Dutch and Spanish colonial eras. With the impact of
the outbreak, I have become more committed to Taiwan’s domestic policies.
The works screen at the Mori this time is, coincidentally, much associated with the outbreak. In Drones, Frosted Bats and the Testimony of Deceased, we can see some bats, which were initially considered the
intermediate hosts of the virus during this epidemic. When I first made this series, I tried to re-enter the colonial and historical issues with the non-human elements; in the past, we talked a lot about the human being, but I
think the non-human factors could be a way outside the existing framework of interpretation. Therefore, we can see non-human elements such as bats, minerals and pine tree spirit running through this series of works. The outbreak
of the epidemic has underlined the delicate symbiotic relationship between humans and all things, and also knocked the humans off our pedestal, back to the original biological appearance – making the anti-anthropocentric way of
thinking appear yet another déjà vu.
Commentary by the Curator
Kataoka Mami (Director, Mori Art Museum)
While the pandemic has changed the way we look at the world, Hsu Chia-Wei’s video works also offer new interpretations. COVID-19 spread across the world within a very short span of time, leading each country to
hastily close its borders. Even the member states of the EU that are united under a political and economic union, with nations connected via land across the European continent, had respectively gone into national lockdown. As a
result, we were made increasingly aware of “nation-state” framework. Huai Mo Village and Ruins of the Intelligence Bureau by Hsu Chia-Wei, which follow the lives of people who are at the mercy of
political turmoil and therefore have deviated from the very framework, once again in current times remind us of the relationship between individuals and the state. The three works, Drones, Frosted Bats and the Testimony of the
Deceased,Takasago, and Nuclear Decay Timer also make us conscious of the nature and concept of “nation-state” through the legacies of colonization and industrial policies. On the other hand however, as Hsu
himself comments, by incorporating scientific perspectives into political history, our awareness is directed towards the history of planet Earth and the history of non-human organisms such as animals and insects, thus eventually
nullifying the significance of such frameworks as nation-states or national borders set forth by human beings. This also seems to convey the impossibility of anthropocentrism, as humans find themselves completely defeated in the
face of an invisible virus.
Hsu Chia-Wei Drones, Frosted Bats and the Testimony of the Deceased
Drones, Frosted Bats and the Testimony of the Deceased
2017
Video
8 min.
Demo version
This work was filmed at the abandoned site of Hsinchu Branch of the Sixth Imperial Japanese Naval Fuel Plant. During the World War II, the fuel plant was used to produce aviation fuel with butanol developed by the Department of
Industrial Fermentation at the Industrial Research Institute. Hsu utilizes the unique mobile perspectives of a drone, while using it in the video as exposed photographic equipment and casting it as an actor anthropomorphically. This
video also includes several different shots, including a scene of frosted bats (northern species) coming to reside in the chimney of the military plant once come early summer, footages of bombers from World War II when United States
allied with China to bomb Taiwan.
The video narration originated from memoirs of factory employees at the time. Nineteen oral accounts dubbed by four voice actors in Japanese and the video archive manipulated by a computer program are arranged randomly on the
playlist to constantly shift the structure of the video, which indeed makes up the video installation altogether. Through the random calculations of the program, Hsu presents the uncertainty of these memories and his response to the
scattered historical text. The online screening program this time presents a demo version of this work.
Hsu Chia-Wei Takasago
Takasago
2017
Video
9 min. 20 sec.
Production support: TAKASAGO INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION
Takasago is a video installation combining two seemingly unrelated elements - Noh theatre” and “a perfume factory currently operating in Japan.” Takasago International Corporation was founded in 1920 in
Japan. With the support from the Japanese government and technical assistance of the Industrial Department at Central Industrial Research Institute, they placed headquarter in Taiwan from 1938 to 1945 aiming to expand the business,
producing fragrance with plants from Taiwan. The corporation was named “Takasago” for two reasons. First, owing to the fact that in old times raw materials were imported to Japan from Taiwan, Taiwan was given a Japanese
name Takasagokoku (“Takasago Country”). Second, Takasago is also the well-known Noh play by Zeami Motokiyo in the Muromachi era (1336-1573) about the lasting love between the twin pines transforming into an old
married couple to express that the geographical distance will never separate the two. In the work where Noh actors perform in a modernized factory, the multiple references of the word “Takasago” and the moral of the
ancient tale are connected through a writing beyond the script of history.
Hsu Chia-Wei Nuclear Decay Timer
Nuclear Decay Timer
2017
Video
8 min. 40 sec.
