Julian Ross

In 1971, the Bikyōtō Revolution Committee declared their members would not exhibit their artworks in galleries or museum for a year. The proposition channeled Japan’s critical reflection on the concept of “space” that was initiated at the ‘From Space to Environment’ exhibition held in 1966, Tokyo, and remained in vogue with the emergence of kankyō geijutsu (environment arts) and intermedia arts. Projection, in both slide- and moving-image formats, became central to the discussion as artists relied on multiplication of projectors to expand the sense of space in the pavilions for the Osaka Expo 1970. Whilst the Expo artists strived to immerse their audiences into sensory submersion, the art students of Bikyōtō Revolution Committee, in explicit rejection of the Expo, called for a critical reevaluation of the experience of “space.”

This paper will explore the three incarnations of the River film by Yamanaka Nobuo, a member of the committee, who presented the same footage of a river in different spatial contexts between 1971-1972: To Project a Film of Filmed River on a River was a projection onto a river; Fixed River was an installation with a projection onto 15 layers of transparent screens; and Diffusion of River projected through a gallery window and onto the streets. In the repudiation of the cinema space and screen, Yamanaka’s installations highlighted the projection apparatus, its social framework of spectatorship (dispositif) and the spatial circumstances where in which his work was presented, which will be discussed via Japan’s discourse on “space.” (kūkan)

After performing his first off-screen projection in 1963, Japanese filmmaker Takahiko Iimura wrote '...in the future we may even see projections onto spherical screens.' (1963: 10) Not only was his vision realised in his own performance Floating (1970), but projections onto balloons also became a familiar sight in Japanese expanded cinema of the late 1960s. In the run-up to the Ōsaka Expo of 1970, industries began to collaborate with artists and architects to establish new forms of pneumatic sculptures and inflatable art, a proposition that crossed over with the search for surfaces of projection beyond the screen by filmmakers. Breaking out of the cinema space, balloon projections took place in gymnasiums, underground discotheques, fashion shows and public parks as the flexibility of inflatables as a sculptural form was exercised by artists exploring alternative spaces and presentational contexts. Merging performance art, sculpture and cinema, projections onto balloons revealed the porosity between film and other media in their exploration of interface between air and light.

This paper will explore in what ways the collision of air art and expanded cinema materialised Japan's understanding of intermedia arts. Entering Japanese art criticism as early as 1966, the word "intermedia" established a platform upon which the inter-relation of things (zentaisei) was theorised, art and technology had met, and the space (kūkan) and experience of art was reevaluated. Through the introduction of works by two Japanese pneumatic artists, Ōnishi Seiji and Isobe Yukihisa, and their collaborations with Japanese and American filmmakers, the paper will investigate how intermedia was understood in Japan to establish interconnections between media whilst rendering them immiscible.

[in Japanese]
万国博覧会前後の日本での映像活動はスクリーンという舞台の中で描かれる物語より、映像の「ディスプレイ」そのものが主役となる傾向が指摘出来る。テレビの一般的な普及も含めて、映画館の外での映像体験が求められるようになっていた。こうした状況の中で1960年代後半に注目を浴びたのは「エキスパンデッド・シネマ」と名付けられた映像を使ったパフォーマンスが一方に、そしてもう一方に映像による環境の創造としての「ディスプレイ」が挙げられる。モントリオール万博やEATなどの海外の事例と同様、その多くは産業との繋がりが強かったため批判の対象ともなったが、今では代表的な扱いをされている。
本発表では以上のような活動とは思想的に共通する面もありつつ、産業とは独立して行われていた映像の「ディスプレイ」の一例として挙げられる「サイケデリック・ ショー」について検討する。幻覚芸術とも名付けられた「サイケデリック」とは映像作家の金坂健二がアメリカから持ち帰ってひろめた現象であり、アンダーグラウンドのディスコで激しい音楽とともに映写機を使ったパフォーマンスを示す。ディスコの個性的な空間、そしてエンターテインメントの場であるからこその観客の独特な受容性も含めて、「サイケデリック・ショー」に関わった人物が映像ディスプレイにどのような可能性を求めたかを追求する。

Whilst painters escaped the gallery space and performance artists rejected the theatre and the stage, Japanese filmmakers of the 1960s-70s sought out ways to present their films outside the established frameworks of the screen and the prescribed viewing positions that come with it. This paper will introduce Shūzō Azuchi Gulliver’s Flying Focus (1969) performed at Rekisen Kōen (park) and Yamanaka Nobuo’s To Project a Film of Filmed River on a River (1971) performed at Tamagawa (river) as two case studies for outdoor film projections that entirely discarded the screen in favour of more volatile surfaces.

