Shinichi Iwata, still from The Walking Man, 1969, 16mm transferred to digital video, 15 min., b&w and color, sound. Collection of the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art
Collaborative Cataloging Japan is pleased to welcome curators Go Hirasawa and Shuhei Hosoya to organize a special online screening of films by members of the group Zero Jigen (Zero Dimension), Shinichi Iwata and Yoshihiro Katō. We are excited to partner with Lightbox Film Center to present this program. The on-demand streaming will be available for $6 each ($12 total) from June 25th through July 2nd, on our streaming platform.
This event marks CCJ’s first collaboration with researcher Shuhei Hosoya, chief representative of the Zero Jigen Katō Yoshihiro Archive. Forthcoming, Hosoya will publish an essay on CCJ’s website that will dig deeper into the issues around archiving and documenting performance works, and about the intersection of 1960s performance art and their media strategies to counter the state power and capital.
Program
Shinichi Iwata, The Walking Man, 1969, 16mm transferred to digital video, 15 min., b&w and color, sound. Collection of the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art
Yoshihiro Katō, The White Hare of Inaba, 1970 (Special edition 2017), 16mm transferred to digital video, two-screen multi-channel projection, 46 min., color and b&w, sound. © Zero Jigen Katō Yoshihiro Archive
Please note that The White Hare of Inaba contains nudity and adult content.
The Walking Man
The artist Iwata Shinichi formed the avant-garde arts group Zero Jigen (Zero Dimension) with Katō Yoshihiro and was one of its core members, primarily active in Nagoya. After the actions of Banpaku Hakai Kyōtō-ha (Expo ’70 Destruction Joint-Struggle Group) came to a close in 1970, he ran for mayor of Nagoya on the “Rainbow Party” ticket, and his activities ran parallel to those of the Japanese hippie scene as well as presenting a unique form of Pop Art that found elements of art in the culture and customs of the masses.
Iwata also launched Rock Kabuki “Super Ichiza” and engaged in diverse artistic activities not only in Nagoya but in various locations, including overseas. His work is viewed as ripe for critical reappraisal in the near future.
In The Walking Man, Iwata walks the streets of Nagoya at a constant pace as the camera continuously films him from the side. Occasionally raucous scenes of men in suits falling over are inserted, but Iwata’s walking speed does not change. Meanwhile, the sound and tempo of the drum track in the background repeatedly change and fluctuate, and the viewer is beckoned on a psychedelic voyage departing from the street-level, mass-cultural scenery of Nagoya. The universal act of simply walking continuously down a street, expressed by the words “THE END LESS” appearing on screen at the beginning, eventually unfolds to an expansion not only of the visual expression of images, but also of our vision of the everyday.
The White Hare of Inaba
The avant-garde arts group Zero Jigen (Zero Dimension) was launched in Nagoya in the 1960s and carried out an extraordinary number of physical actions over a long period of time on the streets of Tokyo and various other locations, reaching its zenith around 1968. In 1969, its members joined Kokuin (Heralding Shadow) and others in forming Banpaku Hakai Kyōtō-ha (Expo ’70 Destruction Joint-Struggle Group) in opposition to the upcoming Expo ’70 Osaka. The members of this group literally placed their bodies on the line in resisting the state and the capitalist system.
The White Hare of Inaba is a film directed by Katō Yoshihiro, a central member of Zero Jigen, with cinematography by the filmmaker Ōe Masanori. Drawing on the Japanese myth of the white hare of Inaba, it presents a white hare (i.e. woman) leaping across waters full of ferocious sharks (i.e. male-dominated society), presenting a vision for a new era while capturing on film the joy of human beings’ inherent Eros and a new mode of “family” that breaks free of feudalistic social constraints.
The special edition screened here was edited just before Katō’s death. It is a two-screen multi-channel projection consisting of documentation of Zero Jigen’s activities from 1967 through 1969 and original footage of The White Hare of Inaba and Brahmin. This work exemplifies Katō’s media practice of his later years, in which the singularity of the performance and situation itself is amplified by connecting the two different moving images by means music at high volume.
Please note that The White Hare of Inaba contains nudity and adult content.
Further reading about Zero Jigen by our partner Julian Ross, is also available on desistfilm.
