Fujiko Nakaya

Video began as a medium that inspired discovery. This art documentary traces the expressive roots of “media art” in Japan — works of video, performances, and installations created using video technology that allowed for free and creative visual expression.

Statics of an Egg focuses on Nakaya’s hands as she tries to balance two eggs upright on a flat surface. The video references ‘The first day of spring’, an essay written by the artist’s father, the prominent scientist Ukichiro Nakaya, wherein he explains how it is possible to stand eggs upright, and not only on the first day of spring, as the Japanese proverb details.

A project by Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) at Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan.

Soji-ji (1979) is a video work documenting a chant recitation at a Zen temple. The chant recited by many monks does not proceed in unison like group singing. Each monk recites in sync with his breath, so that the intake of breath occurs at different moments. That is to say, each monk articulates the chant differently. Since there is no unified division, when the multiple chants overlap, an endless wave of chant (sutra) appears as a collective density or modality (at the same time, each monk’s steps form a totally different rhythm from the individual chants).

Created for the first Japanese exhibition dedicated to video art, Video Communication: Do-It-Yourself-Kit, this work documents protests outside the Chisso Corporation headquarters in central Tokyo. Hazardous byproducts from the company’s chemical plants had caused severe mercury poisoning—and, consequently, a neurological disease—in Minamata’s livestock and inhabitants. Nakaya filmed the sit-in with a handheld video camera and installed a battery-powered television monitor on-site, allowing the demonstrators to watch themselves by playing back the recordings of their actions.

Statics of an Egg focuses on Nakaya’s hands as she tries to balance two eggs upright on a flat surface. The video references ‘The first day of spring’, an essay written by the artist’s father, the prominent scientist Ukichiro Nakaya, wherein he explains how it is possible to stand eggs upright, and not only on the first day of spring, as the Japanese proverb details.

A project by Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) at Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan.

Soji-ji (1979) is a video work documenting a chant recitation at a Zen temple. The chant recited by many monks does not proceed in unison like group singing. Each monk recites in sync with his breath, so that the intake of breath occurs at different moments. That is to say, each monk articulates the chant differently. Since there is no unified division, when the multiple chants overlap, an endless wave of chant (sutra) appears as a collective density or modality (at the same time, each monk’s steps form a totally different rhythm from the individual chants).

Created for the first Japanese exhibition dedicated to video art, Video Communication: Do-It-Yourself-Kit, this work documents protests outside the Chisso Corporation headquarters in central Tokyo. Hazardous byproducts from the company’s chemical plants had caused severe mercury poisoning—and, consequently, a neurological disease—in Minamata’s livestock and inhabitants. Nakaya filmed the sit-in with a handheld video camera and installed a battery-powered television monitor on-site, allowing the demonstrators to watch themselves by playing back the recordings of their actions.