On Friday, April 17th, and Saturday, April 18th, at 7pm, Gladys Lou presents a fascinating selection of 16mm and video works spanning the career of the late, great Takahiko Iimura, all sourced from the collection of The Film-Makers' Cooperative!

Takahiko Iimura: Double Identity is a two-part screening program that brings together a selection of film and video works by the Japanese experimental filmmaker and avant-garde artist Takahiko Iimura (1937–2022), tracing his practice from abstract explorations of the body to structural and conceptual investigations of the moving image. Influenced by the Japanese concept of ma—the interval or space in between—as well as Jacques Derrida’s thinking on language and phenomenology, Iimura approaches the moving image as a site of feedback and exchange between camera and screen, observer and observed, drawing attention to what remains unknown between frames.

The first program on Friday, April 17, “AI/Love,” explores Iimura’s interest in capturing intimacy through the lens, especially through close-ups of bodily movement. Through his camera, the body becomes abstracted and fragmented, estranged and defamiliarized from the viewer’s gaze, positioning the viewer within a voyeuristic point of view.

The second program on Saturday, April 18, “MA/Intervals,” turns to Iimura’s investigation of the semiology of moving images, using systems of counting, numbering, and marking frames to underscore the materiality of film while revealing the hidden apparatus that structures our experience of seeing.

Together, the two screenings challenge the mechanisms of visual perception and heighten our consciousness of time and space. Iimura’s work destabilizes the boundary between positive and negative, subject and object, bringing seemingly opposing forces into one. He deconstructs the nature of seeing, encouraging us to look through altered perspectives.

Program Note:

“In my film 24 Frames Per Second, the concept is like the Chinese yin and yang. It combines positive within negative, and negative within positive in a double structure: a white dot in black and a black dot in white. 24 Frames is made in this way: we see one black frame within one second of white, and one white frame within one second of black. The black frame moves every second, starting from the first frame and then reaching the 24th frame. The same occurs for the white frame, until white becomes black and black becomes white. That is the way the ancient Chinese looked at the universe. It is this dialectic that I try to present in these works.” — Takahiko Iimura, interview with INCITE: Journal of Experimental Media, 2010

The above quote from Iimura speaks to his interest in the cinematic conditions under which opposites become one. Takahiko Iimura: Double Identity is a two-part screening program that brings together a selection of film and video works by the Japanese experimental filmmaker and avant-garde artist Takahiko Iimura (1937–2022), tracing his practice from abstract explorations of the body to conceptual and structural investigations of the moving image. Influenced by the Japanese concept of ma—the interval or space in between—as well as Jacques Derrida’s thinking on language and phenomenology, Iimura approached the moving image as both a philosophical and sensual medium. He began working with film in the 1960s and expanded into video in the 1970s. For Iimura, cinema is a site of feedback and exchange between camera and screen, observer and observed, drawing attention to the unknown between the frames.

The first program, “AI/Love,” explores Takahiko’s interest in capturing intimacy and body movements through the lens in the 1960s. In a 1969 essay on Tatsuki Yoshihiro’s photography exhibition, Iimura articulates that the naked body exists as a kind of visuality beyond language. He believes that in Japan, the nude has historically been understood as a pictorial figure (keishi), and his work aims to reclaim the body as corporeal flesh (nikutai) by highlighting its tactility and material presence. Through his camera, the body is abstracted, fragmented, and defamiliarized from the viewer’s gaze. Early works such as Ai (Love) (1962) focus on close-ups of body parts, where close framing and peephole-like restricted vision recall the viewing of pornography. Accompanied by a soundtrack by Yoko Ono, the work transforms the body into unrecognizable shapes and forms, positioning the viewer in a voyeuristic point of view, which continues in Sakasama (Upside Down) (1963), with shots ranging from a swing ride in an amusement park to the legs and shoes of passersby in subways, which strangely seem to take on a sensual undertone when inverted. In Onan (1963), erotic magazine imagery and surrealist objects such as a silver orb are combined and knit into a series of dreamlike associations of desire. Rose Color Dance (1963) and Anma (The Masseurs) (1963) both document dancers practising Butoh, a Japanese dance-theater art form known as the “dance of darkness” because of its slow movements by white-painted, nearly naked performers that convey deep emotional traumas, documenting the early history of queer body expression and performance in Japan. Iro (Colors) (1962) zooms into the chemical reaction between paint and oil; in one presentation, Iimura projects the film onto fellow artist Jiro Takamatsu’s back, with a circular cut-out from his jacket to match the shape of the projected image. In this work, the body becomes a projection surface itself, merging the double identities of the viewer and projection into one.

