A boy and a girl in a small room, having a fight, making love and suddenly . . . a black humor on a young couple.—Takahiko Iimura, Paper Film: Love and Flowers, 1970.
"Of the new foreign work I saw, (at the Avantgarde Film Festival in London) that of Taka Iimura interested me most – His film + & -, using scratched signs, displayed how perception can be molded by the concept. By postulating negative duration – a length of black, say six seconds, minus a...
‘New York Hot Springs’ (1984) is scenes of steam coming out of many streets of New York, a typical scene in winter, in repeated cycles of short shots. Though the scenes are shot at the same locations, the timings are differed slightly in every cycle.
This video deals with the perception of seeing including the words as I see you, I am seen, and I am not seen. These words are superimposed over the pictures of a face, eyes, and a face in the frame. The video changes in quite rapid motion framewise with the occasional stills inserted.
In the context of the Cold War, use of the word “shelter” was common. However, it surprised Iimura when he started to live in New York in the 1960s. His work Shelter 9999 embodied the idea of a shelter of the future. Iimura captured scratched letters and abstract lines on black film. Letters...
While I was staying in New York in the 1960s during the rise of the hippie movement, I filmed performances of body painting by the artist, Kusama Yayoi, together with the performers. As I wasn't satisfied with merely documenting her performance, made super-impositions of flowers over the...
Camera, Monitor, Frame is the first installment of Takahiko Iimura's "Video Semiotics Triptych" (the other two works are Observer/Observed, made in 1975, and Observer/Observed/Observer, made in 1976). The work analyzes the fundamental components of video: the camera, the monitor, and the frame,...
"In 1 to 60 Seconds Iimura does an extraordinary thing: he abstracts time from any concrete associations, seems to put it on the screen and there you sit looking at (or for) it, experiencing it. The film is all black leader except for the numbers 1 to 60 that appear individually in sequence to...
A compilation tape of performances including John Cage Performs James Joyce, Arakawa, and Iimura's first AIUEONN and As I See You You See Me shot mostly 1980s. All deals with the relationships of words and performance in image-making.
From the collector of Marquis de Sade in the early 1960s, still a 'dark age ' of erotic picture, even his novels were forbidden to publish in Tokyo, I burrowed the copies of the engraving taken from the 18th century edition of "The story of Juliette" and of "The story of Justine." and rearranged...
A precedent to Iimura's video work where he becomes his own subject, I Saw the Shadow sees Iimura follow his own shadow in and out of vision as he roams around streets, steps and fields. As the film progresses, it becomes increasingly unclear whether it is his shadow or camera that is guiding his...
The 1981 performance Circle & Square by Takahiko Iimura, New York-based Japanese film and video pioneer, evolved from the artist's interest in exposing the apparatus of projection and the materiality of image and light, which began in the mid-60s. The work commences with the projection of a long...
Consisting of four parts: Between the Frames; Seeing Nothing; The Privilege to See; I Am A Viewer / You Are A Viewer. The film demonstrates and discusses the structure of film viewing as an institution: playing/talking myself in the double role of the viewer and the maker at the same time sitting...
Time Tunnel: Takahiko Iimura at Kino Arsenal, 18. April 1973
02023HD
In 1973 the Kino Arsenal – then in its Welserstraße location in Berlin-Schöneberg – showed a programme of videos by the Japanese artist Takahiko Iimura. At the time, it was not yet possible to project the video images on the screen at the Arsenal, so employees brought in their own televisions...
A kind of first person cinema where the filmmaker is the cameraman as well as the actor. Acting like a total stranger in the city who does not speak or hear the language, he walks with a camera to such sight-seeing spots as Times Square,and the top of the Empire State building, etc., only listening...
