Screening program “parallel narratives from the other side”
Curated by Hiroyuki Hattori
How is it seen when you looking at the world from different points? Focused on the import of body building from the US to Japan, Yuichiro Tamura looks at the trandition and modernity of our urban life. Miyagi Futoshi has perspective to the complex relationships of Okinawa, Japan and the US through his private experience. And Chulayarnnon Siriphol looks at the relation between political dynamics and the lives through Thai religion and custom.
Why not imagine how to view the relationships between the United States, Japan, and the Asian region connected via the Pacific from the other side of the world?
Tamura delves into the memory and history of localities and transforms these into new narratives that transcend time and space, presenting works that investigate the contemporary significance of past events. This exhibition features his new video installation focusing on the history of modern bodybuilding. Originating in Prussia in the 19th century, modern bodybuilding soon spread from Europe to America and thence to Japan via Yokohama under post-World War II Allied occupation, creating a new image of the body for the modern era. This work delivers a new, unknown story of postwar Yokohama via a new dramatic piece narrated by a fictional storyteller reminiscent of Yukio Mishima.
Tamura was born in Toyama in 1977, now based in Tokyo. He holds a Master of Film and Media from Tokyo University of the Arts. He has consistently pursued the possibilities of the moving image, taking photography as a point of departure while straddling various other media and frameworks, including film, installation, and performance. In recent years, he focuses on approach to sites and places, and attempts to produce his works based on elaborate research of reading their history and context. As same as until now, by connecting context of sites and places with his own experience in his unique way, he creates new landscapes with various final forms.
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02 Futoshi Miyagi “A Romantic Composition,” 21:28min., 2015
*Originally a 2-channel video installation with 3-channel audio outputs.
Futoshi Miyagi was born 1981 in Okinawa, and lives and works in Tokyo. After graduating from high school, Futoshi Miyagi moved to New York after living in Osaka and started his career as an artist whilst working in a bookstore specializing in art-related books. Miyagi’s works are mostly derived from his personal experiences and memories, and underlying themes such as nationality, ethnicity, and identity. He develops these ideas and experiences in the form of photographs, videos, objects, texts, and installations.
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03 Chulayarnnon Siriphol “Planking,” 3min., 2012
“Planking” is a documentation video of public intervention while people stop walking for national anthem at 8 o’clock in the morning and 6 o’clock in the evening.
04 Chulayarnnon Siriphol “Myth of Modernity,” 16min., 2014
“Myth of Modernity” focuses on Thai Buddhism, specifically the simplification over time of ornate architectural structures of worship. These structures that pervade Buddhist culture, such as pagodas, palaces and spirit houses, were symbolically built to represent the ‘three worlds’ of Buddhist cosmology. The influence of modern architecture and the West have resulted in the popular reduction of these forms into the geometric pyramid.
Siriphol draws a parallel between this simplification of structures of worship and the state of current Thai politics. By viewing the political realm as being similar to the religious realm of worship, he implies an idealistic reverie in politics, politicians and the mass experiences that occur during party rallies and demonstrations. (text by Lauren Reid)
Chulayarnnon Siriphol was born in Bangkok in 1986 where he currently lives and works. He is filmmaker and visual artist. He works in short film, experimental film, documentary and video installation which are in-between personal memory and social memory, documentary and fiction, reality and supernatural. He won many short film awards. His works have been screened in many film festivals and exhibitions in Asia and Europe, including in The 34th International Film Festival Rotterdam, Netherlands (2005), Sharjah Biennial 11, United Arab Emirates (2013), the 4th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow, Russia (2014), The 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Fukuoka, Japan (2014).
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