El Proyecto Salones de Artistas desarrolla los Salones Regionales y el Salón Nacional de Artistas. Los Salones se constituyen en una tradición viva y actual por su capacidad de redefinirse continuamente al responder a las transformaciones de las prácticas artísticas y a los desarrollos de la democracia y la descentralización en la política cultural.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Foreign relations By Julian Williams

Yuko Miyamoto and Shinya Kote in ‘The Dark Harbour’

Yuko Miyamoto and Shinya Kote in ‘The Dark Harbour’ (2009)

There are three main strands of Japanese film shown in the west: animation, sex and horror. None of these owes much to traditional Japanese film, but what are niche titles in their own country are often taken as examples of national cinema when they move abroad.

“I think what film distributors select for release in Britain is mostly based on how we like to view Japan, rather than any reality about the country itself,” says Jasper Sharp, author ofThe Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema, and contributor to Whose Film Is It Anyway?, the Japan Foundation’s touring programme of recent Japanese film.



Pokémon (1998) and Dragon Ball Z (1989) at one end of the spectrum, andAudition (1999), Ichi the Killer (2001) and The Ring (1998) at the other, have come to define Japanese cinema for western viewers. These are films that comfortably reinforce the perception of two opposing extremes of Japanese culture. At one pole there is what Donald Richie, a US-born critic of Japanese film, calls the “frivolous Japan”; at the other, the Japan of dark, often fetishistic or sadistic horror and ­pornography (in its own way just as frivolous). The only middle-ground films we encounter come from Studio Ghibli, such as Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2001), and even those, though often excellent, are of limited variety in style or content.

Whose Film Is It Anyway?, which runs at the ICA before touring the UK, consists of nine works from the past decade, each demonstrating a departure from what we have come to expect from Japanese film. The most famous filmmaker in this season, Masayuki Suo, is represented by I Just Didn’t Do It (2006), a sombre, sincere examination of the Japanese legal system in which a young man is arrested and charged with groping a schoolgirl on the public underground. It offers an engrossing look at injustice and human relationships under pressure.

A common characteristic of the films in the season is the nuanced interactions between characters. In Yoji Yamada’s About Her Brother (2010) a mother and daughter are forced to break with the mother’s juvenile middle-aged brother, later finding him dying of cancer in a hospice. It’s a sophisticated, suitably unsentimental film – were it made in Hollywood it would almost certainly ruin the effect of its pathos with sugar. All Around Us (Ryosuke Hashiguchi, 2008) follows a couple struggling to move on from the death of a child. Set over the course of 10 years, it’s simultaneously sweeping in narrative scope and minutely detailed in its depiction of human relationships amid tragedy. Bad Company (2001), the oldest film and winner of the jury and international critics’ prizes at Rotterdam Film Festival, mixes the pragmatism and naivety of childhood and the pains of growing up.

The selection also includes two excellent comedies (a particularly under-represented type of Japanese film in the west). The Dark Harbour (Takatsugu Naito, 2009), in which a lonely fisherman records a video introduction for a dating service, features a very funny scene in a clothes store. Searching for an outfit that will impress city women, the fisherman is offered Johnny Depp’s tasseled cowboy jacket as well as the flowery shirt that Neil Armstrong left on the moon and that Nasa subsequently recovered. Arriving at the dating party, another fisherman is wearing the same shirt. But it is a deeper film than this suggests; full of pathos and understated emotion. A Stranger of Mine (Kenji Uchida, 2005), which won the screenwriter’s prize at Cannes that year, is an expertly structured crime comedy of errors, consisting of well-rounded characters who cross paths during one night in Tokyo. In comedy, as in drama, the force of these films comes from the varying aspects of human experience they depict.

These films show the continuance of an older, more character-driven, humanist tradition of Japanese film.

Yasujiro Ozu, one of the three Japanese directors most revered in the west (Akira Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi being the others), was above all interested in people. When beginning a film, he and co-screenwriter Kogo Nada worked backwards: they would sit down and write dialogue first, before even the characters were conceived or the story decided.

Nenji Kobayashi, Yu Aoi and Sayuri Yoshinaga in ‘About Her Brother’

Nenji Kobayashi, Yu Aoi and Sayuri Yoshinaga in ‘About Her Brother’ (2010)

In an interview with Sharp, Richie pointed out the effect of this process: “There’s a rightness, there’s a logic, there’s an inevitability, there’s a reality about the characters.” Tokyo Story(1953), Ozu’s most famous film, shows an elderly couple who make their first trip to the capital to visit their family, only to find them not much interested in a reunion.