The projection performances will be analysed as expanded cinema ‘events’, where an intervention into public spaces will be suggested to channel Alain Badiou’s fidelity to chance that ‘exposes the subject to the chance of a pure Outside.’ Furthermore, the two pieces will be examined in the context of developments in Japanese expanded cinema and recent discussion on intermedia, with a specific focus on the performances’ relationship to space as filmmakers increasingly sought exhibition spaces outside of cinemas. Positioning film within the broader spectrum of the evolution of postwar avant-garde arts, this paper will propose the events, however, resulted in refocusing the apparatus of the cinematic medium by the very act of taking what is usually considered an essential component, in this case the screen, out of its presentational equation.

Independence is often claimed yet what it exactly means is rarely explored. For some a call for artistic freedom, a rejection of studio capitulation, and for others an only option, this talk will discuss the meaning of independence in the context of Japan’s film history and investigate the different incarnations of jishu eiga as an approach and an attitude, with results that vary from avant-garde expressions to escapist entertainment. From Kaneto Shindo’s pioneering Kindai Eiga Kyokai, the emergence of support systems like the Art Theatre Guild and the proliferation of independent cinema in more recent years, the talk will examine alternative networks of distribution and modes of exhibition as much as methods of production whilst investigating what exactly is gained and lost with the decision to turn independent.

Intermediality as a theoretical framework has experienced a resurgence of interest in art historical research in the past few years. Cinema, despite its commonly recognized trait for being a meeting point between the arts, has only very recently seen publications devoted entirely to its relationship with intermedia (Pethő: 2011). Furthermore, we are also in danger of positioning intermedia as a Euro-American privilege in spite of the wide spectrum of global artistic activity that can be canonized as intermedial practice. It seems pertinent now to position case studies from East Asian cinemas, both in their approach and theorizations, within the discourse of intermedial studies.

Not only has Japan contributed an array of films relevant to the discussion on intermedia, Japan had also participated in the theorization of intermedia early on in its conception. By 1967, only a year after Dick Higgins coined the term, intermedia was discussed in Japanese art journals. Moreover, the understanding of intermedia in Japan (intāmedia) was deeply embedded in cinema and possibilities regarding technology. This paper will analyze the early developments of intermedia in Japan as a theoretical concept and artistic approach with reference to related theories of sōgō geijutsu in existence prior to the arrival of intermedia.

Intermediality as a theoretical framework has experienced a resurgence of interest in art historical research in the past few years. Cinema, despite its commonly recognized trait for being a meeting point between the arts, has only very recently seen publications devoted to its relationship with intermedia (Pethő: 2011). Furthermore, we are also in danger of positioning intermedia as a Euro-American privilege in spite of the wide spectrum of global artistic activity that can be canonized as intermedial practice. It seems pertinent now to position case studies from Asian cinemas, both in their approach and theorizations, within the discourse of intermedial studies.

Not only has Japan contributed an array of films relevant to the discussion on intermedia, Japan had also participated in the theorization of intermedia early on in its conception. By 1967, just two years after Dick Higgins coined the term, intermedia was discussed in Japanese art journals and events were organized with the word in its titles. Uniquely, the Japanese understood intermedia (intāmedia) as uniquely embedded in cinema, in particular, expanded forms of projection. Whilst channeling both recent and more local debates, this presentation will introduce two expanded cinema pieces from Japan, namely Takahiko Iimura’s Screen Play (1963) and Nobuo Yamanaka’s To Project a Film of Filmed River on a River (1971). In these performative projections, the screen was rejected by these artists in favour of more volatile surfaces, such as a human back or a river.

Although film had dominated image-culture as the principal time-based medium, the emergence of video and television began to threaten its position in the 1950s. Despite time being the one of the main factors that connect the three image-based platforms, the treatment of or relationship with time was what differentiated the three mediums. Film and video differ in their approaches to capturing and/or reproducing time and their distinctions were placed into sharpest focus when artists began to incorporate these time-based media into their performance practices that became dubbed as expanded cinema (kakuchō eiga). Although the lucidity and malleability of the media were highlighted through collision in expanded cinema, simultaneously the existence of differences between media was accentuated as one performance utilizing video and another using film produced divergent results.

This paper proposes to discuss the different conceptions of time in Japan’s expanded-cinema performances of the 1960-70s during a period when new developments in image-based technologies resuscitated questions surrounding time in art; simultaneity in the production and dissemination of an image in video and TV advanced conceptions of durational expression and posed renewed questions on the cinematic image. Japanese moving-image artists, including Takahiko Iimura, Rikurō Miyai and Toshio Matsumoto, had strong interactions with the performance-art and underground (angura) theatre scene in the 1960-70s and had begun to incorporate film and projection in theatrical performances, another time-based platform. This paper will outline the emergence of expanded cinema during the period in Japan with specific attention towards the impact of new technologies and the questions of time it brought about, whilst framing it within more recent theoretical discussions on intermedia.