It was in Gdansk, in 2010, when I saw Ken Matsubara’s photographic work for the first time at the Center for Contemporary Art CCA ŁAŹNIA. I was working on NARRACJE, an international art-in-public-space project, which I curated from 2009 to 2011. The title of the exhibition was “Archetyp Fotografii”, and it was curated by Krzysztof Jurecki. Jointly on display were artworks by Joachim Froese, Grzegorz Przyborek, and Ken Matsubara. As implicated in the title of the exhibition, Ken Matsubara’s artistic creation is embedded in a noetic search on the interplay of individual and collective memory, and in which archetypes – enriched through times and generations – offer a framework of exploration for both, the conscious and unconscious. I followed his artistic path over the years, and from 2018, we met frequently which paved the grounds for this text.
From photography to light-based media
“I didn’t know you were in Gdansk at that time and watching my exhibition. In 2010, it was the year when I shifted from photographic to video works that I had been doing for about 30 years.”1All quotes by Ken Matsubara are based on discussions for the text in 2019/2020, unless other stated., Ken Matsubara said when we started to discuss this text. “The works up to that point were still-life photography in the sense of “staged photography”, and various objects, antiques, everyday objects, and sometimes even created objects were set up and shot. These objects were my thoughts, various allegories, or projections of myself. I have been making still-life photography works for many years, and I felt the expression of death itself in those still-life photographs …”, Matsubara recalls the period. “At that time, I was intrigued by the word “Yuragi” which translates to “fluctuation” and little by little I felt the possibility of expressing life itself…”, describes Ken Matsubara how he gradually transient from working with recorded light as in still photography to moving images and light-based media as in video/film.
“I was also greatly influenced by visual expressions of the film directors such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Parajanov and Luchino Visconti …” With Tarkovsky (1932-1986), Matsubara shares the explorative attitude: “Just as from the quivering of a reed you can tell what sort of current, what pressure there is in a river, in the same way, we know the movement of time from the flow of the life-process reproduced in the shot.”2Andrei Tarkovsky: Sculpting in Time. Translation: Kitty Hunter-Blair. Texas Press Austin/TX.us 1986. Page 120., Tarkovsky described his approach in “Sculpting in Time”, published first in 1984.
Working on analog objects with digital imageries
Sergei Parajanov intertwined such diverse influences as folk art, medieval miniature painting, and early cinema a.o. in an outstanding way. With Parajanov (1924-1990), Matsubara ties the interest in small objects of daily life as artistic material of collages, assemblages, and composed objects: “Small or miniature objects hold a special place in the hearts of many Japanese people. They feel as if they can link to a small universe or their perfect society in them. Like in the finely crafted tools and cups for the Japanese tea ceremony, there is a great universe to be found by looking at and pondering on them.”
In his ongoing artistic praxis, Ken Matsubara applies video works to found objects like a random book or a wooden scale box, an industrially manufactured water glass or a hand-crafted metal singing bowl, an outdated TV, or a broken iPad. “I gradually fell in love with the installation of a combination of moving images and objects that were soaked with old memories.” He works meticulously on the visual properties of work to elicit an intriguing mix of realities interlocking analog objects and digital imageries.
Video: Ken Matsubara.
For a series on the Buddhist ritual “Hou-chou”, he explored shadow-graphic projection, applied to a textile lampshade (2016). For “TV on the Seashore: The Drifted Memory”, he staged a series of the legendary portable “TV Sony Solid State” displaying books passing on a force that knocks them over, causing them to fall off one after the other as in a domino effect. His signature works are based on a visual interplay of LED screens and silver-plated glass as seen in the “Moon Bowl” series (since 2017), the “Loop Scale box Box” (2014), the “Mirror” (2012), or the “Letters” (2011). The electronic displays are seamlessly integrated into a wooden frame, a metal box, or some furniture. The silver-plated glass helps to hide the technical hardware, which adds to the magical aspects of the artwork.
ERIC MOUCHET GALLERY Paris 2017. Video: Ken Matsubara.