For Kenji Mizoguchi too, working at the same time as Ozu, humanity is a primary theme; Ugetsu Monogatari, which came out in the same year as Tokyo Story, and Sansho the Bailiff, which followed in 1954, are stories of betrayal, loyalty, family and friendship. Only Kurosawa, the most famous in the west and the most western of the three, could be accused of having other concerns. Kurosawa is a master of dramatic storytelling; Mizoguchi and Ozu are masters of dramatising human experience.

Yet western viewers watching Japanese cinema often can’t get past the kimonos, the slippers and the bowing, to the film itself. This has a lot to do with the way westerners see eastern artworks, “rather passively assuming their mysteriousness”, writes Adam Mars-Jones in Noriko Smiling (2011), the critic and novelist’s brilliant essay on Ozu’s Late Spring (1948).

Many critics suffer from a more intellectualised version of this wood-for-the-trees syndrome. One of the aims of Noriko Smiling is to recover Late Springfrom critics such as Paul Schrader (screenwriter of Taxi Driver and director of a biopic of Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima) who, prioritising style over content, insisted on its “transcendental” qualities. Referring to a famous shot of a vase intercut with shots of the heroine crying, Schrader says the tears themselves have little meaning – he subtracts all emotion, or as Mars-Jones puts it, robs the tears of “all possible moisture content”. It seems, then, that a film being Japanese is the cue for western viewers to not look hard enough, and for some western critics to look too hard.

The importance of all the films in the Japan Foundation’s season lies not in their “Japanese-ness” but in their worldliness, their humanism. Of course, we can’t, and shouldn’t, separate a film from its country of origin. But film is a human medium and its roots (pathos, empathy, joy, anger, fear) are universal elements. “That’s what I think they mean when they say that films cross borders,” director Masayuki Suo suggests. “What do we call a film? If we call it the art of light and shadow reflected on a screen, I think that’s universal. Continuing to stir up the existence of human beings themselves – that’s what film is.”

‘Whose Film Is It Anyway?’ runs at ICA, London, until February 16 and tours the UK until March 28 www.jpf.org.uk

More FIX on the NET @ FIX University Cultural Campus

Vitrina @ FIX University from Lugar a Dudas Hall



Alexandra DEMENTIEVA - 'UNIVERSAL
RECORDING'

15 January - 30 January.2012,
EI Huis


Robert DE KEERSMAECKER -
'VERDER'

18 November 2011 - 8
January.2012, EI Huis


Nicole BAUWENS - 'HET KWARTIER'
18 september - 23 oktober
2011, EI Huis


Marie ROUX - 'PHOTOGRAPHY'
July 2011, EI
Huis


Bernard VILLERS - 'IN UIT'
18 Maart - 1 Mei 2011, EI
Huis


Marc DE BLIECK- 'WALL'
07 Oktober – 14 November
2010, EI Huis


Anne DE CONNICK- 'ECHOES'
12 Augustus - 26 September
2010, EI Huis


Robin KOLLEMAN- 'FOLLOW YOU, FOLLOW
ME'

4 July - 4 August 2010, EI
Huis


Kristof VAN GESTEL- 'CILINDERS'
1 - 28 June 2010, EI Huis

Hans DEMEULENAERE- 'MOVING THE
FURNITURE
'

15 maart - 18 april
2010
, EI Huis

Hedya KLEIN- 'THE INVISIBLE CITY REVISITED'
23 Jan - 28 Feb 2010, EI Huis

Beatrijs ALBERS & Reggy TIMMERMANS-
''kaktəs
'
3 December - 9 January 2009,
EI Huis


Katja BJORN JAKOBSON & Carlos ANDRADE - 'MILK AND
HONEY
'

31 October - 27 November
2009, EI Huis


Yves VANPEVENAEGE - 'PIPI'S LAST
DANCE
'

15 August - 31 October 2009,
EI Huis


Martin DEGE - 'FOUR SEASONS,
1995/96
'

15 May - 27 June 2009, EI
Huis


Maria DEGRÈVE - 'EDO 2004'
10 March - 21 April 2009, EI
Huis


Astrid S. KLEIN - 'COMMENT ON SAPE À
KINSHASA
'

3 January - 2 March 2009, EI
Huis


Lucia PENNINCKX - 'A WALK AROUND THE
HOUSE
'

2007 December, EI
Huis


INTER#10 - Erki DE VRIES / Tim
VETS
- 'Deflektor'
24 september - 22 oktober
2006, EI Huis


