EAS355H1

The Art and Politics of Video in Japan

This course will study the history of Japanese video art, beginning in the 1960s (when the Sony Corporation released the first portable video cameras) leading to the contemporary moment in which recording devices (phones, surveillance cameras, computers) and new distribution models (the Internet, public projections) abound. Video art is neither cinema nor television, and its early history is marked by some of the most radical artistic and political experiments in the history of modern Japan. This course will focus on the aesthetics and politics of experimental video with an eye on its global flows and Japan’s central role in its development.