Collaborators
This project is co-presented by Collaborative Cataloging Japan and the Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia in partnership with Philadelphia Art Alliance at University of the Arts. Major support has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support from the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Toshiba International Foundation, Pola Art Foundation, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
Curators – Go Hirasawa, Julian Ross, Ann Adachi-Tasch
Community Engagement Lead – Rob Buscher
Curatorial Advisor – Nina Horisaki-Christens
Curatorial Assistant & Online Viewing Program Curator - Mia Parnall
Research Assistance – Emiko Inoue, Fusako Matsu, Shuhei Hosoya, Jon Kriney
Exhibition Design & Production Advisors – Michael Ciervo, Matt Suib, Aaron Igler, Nami Yamamoto
Exhibition Media Installations – Greenhouse Media
Design – Mielconejo D'Macedo
Marketing – Witty Gritty
Advisors: Christophe Charles, Gretjen Clausing, Rebecca Cleman, Frederick R. Dickinson, Riko Fujiwara, Antoine Haywood, Nadia Hironaka, Eikichiro Isobe, Barbara London, Mary Lucier, John McInerney, Takako Okamoto, Jesse Pires, Lia Robinson, Hirofumi Sakamoto, Naoko Seki, Akihiro Suzuki, Nobukazu Suzuki, Hiroko Tasaka, Kazumi Teune, Miwako Tezuka, Yuka Yokoyama, Midori Yoshimoto
Partners / Supporters:
Keio University Art Center
Fleisher Art Memorial
Lightbox Film Center
Mori Art Museum
PhillyCAM
Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation
Taki Kentaro, VIDEOART Center Tokyo
Twelve Gates Arts
University of Pennsylvania
Ann Adachi-Tasch is Executive Director of Collaborative Cataloging Japan, a not-for-profit that supports preservation and archiving of Japanese historical and experimental moving image works. Ann has worked at The Museum of Modern Art where she managed projects for the Museum's global research initiative titled Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (C-MAP), and contributed to the launch of its digital platform, post (post.at.moma.org). In 2009, she organized a touring screening program and publication of Japanese experimental video and film, Vital Signals at Electronic Arts Intermix, a video art archive and distributor where she was the Distribution Coordinator. Ann has given presentations and written about the status of media archiving in Japan, at The Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Tate Modern (London); Keio University Art Center (Tokyo); and the Archives of American Art (Washington D.C.), among others. A mother of three, Ann also works at Asian Arts Initiative.
Go Hirasawa is a researcher at Meiji-Gakuin University working on underground and experimental films and avant-garde art movements in 1960s and '70s Japan. His publications include Cultural Theories: 1968 (Japan, 2010), Masao Adachi (France and Mexico, 2012), and Japanese Expanded Cinema and Intermedia (Germany, 2020). He has organized many film programs and exhibitions throughout the world. His recent curations include Landscape Theory: Post-1968 Radical Cinema in Japan (e-flux, 2023), Yasunao Tone Weekend (Light Industry, 2023), After Landscape Theory (Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, 2023), Katsu Kanai (Harvard Film Archive and Anthology Film Archives, 2023), Photographers Making Films (Photographer’s Gallery, 2023).
Photo: Merel Hegenbart Photography
Julian Ross is a researcher, curator and writer based in Amsterdam. He is co-programmer of Doc Fortnight at The Museum of Modern Art (2023-24) and co-programmer of the 69th Flaherty Seminar. Previously, he was programmer at International Film Festival Rotterdam, Locarno Film Festival, and guest programmer at Singapore International Film Festival. His curatorial work has been presented at Tate Modern, Art Institute of Chicago, e-flux Video & Film, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Eye Filmmuseum, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Harvard Film Archive and British Film Institute. He is an Assistant Professor at Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, where he is co-director of the interdisciplinary research centre ReCNTR. He is editorial board member of Collaborative Cataloging Japan and co-curator of the exhibition Community of Images.
Rob Buscher is a film and media specialist, educator, curator, and published author. A mixed-race Yonsei (fourth-generation Japanese American), Rob’s work centers on the history and culture of the Japanese diaspora and other Asian American & Pacific Islander communities. Since 2017 Rob has lectured at University of Pennsylvania’s Asian American Studies Program where he teaches courses on cinema and activism. He is the producer and host of Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation's thirteen-episode podcast Look Toward the Mountain, and host of PBS WHYY's six-episode television series Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders: A Philadelphia Story. Rob recently curated the multimedia site-based exhibition Okaeri (Welcome Home): The Nisei Legacy at Shofuso exploring topics related to the postwar resettlement in Philadelphia and the role that arts and culture have played in local Japanese American activist movements. Rob serves as Executive Director of the Japanese American Confinement Sites Consortium and is currently working on a documentary biopic on Sansei activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya.
Nina Horisaki-Christens received her Ph.D. from the Department of Art History and Archaeology and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University in 2021. Her research focuses on the intersection of art, media, urbanism, translation, and social engagement in Japan, Asia, and the Asian diaspora. She was a summer 2023 Anne van Biema Fellow at the National Museum of Asian Art, a 2023 participant in the Global Asias Summer Institute at Penn State, a 2021-23 Burke Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at Columbia University, a 2017-18 Fulbright Graduate Fellow based at Sophia University in Tokyo, and a 2012-13 Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program. Her curatorial work includes assisting with the Japan Society's 2019 exhibition "Made in Tokyo: Architecture & Living, 1964/2020," serving as Research Assistant for "Gutai: Splendid Playground" at the Guggenheim Museum, and working as Assistant Curator and Interim Programs Manager at Art in General. Her commitment to public engagement has led her to work with Collaborative Cataloguing Japan, the PoNJA Wikipedia Initiative, and Smarthistory, and to contribute to publications and exhibitions produced by the Japan Society, Art Tower Mito, the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, the Mori Art Museum, ArtAsiaPacific, Millennium Film Workshop, and Art in General, among others.
Mia Parnall is an independent researcher now residing in London, who has assisted with communications and programming at CCJ since 2021. She also writes on cinema and media, with articles published on CCJ's Meander platform, in Goldsmiths’ Archaeology of the Moving Image, and The Neutral: Graduate Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. Her programming credits include features on Mari Terashima, Haruka Doi, Masanobu Nakamura and Eri Saito. Mia is a graduate of the Film Studies MA at King’s College London, where she completed a dissertation on the thought of Georges Bataille and questions of the visible in Japanese postwar cinema, supervised by Elena Gorfinkel.
