Ko Nakajima: Video Earth Tokyo and Japanese Cable Access
When |
8 Mar 2019 6:30PM - 9:00PM |
Where | Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) 535 West 22nd St, 5th Floor New York, NY 10011 United States |
EAI is pleased to partner with Collaborative Cataloging Japan (CCJ) to host a rare in-person appearance by the Japanese artist Ko Nakajima, a pioneer of experimental media and early cable access. Nakajima will present a selection of works, including titles recently preserved and made newly available by CCJ and XFR Collective, and speak to his involvement in the video collective Video Earth Tokyo and their engagement with cable access television in Tokyo at a dynamic moment in the 1970s.
Ko Nakajima is an important figure bridging experimental film, video art, and activism in Japan in the 1960s and 70s, at a vital moment of cross-pollination and expansion across the arts. In an essay commissioned for EAI’s DVD edition Vital Signals: Early Japanese Video Art, scholar Hirofumi Sakamoto details this moment, observing key overlaps with activities in Canada and the United States, especially around Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.). Sakamoto also describes a unique continuum between early video and Japan’s own rich experimental film scene, and the natural extension from one technology-based art form to another—fomented in the homeland of the major electronics corporations like SONY and JVC that were responsible for the video equipment that catalyzed experimentation on video and television around the world. Nakajima’s work with Video Earth Tokyo reflected the community-oriented video collective scene in 1970s Japan, which focused on recording social activities and interventions for broadcast on television, such as Video Earth Tokyo’s sprawling picnic on a subway platform. At EAI, Nakajima will present excerpts from select Video Earth Tokyo tapes, including insightful interviews at CATV stations in Japan that have just recently been preserved by CCJ, to promote further research into an aspect of Japanese video history that remains under-recognized. Program of works to be screened: Seizoki (1964), Ko Nakajima, 4 min, 16mm film on video, color, sound Nakajima’s photography is also currently featured at the Japan Society’s exhibition, Radicalism in the Wilderness: Japanese Artists in the Global 1960s, from March 8th to June 9th. In 1969, Nakajima gained rare access to the artist Yutaka Matsuzawa’s Psi Zashiki Room, to which few people were invited. On March 10th at 2pm, Nakajima will discuss his experience with Matsuzawa atImage-in-Focus: Ko Nakajima at Japan Society Gallery. Image courtesy of the organizer. For more information please click here.
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