Koki Tanaka:
The 25th Nakanoshima Eiga Theater “Contemporary Art and Images: Dialogue with Koki Tanaka”
13 May 2023
Date: Saturday, May 13, 2023
Venue: Auditorium, B1F, The National Museum of Art, Osaka (4-2-55 Nakanoshima, Kita-ku, Osaka 530-0005)
Capacity: 100 people (unreserved seating, first-come-first-served basis) Numbered tickets will be distributed from 11:00 on the day (one ticket per person)
Admission : Free
Details:https:https://www.nmao.go.jp/events/event/theater_025/
Detailed PDF:第25回 中之島映像劇場「現代美術と映像_田中功起との対話」チラシダウンロード（PDF 9.2MB）
The 25th Nakanoshima Film Theater will feature a screening and dialogue on the theme of “Contemporary Art and the Moving Image” with guest artist Koki Tanaka (b. 1975), who is currently based in Kyoto. Tanaka is an internationally active contemporary artist, having received a special commendation for his exhibition at the Japan Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, and was named Artist of the Year by Deutsche Bank in 2015. However, the presentation of Tanaka’s work, especially his video works, is not necessarily limited to the context of contemporary art. Some of them were presented within the exhibition format and then edited into theatrical single-channel versions and screened at the Berlin International Film Festival (2020), the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2019), and the Pusan International Film Festival (2019), among others. Furthermore, in the case of “Post Study Session” (2021), produced under the difficult circumstances of the Corona disaster, it was “exhibited” at the Dir’iya Contemporary Art Biennial (Saudi Arabia, 2021), “screened” at the Museum Ludwig (Germany, 2021), and then in 2022 at the Theatre E9 Society in the 21st century is overflowing with all kinds of images, but not all of them can be encountered by audiences through the somewhat privileged formats of “exhibition” and “screening. We would like to discuss with you various issues related to contemporary art and video, such as the way in which works cross different viewing formats, the thinking of artists behind such works, and the meaning of viewing works that can be viewed online in a public space such as an art museum.
Another point I would like to make is that a selection of Tanaka’s works from his 20-year history, from his early works to his latest works, highlights not only the changes in the world of his works but also the changes in the environment for video production, including shooting and editing equipment, data capacity and format, storage media, and production systems. This screening and dialogue is also an attempt to back-illuminate the expansion of the artists’ artistic practice as reflected in the trajectory of video expression.
For the Screening
In this age of random access to video via smartphones and other devices, the experience of viewing images in a movie theater or museum is inconvenient. Still, is there some other meaning to showing images in a movie theater or exhibiting them in a museum? If so, what meaning can we find in it?
I have made many video works, but I was never that interested in the making of video itself. Rather, I am more interested in using the medium of video to make critical art.
Koki Tanaka (2023/4/11)