From a single take to an endless series
Matsubara`s moving images can be composed of hundreds of still images wedded together to form a continuity in a stop-motion-spirit or they may also be small video clips spliced into endless loops which are all based on repetitions of the same. Working in loops spawns the question of losing purpose as it is embedded in Sisyphus’ action as much as the loop incorporates the potential of infinity – like a never-ending story.
Including perception and experience
The identical repetitions in the perspective of production might be perceived differently in beholding. The loop allows a mind-play on the experience of what we already saw and what we are expecting to see. In his 1955 published essay on “Structure and Experience Time”, the German composer Karl-Heinz Stockhausen described the relational properties of objective and experienced time in serial musical compositions: “By experience, time is meant the following: If we listen to a piece of music, the processes of change follow each other at different speeds. Sometimes we have more time to grasp changes, sometimes less. Therefore, everything that is immediately repeated or that we can remember appears to be grasped more quickly than that which changes. We experience the passage of time in the intervals between changes: if nothing changes at all, we lose our time orientation. So, the repetition of an event is also a change: something happens – then nothing happens – and again something happens. Even with a single event, we experience change: it begins and ends. … A repetition … has the least degree of change, a completely surprising event the greatest. … If we notice at the end of a piece of music – regardless of how long it took, whether it was played slowly or quickly, whether there were very many or very few notes – that we “forgot the time”, then we have experienced it most profoundly.” It is the interconnectedness of present and past experiences that is essential in the artistic research and praxis of Ken Matsubara. His works need the viewer, the responsive eye, the agile mind, and the elastic memory.
Storm in a Glass (2012)
On a square silver framed mirror, we see a glass with water moving in it. The source of motion is unclear, its momentum lets the water spill over the rim. In an endless loop, we see the same moment repeatedly, while the amount of water seems to stay the same. The contrast of the lit material and the black background forms a hypnotic setting. Against the nothingness of the black screen, the interaction of light and water easily triggers archetypic associations of waves of the ocean, of motions of a river, or of floating in the amniotic sac. All of them are associated with the vital properties of water. In the first place, Matsubara’s artwork is an open invitation to beholding and contemplating.
When seeing it for the first time, I was reminded of Buddhist religious imageries, called “thangkas”, mystical paintings popular since the seventeenth century. There is this particular genre of black thangkas, mainly in Tibetan Buddhism. The black canvas is associated with primordial darkness. “In the realm where it is dark because there is no light reflected, there is also a sound which we cannot hear as it is so high on the scale box of harmonics that it is inaccessible to the hearing capacity of any physical being. The wonders of creation may be manifested through the gradual slowing down of vibrations. The darkness becomes light, the shadows colors, the colors sound, and sound creates form.”3Nitin Kumar: Color Symbolism in Buddhist Art. February 2002.
URL https://www.exoticindiaart.com/article/colors/ >> 14 January 2020.
, describes the Indian scholar Nitin Kumar. The intriguing visual properties of thangkas derive from contrasting the opaque and non-reflecting black with radiant colors supported by gold, silver, or other reflection-rich materials. And it seems that Ken Matsubara works on a contemporary, digital media-based version of these contemplative paintings.
His artistic research is embedded in a society in which Buddhism remains influential: “My interest in Buddhism deepened with age. It may be because I gradually became aware of death. Although I am not a religious believer, I gradually became interested in Buddhism as philosophy.” Buddhism was introduced in Japan in the 5th Century CE, developed and widely spread in Japanese society with a variety of schools. In the spiritual practice of Buddhism, a “mantra” in Sanskrit or a “Shingon” in Japanese denotes a sound or a movement, a syllable, or a word that can be activated as an “instrument of thought” via repetition4Online Etymology Dictionary: Mantra. No author, no date given.
URL https://www.etymonline.com/word/mantra >> 20 December 2019.
. It is not too far-fetched to link Matsubara’s interest in repetition to the cultural context where the exercise of repeating and the maturing of awareness are closely intertwined.