Katherine LIBEROVSKAYA - 'STORIES FOR THE EYES (while waiting
for the tram)'
25 juni - 30 juli 2006, EI
Huis


INTER#9 - Erki DE VRIES / Tim
VETS

11 mei - 20 juni 2006, EI
Huis


Adam GECZY - 'ABUSE OF POWER'
23 maart - 30 april 2006, EI
Huis


INTER#8 - Marieke DE MUNCK + Ole STRAGIER
1 oktober - 7 november 2005,
EI Huis


Patrick BEAULIEU -
'TRANSFRIABLE'

11 juni - 24 juli 2005, EI Huis

INTER#7 - Marieke DE MUNCK
7 - 29 mei 2005, EI
Huis


Takahiko IIMURA
20 maart, Artcinema OFF-OFF (lezing / video screening)

Takahiko IIMURA - ' THIS IS
A CAMERA WHICH SHOOTS THIS'

19 maart - 17 april 2005, EI Huis

INTER#6 - Marieke DE MUNCK - 'Kinderherinneringen met een verlangen
naar de dood '

5 - 13 maart 2005, EI
Huis


Carlos ANDRADE and Tod
AYOUNG
- ' Beheaded/Decapitado'
5 januari - 27 februari 2005, EI Huis

INTER#5 - Sophie NYS + Danai ANESIADOU - ' No Man Show '
20 - 31 december 2004, EI
Huis


Bruce ALLAN - '
Muidebrug'

6 november - 12 december 2004, EI Huis

INTER#4 - Sophie NYS - ' No Man Show '
11 - 26 september 2004, EI
Huis


Doris KUWERT - ' To and
Fro'

17 juli - 5 september 2004, EI Huis

'Sound Watch' - Paul PANHUYSEN, Robin KOLLERMAN, Aletta DE JONG, Rob MOONEN, Thomas
ANKERSMIT, Jens BRAND, Harald BUSCH, Piotr ZAMOJSKI, Henrike DAUM,
REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT, Rik DE BOE, Lucia PENNINCKX, Juul SADÉE, Julia CLEVER,
Els VAN DEN VEYVER, Maria BLONDEEL, Bea ALBERS, Reggy TIMMERMANS, Sophie NYS,
Alexandra DEMENTIEVA, Lieve D'HONDT, Ludo ENGELS, Manuel ROCHA ITURBIDE

19 - 26 juli 2004, Concept
Space
21 juni - 3 juli, Gallery Surge


INTER#3 - Sophie NYS - ' No Man Show '
3 - 11 juli 2004, EI
Huis


Juul SADÉE - ' 'Sturm und Drang', @state of mixed perception'
15 mei - 27 juni 2004, EI Huis

INTER#2 - Sophie NYS - ' No Man Show '
24 april - 2 mei 2004, EI
Huis


Jurgita
REMEIKYTE
- ' A Time for This and a Time for That - (Part
II)'

24 januari - 15 februari, 2004, EI Huis

INTER#1 - Sophie NYS - ' No Man Show '
24 januari - 15 februari, 2004, EI Huis

Almut RINK and Christof SCHLEGEL - ' Missing Elsewhere
'

25 oktober - 28 november 2003, EI Huis

Yoshito IKEDA - ' Melting Point '
23 augustus - 5 oktober 2003, EI Huis

'Puddles, ARTIST - INITIATIVE LINKS IN 2003',
Internationaal uitwisselingsproject tussen Europa en Japan -
>>

Sara
HORNBACHER
- ' Frames of Reference '
15 juni - 10 augustus 2003, EI Huis

Ivan SMITH - 'Window Shopping / perceive - deceive'
3 mei -7 juni 2003, EI Huis

t s BEALL - 'Artifactual'
16 februari - 23 maart 2003, EI Huis

'Sight-mapping, Site-seeing' - Otto MITTMANNSGRUBER, Takashi
YAMAGUCHI, Reggy TIMMERMANS, Jens BRAND, Yoshito IKEDA, Robin KOLLEMAN, Takehiro
LIKAWA & Akira NISHIHALA, Lucia PENNINCKX, Yves METTLER, Rob MOONEN,
Alexandra DEMENTIEVA & Arnaud JACOBS, Yasutaka KOBAYASHI, Peter MORRENS,
Tetsu TAKAGI, Harald BUSCH, GANSOMAEDA, Lieve D'HONDT, Katja BUTT, Akira MORI,
Christof SCHLEGEL, Eva KOLLISCHAN, Maria BLONDEEL, Toshihiro NAKANOSAI, Rik DE
BOE, Beatrijs ALBERS, Masayuki KAWAI, Yoshi MATSUMOTO, Kentaro TAKI, Amanda
CARDELL, Kunio SEKIGUCHI, An SEEBACH

