unlimited freedom

video, miniDV, 68min, 2003, The Graduation Work of Excellence Prize

 

In the works from ‘unlimited freedom' onwards, with the practical inclusion of these views regarding “territory", I went on to actively use as the actual theme, the critical awareness of the presence of the film-maker. Through the production of the works, in the exploring of the possibilities of freedom inherent in individuals, the boundaries and liberties possessed as an artist, and regarding freedom, the necessity of deliberation was born. Then, to tackle this second concrete theme, I paid attention to the actions and meaning of my body and self-image as an artist, and introduced those into the work. With works such as ‘Remote Painting', ‘The Hit Song Live', ‘The Hit Song', ‘Mobile Life', production was carried out along this theme.

With ‘unlimited freedom', by requesting 4 friends to do the filming, I cut myself off from the authority in the filming. Then, the scene of the request was also included in the work and by doing so the position of the film-maker as being separate to the filming was demonstrated. Through the request from me, in an unexpected situation that arose, in the image in which the crew was entrusted with the filming, it was not possible to safely stand in either camp of the two subjects of “the artist who made the request” and “the crew who were caught up in the film”. This uncertainty of subject in the film was a main factor of this work.

  The second important factor, change in authority, the form of the artist being invisible and disclosing this to the audience, and as an examinable thing, how to expose that in the work. The transferring of authority for filming was the artist's arbitrary intention, from restrictions due to aesthetic considerations, the filming was freed in one respect but, as before the artist continued to arbitrarily decide the production and content of the work, requesting filming to be done by others, and with that dogmatic attitude maintaining authority. So, due to that kind of classical artist's stand-point becoming relative, the artist's body and self image is taken into the work. By doing this, another side of the artist, being the artist's limitations, lack of freedom, and passivity is made visible. This fact, the artist exposing himself, and making the announcement, and because of that the artist's identity no longer being single but dividing so that “subject that actively makes things” and “body, and passivity that risks image” appears and each become relative.

  How the work is opened up to the audience is a problem that the artist has considerable freedom over. In other words, the freedom of the individual is how the individual is constrained, and what kind of system the individual is in, and with the revealing and making public of these, it is thought there may be benefits in investigating those possibilities. For that reason, a production method utilizing the artist's body and self image continues in works after this.

 

the outline

This movie is composed of four episodes in which while the artist himself is acting toward each object he decided, each of four persons, they were asked to be a cameraman by the artist, is documenting it by dv camera in each episode. The first episode is that the artist is going round to see many police boxes one by one to inquire of each police officer what is the advertisement offering a reward for information leading to the arrest of some Japanese famous cult members who carried out terrorism in Tokyo and where the money come from. In the second the artist flies a kite trying to get it caught on a high-voltage cable. And then he calls for a power company to get it back and to see how they deal with it. The third episode is about a slogan to encourage traffic safety on a banner strung across which is often seen on many Japanese roads. In this episode the artist does a big calligraphy of the same words as that slogan and carries this to the place where the slogan is and covers that completely with this. In the final episode the artist asks a person to film him while he is showering just like a “image video”, which is the name of a short movie filming Japanese girl idol.