Paper in the Wind (2014)
“Paper in the Wind” stages the power of wind, an invisible energy that – like light – can only be visually detect through its impact on materials. Projected on a book cover, we see a video that shows a paper in continuous interaction with air. Against the expectation, the paper does not fall, and it is not blown away. While beholding the repeated action, we understand the properties of the paper as much as those of the wind. “This is a work in which a paper floats in the air and flutters, but the paper and the wind are always moving in a relationship, as “Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form” of the “Heart Sutra”. The paper and wind are one, like the front and back of a coin … “, Matsubara explains.
And like in “Storm in a Glass”, there is a limited range of color; in this case, a light-colored book covers interacting with a blank sheet of white paper. The absence of color and any contextual environment – there is only the book, the paper, the wind, and the space – leads to a visual mesh rich in associations and here it turns into a metaphor for the pervasive connectedness throughout the universe.
Video: Ken Matsubara.
Repetition Book (2014)
In the same year that “Paper in the Wind” was developed, Ken Matsubara finalized the “Repetition Book”. The installation consists of a music stand, an open book with a printed picture on one page, and on the opposite page a moving imagery. All selected images refer to experiences that left a mark on a memory map: They are inscribed in personal memories, linked to traumatic collective experiences, or sites of cultural significance.
The starting point of the “Repetition Book” series was an image from the artist’s childhood: “This picture is of my mother and I, perhaps taken by my brother …”5Ken Matsubara: Repetition Book: Kamakura Beach. No date given.
URL http://www.kenmatsubara.com/book11.html >> 12 March 2020.
The photograph triggered the memory of the artist’s first swim in the Pacific Ocean, at Kamakura Beach, a popular beach about an hour south of Tokyo. “I went to the same Kamakura beach taking pictures of my feet and the waves while remembering such moments.”, Matsubara said. As well, the “Ofunato Elementary School” is linked to personal memory, and it is one of the few photographs of a friend in the shared days of their school days. Unfortunately, this school was destroyed in the Tsunami in 2011.
The one of “Oura Tenshudo Church” refers to a Christian church in Nagasaki that did not get destroyed in the Atomic Bomb Attack in August 1945, an event that traumatized the country and changed the world’s history. The image of the “Potsdamer Platz” is also centered around the timeline of World War II. The image of “Hotel Continental Saigon” which was found in a bundle of old letters and photographs at a market in Ho Chi Minh City has a date on the back stating 1952. In the days of the First Indochina War (1949 to 1954), the Hotel Continental was known to be the meeting point for journalists, politicians, and businessmen who shared the news talked about politics and made deals.
Video: Ken Matsubara.
Matsubara went back to the sites from which the selected photographs originated and filmed the sceneries. In the installation, he juxtaposes the still images of the past with the moving ones of the present. At Kamakura Beach, he filmed his feet in the water. At the Ofunato Elementary School, he captured a reflection of the school building in a water pool after the 2011 Tsunami. He taped the Eiffel Tower is reflected in a puddle, and at the “Hotel Continental” he recorded the wind moving the window curtains in one of the hotel rooms. Almost all the images are distorted by the flow of water or the blowing of the wind. He associates the stream of consciousness with the natural forces, their energies, and their momentum.
Matsubara considers memory to be a fragile medium. Rather than being a reliable record of the past, he stages memory as a rendering process, distorted and altered depending on the point of view and the moment of recall. Matsubara’s artistic expression corresponds with what the German cultural science scholar Jan Assmann describes when explaining that the “human self is a “diachronic identity“ … This synthesis of time and identity is effectuated by memory.”6Jan Assmann: Communicative and Cultural Memory. Published first in Berlin / New York 2008.
URL https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/1774/1/Assmann_Communicative_and_cultural_memory_2008.pdf >> 2 August 2020.
Album (2016)
The same approach is applied in the artwork “Album”, first displayed in 2016. The work is based on a Japanese family’s photo album from before and during World War II. He filmed the images with the light of a flickering match. The irregular light situation generates unstable imagery, the reflection of the flames mingles with the filmed photography.
