Artist Talk: Distance and Sensation by Kota Takeuchi
- 13 October 2021
- 18:00 - 19:00
- 13/14 Cornwall Terrace, Outer Circle, London NW1 4QP
- https://dajf.org.uk/event/artist-talk-distance-and-sensation-by-kota-takeuchi
- events@dajf.org.uk
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Kota Takeuchi is an artist based in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. The artwork he will discuss developed from various experiences, including on the clean up operation after the nuclear disaster. This has led him to look deeper into the history of the landscape, the knowledge embedded in it, and how it has been communicated across time as well as its relationship between media and technology in contemporary society.
In this talk chaired by Dr Lena Fritsch, Takeuchi will share his latest project unearthing the history of the first transcontinental weapon called “balloon bombs.” Developed by the Japanese military in World War II, they were carried on high altitude air currents across the Pacific Ocean and landed across North America. News of these bombs and their effects were censored during the war so it is a largely unknown story. Takeuchi has explored national archives, visiting places the bombs landed across the United States, and talking to witnesses, to create a new video work situating the bombs in relation to the mythical Japanese blind figure Tenome.
Please note that this is an in-person event. Guests will be asked to wear masks during the talk, and social distancing measures will be in place in the Lecture Room.
About the contributors
Kota Takeuchi
Kota Takeuchi is a Japanese artist born in 1982. He is a committee member of “Don’t Follow the Wind”, an art project in the nuclear exclusion zone near Fukushima, and representative agent for the “Finger Pointing Worker” of TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant live camera. He makes video and photo installations. He explores the relationship between media and human beings by following the traces of lost history and collaborating in isolated places. Major exhibitions in which he has participated include “Japanorama. A new vision on art since 1970” (Centre Pompidou-Metz, France, 2017), “GLOBALE:GLOBAL CONTROL AND CENSORSHIP” (ZKM_Lichthof1+2, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2015), “Weavers of Worlds -A Century of Flux in Japanese Modern / Contemporary Art-” (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Japan, 2019), “Splitting Atom” (CAC/SMK Centre for Contemporary Art and Energy & Technology Museum, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2020).
Dr Lena Fritsch
Dr Lena Fritsch (moderator) is the Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at the Ashmolean Museum (University of Oxford), working on exhibitions, displays and acquisitions of international art. One of her main research areas is Japanese art and photography of the 20th and 21st centuries. Before joining the Ashmolean, she was a curator at Tate Modern. In 2018 Fritsch published one of the first overviews on Japanese photography in English: Ravens & Red Lipstick: Japanese Photography since 1945 (English version with Thames & Hudson, Japanese with Seigensha). Other publications include Tokyo: Art & Photography (2021), A.R. Penck: I Think in Pictures (2019), an English-language version of Moriyama Daido’s Tales of Tono (2012), The Body as a Screen: Japanese Art Photography of the 1990s (2011), and Yasumasa Morimura’s Self-Portrait as Actress (2008). Fritsch holds a PhD from Bonn University, and also studied at Keio University, Tokyo.