19 - 23 november 2002, Fricties Kunstencentrum
Vooruit, Gent
17 - 25 oktober 2003, argosfestival Argos,
Brussel

Paul DEVENS - 'Untitled'
19 oktober - 24 november 2002, EI Huis

Anna BEST - 'd.i.y. t.v.'
15 juni - 18 augustus 2002, EI Huis

'Puddles, ARTIST - INITIATIVE LINKS IN 2002',
Internationaal uitwisselingsproject tussen Europa en Japan -
>>

An
SEEBACH
- 'Untitled (homesickness)'
23 maart - 9 juni 2002, EI Huis

Nina KOVACHEVA
and Valentin STEFANOFF
- 'Wet Contact'
12 januari - 3 maart 2002, EI Huis

Minoru SATO - 'linear manifold 2001: phase difference between two windows'
20 oktober - 11 november 2001, EI Huis

Jio SHIMIZU - 'white light / with three different frequencies'
22 september - 14 oktober 2001, EI Huis

'IM (7-9/9) on very special, brief occasions' - AUVID, Pierre BASTIEN, Maria
BLONDEEL, Harald BUSCH, Annalisa CATTANI, Rik DE BOE, Zjuul DEVENS, Lieve
D'HONDT, Petra DUBACH, Ludo ENGELS, Yukio FUIJMOTO, Mario VAN HORRIK, Hiroko
ICHIHARA, Guus KOENRAADS, Ales KILLIAN, Vaclav ONDORUSEK, Dario PARISINI, Paul
PANHUYSEN, MACIUNAS ENSEMBLE, Peter MORRENS, Phill NIBLOCK, Leon VAN NOORDEN,
Fabrizio RIVOLA, Kyoko SAWANOBORI, Jio SHIMIZU, Dirk WACHTELAER, Stevie WISHART,
Ladislav ZELEZNY

7-9 september 2001, KOOLMIJN WATERSCHEI, Genk

Ursula
SCHERRER
- 'Schritte'
23 juni - 19 augustus 2001, EI Huis

Leónidas MARTÍN
SAURA
- 'IT IS AN INTUITION'
7 april - 10 juni 2001, EI Huis

Sonia
RODRIGUES + Renate HOFFMANN KORTH
- 'DOUBLE-FUGUE of Tuchfuhlung 2'
20 januari - 4 maart 2001, EI Huis

'Puddles, ARTIST - INITIATIVE LINKS IN 2001',
Internationaal uitwisselingsproject tussen Europa en Japan -
>>

Heike KERN - 'hoekje te huur (piece for outsiders)' en 'en trance only (piece for
insiders)'

18 november 2000 - 14 januari 2001, EI Huis en 18 november 2000
- 6 januari 2001, Voorkamer

ARICHI +
SASAOKA
- 'LUMINOUS 2000'
19 augustus - 15 oktober 2000, EI Huis

'Among Others@Cafe9.net' - Guy DE BIEVRE, Phill
NIBLOCK, Guy VAN BELLE, Dirk WACHTELAER, Harald BUSCH, Lieve D'HONDT, Daniella
SWAROWSKY

9 september 2000, Mediaspace and BAR2000, Brussel

Beate Maria
WÖRZ
- 'Inter-Re-ticu-lation'
24 juni - 6 augustus 2000, EI Huis

Mirjam
BERLOTH
- 'SHADES'
15 april - 18 juni 2000, EI Huis

Maria FRIBERG
and John ØIVIND EGGESBØ
- 'Changing Minds'
23 januari - 27 februari 2000, EI Huis

'Puddles, ARTIST - INITIATIVE LINKS IN 2000',
Internationaal uitwisselingsproject tussen Europa en Japan -
ARICHI + SASAOKA, Phill NIBLOCK , Maria BLONDEEL

Steffen MÜCK - 'Monitorworks'
13 november 1999 - 9 januari 2000, EI Huis

LENGOW &
HEyeRMEarS
- 'The Dark Side of the EI Huis'
18 september - 30 oktober 1999, EI Huis