Single-channel version
For this work, Hsu collaborated with geologists to look at colonial history from a science history perspective. After the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, Japan’s economy suffered a steep economic decline. In hopes of reviving
the economy, Japanese established several benefits for the gold mining, thus resulting in a rapid development of colonial Taiwan’s gold mining industry. It was not until the geologists discovered zircon in the riverbed of Mawudu
River (in Hsinchu) that it was put into proper research. Initially, researches aimed to survey these mineral resources in order to produce alloy and to support military’s development during the World War II, however, later did
they realize that the output of zircon was insufficient. Although the plan ended in failure, the zircon samples from the excavation have new scientific applications for the later generations of geologists. Now they can determine the
composition of zircon. In addition, with the help of nuclear physics, they are able to reveal intriguing information about the past. Zircon is like a nuclear decay timer that allows geologists to look at the long span of time from
the beginning of the world to the birth of humans.
Hsu Chia-Wei Huai Mo Village
Huai Mo Village
2012
Video
8 min. 20 sec.
Huai Mo Village focuses on the “Huai Mo Tzu Chiang House” in Chiang Rai, Thailand. The founder of this orphanage house is a priest who, during the Cold War period, served as a secret informer for the CIA for 39
years. His identity indicates the sources of this period of history and the process of change. Starting from the 1980s, this region had turned into a world’s drug center facing serious issues of smuggling and human
trafficking. Currently, there are around seventy children most of whose parents have been killed or jailed due to drug trafficking or smuggling and become orphans.
In this video work, the artist invited these children to form a filming team and jointly used cameras, sound recording equipment, lights, and other filming devices. Children were able to visit the priest in person and to listen to
him tirelessly talking about the past of the Intelligence Bureau. The artist’s customary style is extended in this work - the people telling the stories, the people listening to the stories, the filming crew made up of
orphans, with the artist standing furthest back, observing it all and exploring a complex history of this region.
Hsu Chia-Wei Ruins of the Intelligence Bureau
Ruins of the Intelligence Bureau
2015
Video
13 min. 30 sec.
Produced by: Le Fresnoy
This work was filmed at its historical site in Huai Mo Village, near the Thai-Burmese borders. The original building of the Intelligence Bureau does not exist any longer, yet foundation slab, now governed by the Thai army, still
remains there. The artist invited former intelligence officers, who still live in this area, to participate in filming. The foundation slab was turned into a stage for a traditional Thai puppet show. The narrator in this video is
the head of the orphanage “Huai Mo Tzu Chiang House” and served as an intelligence officer for thirty-nine years. The video also reveals the narration recording process.
The video opens with the puppet show upon the grounds of the Intelligence Bureau; the puppeteers are dressed in black and wear black masks. Simultaneously, the narrator recounts an ancient legend about the monkey general Hanuman
rescuing the army. Some of the performers currently serve for the Thai army and some are the former informants. All of them wear black masks. They are a group of unknown people who had been forgotten in the tides of history. The
final scene of the video reveals an empty recording studio, where only the video is still running. Weaving together folklore and reality, documentary and fiction, this work reveals complex identities, memories and dreams of people
in Huai Mo Village.
MAM Screen 009: Hsu Chia-Wei
Period: 2018.10.6 [Sat] - 2019.1.20 [Sun]
Organizer: Mori Art Museum
Curated by: Kataoka Mami (then Chief Curator, Mori Art Museum (current Director))
Online Screening of MAM Screen 010: Mikhail Karikis
Screening Period: Saturday, August 1 - Saturday, October 31, 2020
The fourth edition of “MAM Screen” Encore Series features three works by Mikhail Karikis for a limited time. All works were previously presented at MAM Screen 010: Mikhail Karikis.
Mikhail Karikis (born 1975, Thessaloniki, Greece, lives and works in London) had shown extensively in a number of museums, including his solo exhibitions at Whitechapel Gallery (London, 2018-2019) and the Turku Art Museum
(Finland, 2018). He has also participated in various international exhibitions, including the Aichi Triennale (2013), and the Biennale of Sydney (2014).
After studying music and architecture, Mikhail Karikis has crossed a wide range of genres including moving image, photography, and performance, developing these media into immersive installations. While Karikis
deploys sound as the primary material for his work, the human voice plays a particularly important role within his practice. This program presents three works, Sounds from Beneath, Ain’t Got No Fear and The Chalk
Factory. Each of these works propose alternative models of friendship, labor, action, and even human existence itself. As viewers, we are made keenly aware of the impact exerted on individual lives by shifts in economic
and industrial structures, as well as fundamental questions regarding the nature of labor, employment, and communities. Let us lend an ear to the collective voices of various communities, and expand our imagination to try and
envision an increasingly informatized contemporary society, as well as a future society that accepts diversity.
