Why Preservation Matters

The recent Typhoon 19 / Hagibis in Japan left a trail of death and destruction in Japan, including damages to cultural assets at museums due to water damage. Film that were brought to the museum because they were believed to be safe there, may have been ruined.

It is too late after something happens. What could we have done before the typhoon to assure longevity to these materials?

The urgency of preserving Japanese experimental films and videos lies on the fact that the resource to protect them is scarce. In Japan, there are only handful of archival institutions and limited funding for preserving avant-garde moving image materials. Thus, when something like a typhoon destructs an institution that contains valuable and possibly the only surviving copy, the film art work, and with it the history, is vulnerable to disappearance and oblivion.

The history of Japanese experimental moving image should not be forgotten. It is an important part of postwar art history and illuminates the counterculture of the period. The unyielding artistic audacity that emerged within Japan’s rapid economic development and internal political struggle, is not the usual narrative told in our encounter with today’s mainstream Japanese culture. This is why we need to save these materials. This is why preservation matters.

What could we have done, and do now, so that these materials don’t disappear? We could digitize films and videos, produce archival copies, and keep them in copies at multiple locations. Before the next disaster hits, or even the fact of time results in mold or tear, now is the time to do something.

Thus far, CCJ has preserved ten works. Since our establishment in 2016, we have effectively used grant fundings to research, and to ensure archival longevity of these works. We have donated our archival outcomes to the following institutions and artists’ collections: