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Remembering Seiko Mikami, media artist – or was she? IV (Continued) So what exactly does this term “world membrane,” which Seiko Mikami liked to use around this time, mean? When did she come up with this term and when didView More >

Remembering Seiko Mikami, media artist – or was she? III Installation view of the exhibition “World Membrane: Disposal Containers” (1993), Gallery NW House, Tokyo. Photo: Mikio Kurokawa. All photos courtesy Roentgenwerke; cooperation Shigeki Kimura. (Continued) The conspicuous gap between SeikoView More >

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 hereView More >

Remembering Seiko Mikami, media artist – or was she? “Molecular Informatics ~ morphogenic substance via eye tracking (Version 1.0)” (1969), Canon ARTLAB, Hillside Plaza, Tokyo. Photo Mikio Kurokawa, all photos courtesy Tama Art University The sad news of the deathView More >

Obscenity as a symbol – Rokudenashiko and Genpei Akasegawa Rokudenashiko in her “Manboat.” Photo courtesy Shinjuku Ophthalmologist Gallery Artist Rokudenashiko has been rearrested. (1) As with her first arrest in July 2014, this latest action stems from suspicions on theView More >

A Restatement: The Art of ‘Ground Zero’ (Part 20) “Yasashii Bijutsu” and Takashi Tosu III Takashi Tosu – Oshima leprosy sanatorium. “Takamatsu, boat and crag.” All photos: From Nobuyuki Takahashi’s Twitter (@yasashiibijutsu). This photo posted November 15, 2014. If thereView More >

The shape of the “future” – Grand Guignol Mirai postscript All photos: Scenes from the August 2014 performance of Grand Guignol Mirai. Photos ©Takashi Homma, courtesy Grand Guignol Mirai 2014 executive committee. This installment of Notes on Art and CurrentView More >

Invention: Keisuke Matsuda ‘Stabilization 3’ ＠ eN arts Keisuke Matsuda – Untitled (2015) Objects whose secret is not their expression, their representative form, but on the contrary their condensation and their subsequent dispersion in the cycle of metamorphoses. In fact,View More >

‘Okinawa’ and ‘Portrait’: – Ryuichi Ishikawa’s Okinawan Portraits 2010-2012 Ryuichi Ishikawa – from Okinawan Portraits 2010-2012 I have already touched on the portraits of Ryuichi Ishikawa (b. 1984) in a previous column (Critical Fieldwork 48: Japanese Portraits). I noted thatView More >

Photographs as graves: Taiji Matsue’s JP-01 SPK (Part 3) Another “departure” that is striking in the context of this photobook is the use of oblique composition, which applies to just two works: JP01-73 and SPK44134.(1) To repeat, oblique composition isView More >

Photographs as graves: Taiji Matsue’s JP-01 SPK (Part 2) JP01-80 from Taiji Matsue’s photo book JP-01 SPK (AKAAKA, 2014) All images: © Taiji Matsue, courtesy the artist and Taro Nasu. The first 11 works in the photobook are all photosView More >

Photographs as graves: Taiji Matsue’s JP-01 SPK (Part 1) Taiji Matsue’s new photobook, JP-01 SPK (AKAAKA, 2014) is, as the city code of the title suggests, a book dedicated to one city: Sapporo. However, perhaps because the subject has beenView More >