In the installation, he projects the now ‘moving’ image on an acrylic tray filled with water. On the wall, we can see the reflected imagery, further distorted by the reflection and by the slight movement of the water. The overlays of projection and reflection, recording, and display generate a visual complexity that is difficult to read and understand.
The “Album” is dedicated to the processing of memory. He looks at the memory as an evolving medium and not a neutral storage. He directs his attention to the implications that are embedded in the distortions. His approach is in synch with Gille Deleuze’s thesis that recalls is an “active force … producing difference” as explained in his major work “Difference and Repetition”, originally published in France. He talks about the conceptual shifts from a multiplicity over an original substance, of events substituting a basic essence, and virtuality replacing possibility.
MOON BOWL Series (Since 2017)
The “Moon Bowl” Series stage is a sequence of short videos of a falling object or a reflection on the water. The small segments of time and their continuous return are not leading anywhere. A glass bottle is falling into a black hole, shattered on something unknown, floating in pieces before being recollected, coming up and falling again. In a similar sequence, a Buddha statue takes the place of the glass vessel. For a moment it disappears in the reflection of light in the moving water, reappearing again in the next moment. The two versions that focus on circles of light reflected on a water surface, one set in motion by a drop falling into the middle, the other one by waves arriving from outside, is also very intriguing.
Over recent years, these works have been on display in different environments. “The installations at COLLUMINA in Cologne, INTERFERENCE in Tunisia, and LUNA in Leeuwarden, were a great opportunity to prove my common memory.”, Matsubara adds. The reduced environment of the White Cube in Cologne, the spiritual dimension of the church in Leeuwarden, and the memories associated with the ruin in Tunis corresponded with the work in excitingly different ways. “I was looking forward to the chemical reaction that caused my video work to sneak into the memories of different places and people.”, Matsubara recalls. “Instead of using the Tibetan hand-crafted metal singing bowls, I used large old antique ceramic bowls for the couscous dishes I found in the Medina of Tunis. I used a traditional women’s white sari for the projection screen and put the video screen in the ethnic mirror I found in the old market. I have tried to see how the memories of the places react with the memories of my artwork, and how through it I can share common human memories at each place with its people. It was a very interesting installation.“
For Ken Matsubara, the noetic or philosophical approach is part of the artistic vision and can be elicited while beholding his artwork. The artist envisions human consciousness as rooted in memories. He believes that we are all embedded in an ancient knowledge that transcends the individual, and is transmitted across people, and from generation to generation, at a microcosmic level. By considering memory as an individual and as a collective medium, Matsubara seeks an open framework where the personal and the universal are interwoven.
His works inspire a commitment of time to stop motion, be still and behold, and contemplate. With minimal means, he provides us with esthetic excitation, and mindful moments, and creates immersive environments where the poetic and the noetic synchronize. His works generate a conscious awareness of the present moment, which needs to be experienced and shared.
OLGA KORPER GALLERY Toronto 2022. Video: Ken Matsubara.
LINKS
kenmatsubara.com
instagram.com
vimeo.com
- 1All quotes by Ken Matsubara are based on discussions for the text in 2019/2020, unless other stated.
- 2Andrei Tarkovsky: Sculpting in Time. Translation: Kitty Hunter-Blair. Texas Press Austin/TX.us 1986. Page 120.
- 3Nitin Kumar: Color Symbolism in Buddhist Art. February 2002.
URL https://www.exoticindiaart.com/article/colors/ >> 14 January 2020.
- 4Online Etymology Dictionary: Mantra. No author, no date given.
URL https://www.etymonline.com/word/mantra >> 20 December 2019.
- 5Ken Matsubara: Repetition Book: Kamakura Beach. No date given.
URL http://www.kenmatsubara.com/book11.html >> 12 March 2020.
- 6Jan Assmann: Communicative and Cultural Memory. Published first in Berlin / New York 2008.
URL https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdok/1774/1/Assmann_Communicative_and_cultural_memory_2008.pdf >> 2 August 2020.