Commentary by the Artist Reflections on art and visions of the future
Mikhail Karikis
Coal defined British life and played a key role in British life. Coalmining fuelled domestic fires and industrial furnaces, and stimulated the socio-political and cultural life of the country through
workers’ unions and choirs. Now, the English landscape is marked by the radical urban, social and economic changes that have taken place in the country since the mid-1980s. Since the dismantling of the coalmining
industry in England in the ‘80s, many coalmines have stood desolate and silent.
In response to the muteness of the empty pits in south-east England, in my project Sounds from Beneath I wanted to give voice to the community of former coal miners. The colliers were proud men who, after
the closing of the mines, experienced communal unemployment, poverty and the dispersal of their communities. They became socially stigmatised and felt humiliated. What could be an adequate memory keeper of their community,
their achievements, resistance and culture?
I started working on Sounds from Beneath in 2010. I collaborated with a coalminers’ choir. Through conversations with the men, I asked them to recall and vocalise the sounds they used to hear when
they worked in the mines. In the film we produced, the men sing noises that evoke the coalmine where they used to work. Mechanical clangs, whirring engines, wailing alarms, subterranean blasts, hissing and whistling vocalised
by the men reanimate the empty pits. Singing became the reason for the men to come together again. Their song transforms the desolate mining site into an amphitheatre of communal remembering, forming a record of former
activity and community. The miners stand with dignity and unearth a memory of loss. They compose a collective lament, both resisting social inaudibility and resonating beyond the silence of England’s vanished industrial
architectures.
Several years later, in 2015, I was given the opportunity to work in Japan and I turned my attention to another group of workers on the outskirts of Tokyo. I first visited the country in 2013 and in my research
before traveling I read about cultural attitudes towards disability and labour. Workplaces must include a minimum of 2.2% (2% in 2013) disabled employees, yet the majority of companies in the country choose to pay a penalty
rather than comply with this rule. There are exceptions however that offer positive and empowering examples which include people with disabilities.
I discovered Nihon Rikagagu Chalk Industries. Over 70% of their workers have disabilities. At the factory I observed a large team of hard-working specialised and productive staff. Any team of high-performing
workers such as those at the chalk factory would be defined by their achievements and abilities. Yet, cultural attitudes define these people by what they are not able to do: by their disabilities. This is not however the only
attitude Japanese culture provides.
In my research into Japanese legends I discovered the myth of Hyottoko, the god of fire. If Hyottoko were alive today, he would be labelled as a person with a learning disability: he failed to understand
the instructions of every task he was given. He was asked to clean but he swept the ceiling; he was asked to pick citrus fruit but collected leaves instead. Everything changed however when he was asked to blow the fire and
keep it ablaze. He did it enthusiastically and tirelessly, keeping his village warm while people were out, giving light and making it possible for everyone to cook. His work and contribution to his community were irreplaceable
and immortalised in the mask we see today in shops, homes, on tattoos and in festivals around the country. Hyottoko might have faced difficulties, but was valued and remains remembered and celebrated for his gift of fire and
his ability.
As I write this, a world pandemic has gripped our planet and we are suddenly faced by obstacles and our inability to continue with our daily lives the way we used to. All of us have experienced more isolation.
Many people have become unwell, some have sadly been lost, and many communities have become poorer with worsened employment and life prospects. What can art and culture do in the face of such global disaster? In many ways, art
is incapable of providing immediate practical solutions, but what it can provide is examples of care, empathy and compassion. Art offers insights into other people’s ways of overcoming difficulties and hardship. In my
projects, I have chosen to focus on human dignity and solidarity, and on compassionate empowering action in the face of adversity - be it unemployment or disability. Art allows us to imagine different possible, probable,
desired and empowered futures. Once we capture these positive futures with our imagination, we can focus on making them real. That’s what I feel we collectively need right now to face the challenges ahead.
Commentary by the Curator
Kataoka Mami (Director, Mori Art Museum)
Mikhail Karikis creates sculptures of the human voice, upon which he projects people’s dignity. These sculptures have no specific form, and are only perceived through hearing. He states, “I often find
language to be unreliable. While language and words are able to conceal something, the voice itself - its volume, tone, and what it implies, functions as a measure of one’s emotions. The voice reflects a person’s
emotional world like an x-ray. In fact, by just listening to a person’s voice I am able to tell whether they are physically in good health, as well as the state of their emotions.”
