Date and time: Friday June 21, 2024 @18:30-20:30
Location: Sàn Art
Language: Japanese with English subtitles

Sàn Art is pleased to present ‘The trail inward: image-making, symbolism and memory in film’, a satellite screening programme created in tandem with our current exhibition ‘Humming at the End of A Dream’ by artist Nghia Dang. With a common interest in dissecting memory, dreamscapes and psychic phenomena as a way of extracting potent symbols and surreal images that haunt and define us, the selected films echo a kinship, methodology, and aesthetic universe reminiscent of Nghia Dang’s own artistic universe.

Spanning the exhibition duration until the end of June 2024, this 4-part screening programme will take us through the semi-fictional documentary and performative work of Guy Maddin (Canada), the slow pacing of time and dream modes encountered in Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand), the surreal and absurdist narration of Wojciech Jerzy Has (Poland), and variations of poetic onirisme in experimental film bringing together Shuji Terayama, Fuyuhiko Takata and Yuri Muraoka (Japan).

Concluding our screening series, ‘Onirisme in Japanese art-house and experimental film’ presents the dream-like experiences, phantasms, and profoundly poetic artistry of three Japanese practitioners. Beginning with Shuji Terayama, a trailblazer in postwar poetry, radical performance, and filmmaking with singular aesthetics, the screening will look at his narrative reimagination of childhood and memory. The event continues with two video works by contemporary artist Fuyuhiko Takata that expose our subconscious’ capacity for surreal and absurd word-image associations, and our shifting perspectives as participants and observers of dreams. The screening will conclude with poet and filmmaker Yuri Muraoka who has continuously crafted filmic self-portraits exploring the worlds of mental and visual obsessions.

With immense thanks:
Sàn Art would like to sincerely thank artists Yuri Muraoka and Fuyuhiko Takata, as well as WAITINGROOM gallery in Tokyo, for allowing us to present their works to our local audiences. 

Fuyuhiko Takata – The Princess and the Magic Birds:
2020-21, single channel video with sound, 17:52.

“One night, two enchanted birds fly in through the window of a sleeping adolescent boy. Perching upon his ear, these magical creatures recount fantastic and peculiar folk tales into the teenager’s mind, as if speaking directly into his dreams. Relating an erotic fable of an Arabian princess who escapes her palace to spend lurid evenings with common men, the birds entice the young man toward his own desire. Their elaborate narrative, which unfolds with ambiguous shifts in genders and protagonists, escalates in intensity until it is suddenly interrupted, just before it reaches the best part of the story.”
– Texts by Greg Dvorak (Professor, Waseda University). Video courtesy of the artist & WAITINGROOM. 

Fuyuhiko Takata – The Butterfly Dream:
2022, single channel video with sound, 04:36.

“A young man of about college age is napping in the shade of a tree, and a butterfly is flying by. The butterfly flies freely around the area, but before long, it transforms into an object that resembles a combination of a butterfly and a pair of scissors. This object (called “butterfly scissors”) is simply crafted so that when you make the blades of the scissors move in a chopping motion, a butterfly flutters its wings at the same time. These “butterfly scissors” begin to cut through the sleeping man’s clothes. The butterfly flutters daintily, and at the same time, the clothes are being cut off roughly.”
– Video courtesy of the artist & WAITINGROOM. 

Yuri Muraoka – Schizophrenia:
2016, single channel video with sound, 10:00.

“Self-portrait conducted in my 7th year of treatment for schizophrenia. An obsession by the name of “odd-numbers” torments me in daily life (Chapter 1: The odd numbers). A death sentence was being pronounced. With the sound of the scaffold coming down, the fear of self-destruction, that “the reality” collapses into pieces at my feet (Chapter 2 – Transparent, I am.).”
– Text and video courtesy of the artist.

Shuji Terayama – Grass Labyrinth (Kusa-Meikyu): 
1979, filmed in France and Japan, 40:00.