Yoshihiro Katō, still fromThe White Hare of Inaba, 16mm transferred to digital video, 46 min., color and b&w, sound. © Zero Jigen Katō Yoshihiro Archive
『THE WALKING MAN』
監督：岩田信市／1969年／カラー・白黒／15分／サウンド／愛知県美術館所蔵
美術家の岩田信市は、加藤好弘とともに前衛藝術集団〈ゼロ次元〉を結成し、中心メンバーとしておもに名古屋で活動した。〈万博破壊共闘派〉の活動を終えた1970年以降は、レインボー党を掲げて名古屋市長選に出馬し、日本のヒッピーカルチャーに並走するとともに、大衆・風俗から藝術を見出すという独自の「ポップアート」を表した。また、ロック歌舞伎「スーパー一座」を旗揚げして、名古屋にとどまらず海外公演を行うなどさまざまな表現活動を展開しており、これからの再評価が期待されている。
『THE WALKING MAN』は、名古屋の町を岩田自身が歩く姿を同じ速度でカメラが側面から捉え続けた作品である。背広姿の男たちの派手な転倒シーンが時折挿入されるが、岩田の歩くテンポが変わることはない。その一方、バックに流れるドラム音は音の変化とテンポの変動を繰り返し、観るものを名古屋の大衆・風俗からトリップへと誘う。冒頭の「THE END LESS」のテロップが象徴する街頭をただ歩き続けるという普遍的な行為は、やがて映像による造形表現のみならず、日常性の拡張へとひらかれていく。
『いなばの白うさぎ』
監督：加藤好弘／1970年（スペシャル・エディション 2017年）／カラー・白黒／46分／サウンド／二面マルチ／©ゼロ次元・加藤好弘アーカイヴ © Zero Jigen Katō Yoshihiro Archive
1960年代、名古屋から出発し、東京の街頭や各地において、肉体表現を長期にわたり膨大な回数で展開した前衛藝術集団〈ゼロ次元〉は、1968年ごろに高揚期を迎える。1969年には日本万国博覧会EXPO'70に異議をとなえ、ともに活動していた〈告陰〉らとともに〈万博破壊共闘派〉を結成。その肉体に賭けて国家と資本システムに抵抗していった。
『いなばの白うさぎ』は、撮影に映像作家のおおえまさのりを迎え、〈ゼロ次元〉の中心メンバーであった加藤好弘が監督した作品である。日本の神話「因幡の白兎」を題材として、鰐鮫＝男性社会を飛び跳ねていく白兎＝女性を描き、新たな時代のヴィジョンを提示するとともに、人間が本来もつエロスの悦びや、封建的な社会を脱する新しい「ファミリー」のあり様をフィルムに定着させている。
今回上映されるスペシャル・エディションは、加藤が他界する直前に編集したもので、〈ゼロ次元〉の67年〜69年の活動記録、そしてオリジナルの『いなばの白うさぎ』と『バラモン』の映像素材が2面マルチで構成されている。異なる二つのシーンを大音量の音楽でつなぎ展開することで、映像で記録された一回性のパフォーマンス、そして状況そのものを増幅させていく加藤の新たなメディア実践の一つである。
CURATORS
Born in 1983, Shuhei Hosoya is a scholar on art and media, as well as a videographer. He is chief representatives of the Zero Jigen Katō Yoshihiro Archive, as well as the HM Archive which holds materials by Minoru Hirata. After he studied symbolic iconography, and book and film editing at university, Hosoya is engaged in art documentation through interviews and research of artists’ practices. His main research field is art and politics, as well as media in the 1960s, about which he has published videos and books, and organized symposia. After the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, Hosoya continues his thinking and practice on art and documentation. Further, he was responsible as the special researcher for the Zero Jigen Collection for the Performance Art Archive at Asia Culture Center in Gwangju, Korea. His co-authored works include: Shibusawa Tatsuhiko Again (Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2017), Japanese Terror: Era of Bombs 60s-70s (Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2017), Peninsula Theory (Kyobunsha, 2018).
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 Godard (Tokyo, 2002), Fassbinder (Tokyo, 2005), Cultural Theories: 1968 (Tokyo, 2010), Koji Wakamatsu: Cinéaste de la Révolte (Paris, 2010), and Masao Adachi: Le bus de la révolution passera bientot près de chez toi (Paris, 2012). He has organized more than fifty film exhibitions throughout the world, including Underground Film Archives (Tokyo, 2001), Nagisa Oshima (Seoul Art Cinema, 2010), Koji Wakamatsu and Masao Adachi (Cinematheque Française, 2010), Theatre Scorpio: Japanese Independent and Experimental Cinema of the 1960s (Close-Up: London, 2011), and Art Theater Guild and Japanese Underground Cinema, 1960–1986 (The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2012).