Peter
SCHOUTSEN
- 'REBUT'
21 augustus - 12 september 1999, EI Huis

Ludwika
OGORZELEC
- 'Crystallisation of Space'
9 mei - 8 augustus 1999, EI Huis

Esther FERRER - ' Untitled'
16 januari - 18 april 1999, EI Huis

'Onix Shoe' - Katrien ALLAERT, Micheal BALLOU, Jens BRAND (i.s.m.
Naomi WATANABE, Guy DE BIÈVRE
), Anton COTTELEER, Lieve D'HONDT, Heike
KERN, Peter BOELENS, Els OPSOMER, Peter SCHOUTSEN, An SEEBACH & Stef STAGEL,
Eberhard WEIBLE, Dirk ZOETE

29 november 1998 - 18 januari 1999, different locations in
Lier

Doris KOCH (external link) - 'Avoir lieu / Avoir
l'idée'

29 juni - 28 augustus 1998, EI Huis

Marica PRESIC - 'Periodically'
18 januari - 10 april 1998, EI Huis

Claudia
SCHMACKE
- 'Voor een Publiek'
14 juli 1997- 10 januari 1998, EI Huis



Hilda KOZARI, Petr KVICALA,
APSOLUTNO, Slaven TOLJ
- 'Schrattenberg Periphery'
15 juni - 10 juli
1997, EI Huis en Instalraam-Croxhapox

Christoph BANGERT, Maria
BLONDEEL & Michael VORFELD, Phill NIBLOCK, Josef REITER & Hubert LOBNIG,
Shinichi YANAI, Heinz WEBER
- 'projectISM'
24 mei - 27 september
1997, Kunstenaarsintiatief Voorkamer en De kapel, Lier

Lisi BRUESS, Uli
VONBANK-SCHEDLER, Martin DICKINGER, Heimo WALLNER
- 'Schrattenberg Nucleus'
20 april - 14 juni
1997, EI Huis en Instalraam-Croxhapox

Harald KUBICAK, Maria BLONDEEL,
Jens BRAND, Zjuul DEVENS, Ludo ENGELS, An VAN EXE, Phill NIBLOCK, Chrit VEUGEN,
Michael VORFELD
- 'projectEI'
23 maart - 25 april
1997, Kunstcentrum Sittard, Nederland

Claudia
WISSMANN
-
'Klappflügel'
23 februari - 15 april
1997, EI Huis

Kjell
BJÖRGEENGEN

- 'Untitled'
12 januari - 9
februari 1997, EI Huis

Adri HUISMAN -
'Nachtschades'
3 oktober 1996 - 12
januari 1997, EI Huis

Juana VALDES - 'Untitled'
29 juni - 20 augustus
1996, EI Huis

Beverly PIERSOL & Gertrude
MOSER-WAGNER

- 'Time Sharing'
a VICE VERSA project
12 mei - 1 juni 1996,
EI Huis

Beverly PIERSOL - 'Window
Work'
11 januari - 10 april
1996, EI Huis

Penelope WEHRLI - 'Looking into a Living
Room'
22 oktober 1995 - 15
januari 1996, EI Huis

Penelope WEHRLI - 'Fleet of
Shirts'
21 oktober
1995
performance op de
Leie, aan de Krommewalbrug (bij het Sluizeken)
in samenwerking met de
afdeling Beeldhouwen van de KASK,Gent

Mike METZ - 'Two-fold and Disclosure,
Public Banners'
22 oktober - 15
januari 1996, EI Huis en (de ladder van) Pontormo
in samenwerking met
KASK, Gent

Alexandru PATATICS
& Gerd SMEDES - 'Unter Anderen - Among Others'
11 juni - 11 oktober
1995, EI Huis
in samenwerking met
MeX, Dortmund

Harald KUBICZAK - 'Traag als een slak - Snel
als een slak'
22 april - 16 juni
1995, EI Huis

Uli
VONBANK-SCHEDLER
- 'Curtains'
27 januari - 15 april
1995, EI Huis

Michael VORFELD - 'Licht
Installatie'
12 november 1994 - 15
januari 1995, EI Huis

Michael TIMPSON - 'Penetrate the Polished
Surface'
28 juni - 15 oktober
1994, EI Huis

Sigrid LANGE - 'About
Voyeurism'
31 maart - 30 juni
1994, EI Huis
introductie: Bärbel
Messing, Kunstring Folkwang, Essen

Maria EVELEIN - 'Talking
Movements'
4 november 1993 - 22
maart 1994, EI Huis

More FIX on the NET @ FIX University Cultural Campus

Blog Archive