Now that the pandemic has exposed the fragility and imbalances of the world’s social structure, Karikis’ attitude towards artistic production seems to have strengthened its very significance. That is, with the
limitations of human-centered and economic-centered growth models pointed out, to take another good look at the land upon which we stand and aim for a society in which all life there is healthy and sound. We human beings as a
part of the natural world are also required to listen to the voices of nature. What do the voices that are heard from Karikis’ work have us think about in this day and age?
Mikhail Karikis Sounds from Beneath
Sounds from Beneath 2011-2012
Video
6 min. 47 sec.
Sounds from Beneath centers around a sound work for which Karikis asked a community of a former coal miners’ choir to recall and vocalize the industrial sounds of a working coal mine, which they used to hear when
they worked in the pits. Karikis located the former Kentish coalmine where the men used to work, and upon completing the sound work he invited the artist Uriel Orlow to collaborate on a video which depicts the desolate colliery
brought back to life through the miners’ song. The sunken mine transforms into an amphitheater resonating sounds of former underground explosions, mechanical clangs cutting the coal-face, wailing alarms and shovels
scratching the earth, all sung by Snowdown Colliery Welfare Male Voice Choir grouping in formations reminiscent of picket lines.
Commenting on Sounds from Beneath, the curator and writer Katerina Gregos highlights that “at once political and poetic, the film cuts through any expected conventional documentary realism and resonates with pathos
dignity and emotional force. It functions as a salvaging of memory, an ode, a tribute, and a requiem all at once […] It captures the essence of the act of coal mining, while recalling the picket lines and intimating a strong
sense of male identity and the solidarity of sharing a common purpose in work and song.”
Mikhail Karikis Ain’t Got No Fear
Ain’t Got No Fear
2016
Video
10 min.
Commissioned by Whitstable Biennale 2016 & Ideas Test
Ain’t Got No Fear is a project which Karikis created with a group of teenagers who are growing up in the militarized post-industrial marshland of the Isle of Grain in southern England. In response to the isolation
of their village and the lack of space for teenagers, in the last few years, kids have been organizing raves in a local wood, recently raided by the police. Using as their beat the persistent crushing noises of the demolition of
a neighboring power plant, 11 to 13-year-old boys from Grain sing a rap song they wrote about their lives, recalling memories of being younger and imagining their old age and future. Reminiscent of a music video the film
glimpses teenage experiences on the edges of urbanity by following youths to their secret underground hideaways and capturing their rackety reclaiming of the local site where raves used to take place. The project reveals a way
in which industrial sites are often re-imagined by youths with a form of spatial justice defined by friendship and play, the thrill of subverting authority and evading adult surveillance.
Mikhail Karikis The Chalk Factory
The Chalk Factory
2017/2019
Video, single channel edition
22 min. 22sec.
Commissioned by European Capital of Culture 2017, Aarhus, Denmark
Supported by Channel 4, UK and Arts Council England
Special thanks to Nihon Rikagaku Industry Co., Ltd, Shibata Naomi, Kiku Day, Osaka Koichiro, Dr. Nicola Grove, Mitsudo Yumiko, Namba Sachiko, Spiral and the Yokohama
Paratriennale 2014.
The Chalk Factory is a project created with a group of factory workers with learning disabilities in Japan. Built in the dense industrial outskirts of Tokyo, Nihon Rikagaku Industry Co., Ltd offered temporary internship
to two teenagers with mental disabilities in 1959. The last day of the youths’ internship was marked by a little-known but extraordinary event that changed the factory’s identity and Japan’s labor history.
Workers reacted against the termination of the internship of their disabled colleagues, requesting permanent employment and emphasizing the benefits of including them in their team. Nearly sixty years on, the factory has a
workforce almost 75% formed of people with disabilities. Karikis was inspired by the workers’ historical action, which addressed labor rights for workers with disabilities.
For MAM Screen 010, Karikis edited an original ten-channel video installation into a single channel version. The soundscape ranges from factory chimes which conduct the day’s activities, to industrial beats
accompanying the workers’ murmurs, their involuntary vocalizations and repeated soliloquies. These are interrupted by the cheerful dissonances of the workers’ karaoke. The Chalk Factory foregrounds
disability’s own cultural history. The project observes productivity, the body and social function and raises ethical questions about disability and labor.
MAM Screen 010: Mikhail Karikis
Period: 2019.2.9 [Sat] - 2019.5.26 [Sun]
Organizer: Mori Art Museum
Curated by: Kataoka Mami (then Chief Curator, Mori Art Museum (current Director))
