Noi Sawaragi: Notes on Art and Current Events 48

Remembering Seiko Mikami, media artist – or was she? II


Molecular Informatics ~ morphogenic substance via eye tracking (Version 2.0) (1996), DEAF96, Rotterdam. Photo V2_Organisatie, all photos courtesy Tama Art University

(Continued) The question that immediately springs to mind here is, why, then, did Mikami’s “conversion” in around 1990 “from junk art to media art” actually occur? From the outset, however, we need to acknowledge that this question is in fact a “false question.” Why? Because even after this “conversion,” Mikami herself refused to use the title “media artist.” Here is what she had to say on this matter:

For 21 years from 1984 to the present, I have produced a variety of installations and works for solo and other exhibitions, but I still use the title “artist,” since not only have I never considered myself wanting to become a media artist, but also I think that such a title is something the external environment assigns to one over time. (1)

In other words, Mikami had no awareness that she was a media artist. On the other hand, however, this did not mean that she went as far as denying being considered a media artist. Because “such a title is something the external environment assigns to one over time.” In fact, in the same interview, while looking back at one of her own past works, “Pulse BEATS” (P3 Alternative Museum Tokyo, 1991), Mikami states, “These days I think it would be classified as pure media art, but at the time it wasn’t called that. And so I think that’s what you would call my work since the 1990s.”

When viewed from a critical perspective, this statement of Mikami’s raises a very intriguing question. What do I mean by this? Well, assuming for the sake of argument that the field and term “media art” had not become established, how would Mikami’s work have been designated? The question arises because as long as Mikami referred to herself not as a media artist, but simply as an artist , properly speaking, such an assessment would be regarded as legitimate.

However, as indicated by the fact that the site this interview appeared on was part of a series of interviews titled “Media Art Meister,” Mikami is now not only a “pioneer” of media art, but ironically even a “meister” of it.

There is a reason why I used the word “ironically” just now. Once one reaches the level in a particular field where one is called a “meister,” it is unavoidable that for reasons of balance one’s recognition in other fields diminishes. In other words, in Mikami’s case, perhaps her “recognition as a media artist” (from outside) actually resulted in her “recognition as an artist” (which one expects resided in her) diminishing.

Here, simply put, by “recognition as an artist” I am referring to one’s standing in “contemporary art” as the vanguard of art history. Based on the aforementioned interview, it is probably clear that what Mikami was ultimately seeking was also this kind of recognition. However, regardless of how much she emphasized, for example, that titles are “something the external environment assigns to one,” one cannot deny that this state of affairs was actually brought about because of Mikami’s activities since the 1990s. So drastic was the transformation that occurred in her work in 1990.


Molecular Informatics ~ morphogenic substance via eye tracking (Version 1.0) (1996), Canon ARTLAB, Tokyo. Photo Mikio Kurokawa

This transformation was evident not only in the appearance of the works themselves, but also in the locations where the works were unveiled. For Mikami, who had hitherto been averse to exhibiting in traditional spaces such as galleries and museums, preferring to discover herself what one might call “non-locations” that resembled cracks in the city and prepare them to suit each individual installation, and for those around her, the expansion of the base of her activities, beginning with her use of the unaffiliated exhibition venue P3 Alternative Museum Tokyo, to include an even larger private venue in the form of the NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC), a public facility in Yamaguchi in the form of the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM), and an arts festival run by a special body of the Ministry of Education in the form of the Japan Media Arts Festival, was a major transformation indeed. This is because one can read from this a course leading from nameless abandoned city ruins via support from large private corporations all the way to national and other public institutions. I think it would probably be fair to describe this as a magnificent “promotion” to a status by no means inferior to that of “media arts meister.”


Seiko Mikami + Sota Ichikawa – gravicells~LED version (2004), Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM). Photo: Kenichi Hagihara, Hiroki Obara


Desire of Codes (2011), NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC), Tokyo. Photo: Keizo Kioku

Again, however, what about her status when viewed as an artist? In order to clearly position a particular artist within the field of art, some kind of connection with art history is usually necessary. However, while the works Mikami produced in the period of activity she refers to as “since the 1990s” were characterized by a dramatic increase in both scale and technical precision, they had as their given condition not so much the wider context of art history, but the size of the budget or the environment at existing facilities, or the state-of-the-art technology provided at these facilities. It goes without saying that from an artistic perspective, such conditions are nothing more than completely incidental elements. Theoretically, a single painting on which no money was spent at all could be positioned at the vanguard of art history. Because no matter how you look at it, the important thing is context.

With Mikami’s works, because they relied so heavily on technology and equipment for their realization, there was often a tendency for this art historical context to become lost. Then again, if Mikami were alive, perhaps she would argue that this was simply because under the existing circumstances, the locations endowed with the conditions required for her to realize her own vision were extremely limited. This certainly makes sense. But even if it were true, it does not mean that the context that determines these activities is itself rendered unnecessary.

Then again, perhaps it was not the artist herself, but rather the art critics and curators who should have taken on this role. Even more so, perhaps, if indeed “such a title is something the external environment assigns to one.” Which is precisely why it was so important to create a coherent context as an artist, a context strong enough to prevent the transformation that occurred in Mikami’s work in 1990 being viewed as a “conversion.” But this is no easy matter. So dramatic was Mikami’s transformation, and so emphatic her own rejection of her past activities. For her to be “returned to being an artist” from being a “media art meister” would require the reshaping, contrary to the wishes of the artist herself, of a separate focus of argument capable of running through her work before and after 1990.

The thing that is the most important key at this time can probably be summed up in the single word “ruins.” It would seem that Mikami started out as an artist of ruins and at some point abandoned this. But is this really the case? Could it be that these ruins were adapted into something different, and that they long continued to exist inside of her?

To float this critical perspective requires an additional step, such as the following. Even before the existence of ruins as plain as deserted houses, are not our living bodies themselves ruins? To put it another way, could it have been for the very purpose of revealing the difficult-to-remove ruinous characteristics of our own bodies that Mikami needed (ex post facto) to use “sensors” to manipulate the senses and sense of gravity the human body is endowed with from the outset? Furthermore, was not Mikami’s entire life as an artist spent earnestly trying to demonstrate that “living bodies = ruins”?(2) (To be continued)

 

 

    1. “Media Arts Meister, Vol. 4 – Interview with Seiko Mikami,” Japan Media Arts Plaza, 2005.

  1. Note that Toshiharu Ito’s book Seitai-haikyo ron (On the living body in ruins) (Libroport, 1986) was published after Mikami launched her artistic practice.

    Noi Sawaragi: Notes on Art and Current Events 1-6

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