Screening Program

To Be Being Seen: Exploring Artistic Expression in Moving Image Works from the 1960s to Today in Japan

2025 6.6 Fri ─ 6.8 Sun

OSAKA CITY CENTRAL PUBLIC HALL 1st Floor

Admission Free

Program Curation: Umezu Gen (critic and curator)
Planning Support: Ishida Katsuya (MEM)

Access

Experimental films and video art heralded the arrival of the moving image as an art form. Fundamental explorations of expression have guided the use of film and video in contemporary art, and contemporary artists continue to transcend boundaries, engage in critiques, and return to reflexive inquiry as they search for future forms of the moving image works. In a world where we are surrounded by images, now is the time to confront the fundamental roots of to be reflected through optical mechanisms and electrical or electronic devices. This inquiry is inspired by the statement, “Inevitably, we must address the question of what it means to ‘to be being seen.’”*

*Statement by Hagiwara Sakumi in KIKAIDE MIRUKOTO = Eye Machine / To See by Chance.

Programs

  • A KIKAIDE MIRUKOTO = Eye Machine / To See by Chance –The Pioneers of Japanese Video Arts–

    Director: Taki Kentaro Produced by VIDEOART CENTER Tokyo 2013, 82 min

    Main artists featured in the program: Abe Shuya, Ando Kohei, Iimura Takahiko, Idemitsu Mako, Kawanaka Nobuhiro, Kubota Shigeko, Michael Goldberg, Kobayashi Hakudo, Nakajima Ko, Nakaya Fujiko, Hagiwara Sakumi, Matsumoto Toshio, Yamaguchi Katsuhiro, Yamamoto Keigo, Wada Morihiro

  • B Arrival of the Moving Image: Experimental Film, Video Art, Contemporary Art

  • C Exploration of Expression: Film and Video by Visual Artists

  • D Future Forms of the Moving Image Works: Interdisciplinarity, Criticality, Reflexivity

*Information about artists and works for Programs B, C, and D will be announced on this page.

Symposium

June 7 (Sat) 15:30-18:00

*Details will be announced on this page as they become available.

Profile

Umezu Gen (critic and curator)

Born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1966. Completed the Master’s Degree Program at Tama Art University in 1991. Engages in interdisciplinary activities focused on writing and curating in the fields of visual art, photography, moving image works and music, in an exploration of the possibilities of art from modernism onward. Major curated programs include: “DE/construct: Updating Modernism—Three Programs Concerning Agi Yuzuru” NADiff modern & SuperDeluxe (2014), “Trans / Real: The Potential of Intangible Art” (Gallery αM, 2016-17), “Tomoyuki Higuchi DUB/stance” The White (2024). Curator from 1991 to 2021 at The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, where he organized/co-organized exhibitions: “VISUALIZATION in the end of the 20th century” (1994), “Donald Judd 1960–1991” (1999), “Plastic Age | Art & Design” (2000), “DECODE / Events & Materials: The Work of Art in the Age of Post-Industrial Society” (2019) and others.