Based on a story by the surrealist writer Kyoka Izumi, ‘Grass Labyrinth’ follows a young man’s quest to unearth a beloved melody from his childhood memories. The young man ostensibly wanders into a time-warp in which aspects from his childhood and adulthood, and different variants of reality and the subconscious, merge together.

About Fuyuhiko Takata:

Born in 1987 in Hiroshima, Fuyuhiko Takata currently lives and works in Chiba. He completed a doctoral course in oil painting at the Tokyo University of the Arts in 2017. Recent group exhibitions include “Spring Show” (2024, @WAITINGROOM, Tokyo), “Storymakers in Contemporary Japanese Art” (2022, @The Japan Foundation Sydney, Sydney), “Lost in Translation” (2021, @KCUA, Kyoto), “When It Waxes and Wanes” (2020, @VBKÖ, Vienna), and “MOT Annual 2016 Loose Lips Save Ships” (2016, @Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo) amongst others. Solo exhibitions and showcases include:  “Art Basel Hong Kong 2024” (2024, @Art Basel HK, Hong Kong), “Cut Pieces” (2023, @WAITINGROOM, Tokyo), “Nada Miami 2022” (2022, Miami), “LOVE PHANTOM 2” (2021, @WAITINGROOM, Tokyo), “MAM Screen011: Fuyuhiko Takata” (2019, @Mori Art Museum, Tokyo), “Dream Catcher” (2018, @Alternative Space CORE, Hiroshima), “LOVE PHANTOM” (2017,@ Art Center Ongoing, Tokyo), and “STORYTELLING” (2016, @Kodama Gallery, Tokyo). https://fuyuhikotakata.com/ and @fuyuhiko_takata

About Yuri Muraoka:

Yuri Muraoka was born in Tokyo in 1981. After dropping out of the high-school attached to Japan Women’s University, she graduated the 26th class of the Image Forum Institute of the Moving Image. Nowadays she continues to create moving images and photographic works of “self-portraiture”. All of her works are self-created and self-performed. Her latest film ‘Transparent, I am.’ (2020) won the Grand Prix at the 67th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. Aside from her filmmaking practice, she has been working on poetry since 2018 and is the mother of two daughters. Her films have been shown in various international festivals, including The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (Germany), Porto Femme 2023 (Portugal), Kinoskop 2022 (Serbia), Saigon Experimental Film Festival 2024 (Viet Nam), KHUSUSNYA FESTIVAL FILM DOKUMENTER (Indonesia), BIDEODROMO 2022 (Spain), REAKTOR 2022 (Austria), INDIE CORK 2022 (Ireland), 26th AVANCA (Portugal), On-art (Poland), 26th Barcelona International Women’s Film Festival (Spain), Festival Accès Asie 2022 (Canada), Buenos Aires Festival Internacional De Cine Independiente 2022 (Argentina), 23rd Paris Festival of Different and Experimental Cinemas (France), 35th Image Forum Festival 2021 (Japan) to name a few. http://www.yuri-paradox.ecweb.jp/index.html

About Shuji Terayama (1935-1983):
Poet, playwright, novelist, photographer, sports critic, filmmaker and cultural agent provocateur Shuji Terayama was among the most broadly influential and innovative figures active in the post-WWII Japanese avant-garde. Throughout his all-too-brief but astonishingly prolific and multifaceted career, Terayama deliberately confused boundaries between high and low, between history and myth, while working inventively across different media. Terayama’s intermingling of theater, film and photography was an especially important inspiration for his visionary art practice. Beginning with his precocious and often controversial engagement with traditional tanka poetry as a mere teen, Terayama held tight to his belief that genuine artistic creativity was rooted in the act of shattering molds in order to cast them anew.
– Excerpt from Haden Guest, Harvard Film Archive

About WAITINGROOM:
WAITINGROOM was founded in Tokyo in 2010, with the mission to promote and support cutting-edge contemporary art across various media. The gallery works with young and emerging artists who seek the balance between two diverse aspects with their own distinctive perspective and expression. https://waitingroom.jp/en and @waitingroom_gallery