Talk by Julian Ross: “Japanese Expanded Cinema”
Keiichi Tanaami, „4 silma” / 4 Eyes. 1975, 9 min, 16 mm x 2, Jaapan. Tänu Nanzuka galeriile
Expanded cinema from the 1960–70s has experienced a resurgence of curatorial and academic interest worldwide in the past decade. Due to the lack of access, however, the prolific contributions to this field by Japanese artists have been mostly missing in this discussion. In Japan, the interdisciplinary nature of expanded cinema – where film projection is taken outside of the cinema space and into different environments – has prevented museums and film archives from engaging with its history and committing to preservation projects. Recent discussions on expanded cinema on the international stage have also neglected Japanese debates on the topic due to the difficulty in accessing these texts. To rectify this situation, Collaborative Cataloging Japan set out to identify preservation projects and translate Japanese articles into English in order for Japanese expanded cinema to reach a wider audience. This talk will trace the history of Japanese expanded cinema and share the discoveries that were made in the research and preservation process.
Julian Ross is a British–Japanese researcher, curator and writer based in Amsterdam. He is an assistant professor at Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) and a programmer at International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). His curatorial projects on Japanese expanded cinema have been presented at Tate Modern, Art Institute of Chicago, Eye Filmmuseum, Pioneer Works and Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. He is co-editor of Japanese Expanded Cinema and Intermedia: Critical Texts from the 1960s (Archive Books).