Yōji Kuri Part 3: Art, Life and Opinions
Yōji Kuri, Art, Life and Opinions: Sawako Gōda, 1973, 25 min, color, sound, 16mm transferred to digital. Courtesy of Kuri Experimental Manga Studio.
This October, we are delighted to present the third episode in our three-part memorial screening in honour of Yōji Kuri, one of the founders of Japanese experimental animation, who passed away in November last year. Curated by Fusako Matsu and in collaboration with the Kuri Experimental Manga Studio, the program introduces a varied range of works from Kuri’s expansive career - his famous animations in August, television works in September, and his interviews with contemporary artists in October.
Kuri’s artistic practice spanned various media, disciplines and platforms, and our October screening examines his engagement in the world of contemporary arts and the the question of what it meant to live the life of an artist. In 1973, Kuri launched the documentary project Art, Life and Opinions (芸術と生活と意見) in which he interviewed several prominent artists of the time, including Sawako Gōda, Shūsaku Arakawa, Tadanori Yokoo, and Ushio Shinohara, about their work and their thoughts on life and art. The interviews are accompanied by 16mm footage of the artists working at their work-spaces, of their finished works and exhibitions, and of other aspects of their private lives, giving a uniquely intimate and down-to-earth view of some legendary figures of the avant-garde.
After graduating from the commercial design department at Musashino University, Sawako Gōda began her career designing sets for avant-garde theater troupes Jōkyō Gekijō and Tenjō Sajiki, before exhibiting her first independent artworks at the age of 24. In her episode of Art, Life and Opinions, Gōda talks Kuri through the development of her best-known works and the origins of their distinctly Gothic sensibility, including her assemblages of junk and debris picked up in Tokyo and New York, her painted copies of antique foreign photographs, the quickly-produced painted eggs which became her signature, and the sculptures she made from a horse skeleton which she helped to flay herself. Gōda’s commentary on her artistic practice is interwoven with reflections on the practical demands of her life: from the challenges of living abroad and of raising her child as a single mother, to how financial circumstances helped to shape the appearance and form of her objects.
Shūsaku Arakawa’s interview meanders through a variety of subjects in a less linear fashion, accompanied by shots of his conceptual drawings which incorporate words and diagrams. Arakawa, who spent much of his life in New York, touches on the particularities of class in Japan, its failure to invest in arts and culture as a nation, the prejudices and preconceptions that Japanese artists encounter abroad, and the self-image of Japanese artists in general. The amplification of ambiguous ambient sounds during Arakawa’s monologue invites curiosity as to what kind of place the artist is speaking from.
THE PROGRAM WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR VIEWING ON CCJ’S VIEWING PLATFORM.
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Program
Yōji Kuri, Art, Life and Opinions: Shūsaku Arakawa, 1973, 20 min, b/w, sound, 16mm transferred to digital
An interview with conceptual artist Shūsaku Arakawa.
Yōji Kuri, Art, Life and Opinions: Sawako Gōda, 1973, 25 min, color, sound, 16mm transferred to digital
An interview with multimedia artist Sawako Gōda.
