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About Interdisciplinary Art Festival Tokyo

In 2009 IAFT was founded, as a reincarnation of “Far East Audio Visual Socialization (FEAVS),” to shatter the current norm of fixed spaces and audiences; and to discover artists who create new values going beyond the borders of artistic practice. We feature artists who engage in interdisciplinary practice, creating new values that connect people by introducing more dynamic art festivals that reflects contemporary society. Our purpose is to provide new and free perspectives that enrich people with inspiration – expanding the opportunity for the artists to present their works, by introducing experimental and avant-garde art. We aim for both creators and viewers to mutually share their feed back with each other: build the foundation for new art, and rejuvenate the art scene by featuring innovative artists with clear concepts and new visions.

Curator: Sung Nam Han

Born in Japan and the 3rd Korean resident in Japan.

Sung Nam Han makes works with a semiological approach to languages, colors, sounds and images and often employs abrupt visual effects. Han’s practice expands from video works, to installations and art performances, exploring the social code of human/sex/religion.

Director of Art in Country of Tokyo (AICOT) and Interdisciplinary Art Festival Tokyo (IAFT),Sung Nam Han makes artworks around the theme of “What watching a video is”. Her work includes interactive art installations made using blue screen editing or ‘keying’, and wearable / pocketable video works utilising smartphones, small cameras or monitors. She has also created work using Augmented Reality ‘AR’ technology and performances focused on the concept of “super linear” which combines video, play and dance. Many works have been shown at domestic and international film festivals such as Tampere Film Festival 2019, 32nd Image Forum Festival 2018 [Award of Excellence], Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul, Seoul New Media Festival [Media Artist Prize], Lausanne Underground Film and Music Festival, International Short Film Festival Detmold; acted as the opening performance for Asia Anarchy Alliance at Tokyo wonder site; exhibited at MORI YU GALLERY, Asia Culture Center Creation in Gwangju, and more.

Artist Statement

Timeless video - fall -
2 min 00 sec
2 synchronized videos
2020

Pictures and sounds are chopped for every single pixel and frame, which are the minimum units of video, and reconstructed by shifting its time and space. By shifting the layer of a pixel for each frame and rearranging the pixels of the picture, the fragments of pictures and sounds of all frames are output simultaneously.

This shredded-like image is not just a visual effect. It is a formation of the space where both the beginning and the end of the video are constantly present, and the time does not progress despite the visual changes. There is a continuous time existing in an instant, and the time that should flow irreversibly accumulating infinitely.

The waterfall also seems to be stationary, but it is constantly changing even if there is a lot of water falling. This work will show that time has passed by recomposing the waterfall as a symbol of movement pixel by pixel.

Web as feedback
24hr live streaming
2020

The web page where the live streaming player is pasted is captured as a video and streamed to the same player again. In this work, the website is regarded as a video, and feedback is given via the Internet to make people aware of the difference between viewing the video and the website.

Transformation of moving state
Text by Sung Nam Han

What does it look like when we look at the scenery we usually perceive with digital logic such as pixels? Shuhei Nishiyama's videos and web works make us think about the possibilities of a non-anthropocentric world. The history of painting that the painters whispered to abandon our overly vivid vision -- moving Formalism, moving Suprematism, moving Abstract Expressionism -- his work is not in the history of the moving image, but in the context of the painting.

The transformed object that was not a waterfall may have been a waterfall. The image that seemed to be "like" the waterfall when we kept watching it probably shot the waterfall itself that should have been there at that time.

It is appropriate to think that way, isn’t it?