The second program, “MA/Intervals,” focuses on Iimura’s investigation into the semiology of moving images, revealing the hidden apparatus that structures our experience of seeing. In the 1970s, Iimura shifted toward a formal and elemental approach, using systems of counting, numbering, and marking frames to underscore the materiality of film. In 24 Frames Per Second (1975), he draws attention to time and its precise nature through repeated counting and frame-by-frame measurement. From the lecture-like, theory-driven Talking Picture (The Structure of Film Viewing) (1981), accompanied by Iimura’s narration that instructs us on where to look, to the field-based Talking in New York (1994), he extends his theory of consciousness into the streetscape of New York. Repeatedly chanting Jacques Derrida’s line, “I hear myself at the same time that I speak,” Iimura interacts with his surrounding environment—passing police sirens, crowds in Washington Square Park, construction sites, abandoned alleys, and posters lining the walls of buildings. These moments of urban life become a testing ground for the relationship between the “I” who speaks and the “I” who hears, a split that points to the same subject but never fully coincides in time. In Observer/Observed (1999), frontal shots shifting between camera, monitor, and screen once again break down the underlying structures of perspective, questioning who is observing and who, at the same time, is being observed.

Together, the two screenings challenge the mechanisms of visual perception and heighten our consciousness of time and space. Iimura’s work destabilizes the boundary between positive and negative, subject and object, bringing seemingly opposing forces into one. He deconstructs the nature of seeing, encouraging us to look through altered perspectives.

Throughout the years, Iimura maintained a close relationship with the New York experimental film and video community. He was a long-time member of The Film-Makers’ Cooperative, which distributed more than 50 of his works. The Japanese American artist-curator Shigeko Kubota frequently programmed his works, including in Tokyo–New York Video Express (1974) in Japan, and as video curator at Anthology Film Archives (1974–1983) in New York. The two artists’ works were featured together in the 1979 exhibition Shigeko Kubota/Taka Iimura: New Video, curated by John Hanhardt at the Whitney Museum of American Art, a prime example of the close collaboration between members of the experimental film and video community in the 1970s and ’80s.

-Gladys Lou

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1. Sakasama (Upside Down), 1963, 16mm, color, silent, 13 minutes
2. Ai (Love), 1962, 16mm, black and white, sound, 10 minutes
3. Onan, 1963, 16mm, black and white, sound, 7 minutes
4. A Dance Party in the Kingdom of Lilliput No. 1, 1964, 16mm, black and white, sound, 14 minutes
5. Rose Color Dance, 1963, 16mm, black and white, silent, 13 minutes
6. Anma (The Masseurs), 1963, 16mm, black and white, silent, 13 minutes
7. Iro (Colors), 1962, 16mm, color, sound, 10 minutes

1. 24 Frames Per Second, 1975, 16mm, black and white, sound, 10.5 minutes
2. Talking Picture (The Structure of Film Viewing), 1981, 16mm, color and b/w, sound, 23 minutes
3. Talking in New York, 1994, 16mm, 18 minutes
4. (Break)
5. Observer/Observed, 1999, CD-ROM, DVD, color, sound, 22 minutes
6. Ma (Intervals), 1975-77, 16mm, 12 minutes