Since the 1950s, there has been an active production of experimental film, animation, and video art in Asia. Yet, much of this work has not been consistently conserved or shared with the public due to the lack of accessible archives or organized collections dedicated to its preservation and dissemination.

The conference “The Archival Impulse: Collecting and Conserving the Moving Image in Asia” took place on September 10, 2015 in the The Celeste Bartos Theater at the Museum of Modern Art. Co-organized by Asia Art Archive in America, Collaborative Cataloging Japan, and MoMA’s Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (C-MAP), it brought together archiving initiatives that have emerged in recent years across Asia, presenting an opportunity to rethink and share methods, philosophies, and challenges to archiving moving image and time-based media works. The event is divided into three panels.

In the first panel Developing Collections, Hiroko Tasaka, Farah Wardani, Fang Lu, and moderator Stuart Comer introduce collection strategies and compare archiving techniques at their respective organizations in Japan, Singapore, China, and New York. Keeping in mind the different regional contexts, the panel will explore the following issues: What was the impetus behind the development of these collections? What are the urgencies to which these collections respond? How do these collections expand upon existing art historical narratives? Complicating these questions is the complex nature of moving image and media works, which often blurs the boundary between disciplines and requires ongoing reevaluation of the organizational categories within institutions. Hiroko Tasaka introduces the collecting practice at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, covering 19th century film and film production, film history of Japan and Asia, and international artists of today. Recognizing the discontinuities and missing links in the field of Southeast Asian art historiography, Farah Wardani discusses the collection strategies taken at the National Gallery Singapore Resource Centre, where she serves as Assistant Director. Fang Lu talks about how Video Bureau, an artist-run video archive founded in 2012, structures the archival process, and how this project is situated in the Chinese contemporary art world.

Archiving is never just about collecting and safeguarding materials; it is also about how to share and circulate these materials, and bring them into a rhizomatic network of knowledge. With the rise of digital modes of access, archiving initiatives are faced with a plentitude of possibilities, as well as new challenges, such as the privatization and commodification of information. In the second panel, Opening the Digital Vault, archivists Sen Uesaki, David Smith, Alf Chang, and moderator Ben Fino-Radin explore the transition from a static physical archive to a digital infrastructure that is open, nonlinear, web-like, and constantly evolving. They will also share their experience in emerging technologies, examining different ways to effectively digest, preserve, and distribute media works in the digital age. Taking a cue from the discussions on collecting practices in the first panel, Sen Uesaki reexamines the physical and digital natures of archival and artistic material by questioning its physical existence in the first place, exploring its function as information. David Smith discusses Asia Art Archive’s digital presence and the motivations behind its current restructuring efforts, looking at the relationship between the archivist, the collections, and the public. Alf Chang will introduce the history and archive of ETAT, an ongoing experiment started from 1995 to create an autonomous platform for sharing, interaction, and preservation.

In the third panel, Transforming Stories, Mariam Ghani, Go Hirasawa, Huang Chien-Hung, and moderator Jane DeBevoise discuss research projects that develop out of archival materials. Pointing to diverse sources of information, from personal archives to commercial and state-sponsored media production, these projects represent efforts to expand and add nuance to ways of thinking about history, politics, and collective memory. Mariam Ghani will present What we left unfinished, a long-term research, film, and dialogue project centered around five unfinished films commissioned, produced, and canceled by various iterations of the Afghan state. Go Hirasawa introduces his research, preservation, and curatorial projects focusing on two Japanese filmmakers—Masao Adachi and Motoharu Jonouchi—in order to examine how established narratives about certain works or artists may be reconsidered and reconstructed. Huang Chien-Hung presents Liu Asio’s documentary project that traces the life of an anti-communist hero, proposing a possibility to think of a topological Asia, an Asia not based on geography, nations, or races, but on interrelations between events, media, persons and the production of images.

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As a young designer with ambitions to become an artist, Yokoo frequented events at the Sogetsu Art Center (SAC), where he witnessed memorable performances by the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, who created a painting onstage during what was supposed to be a Q&A session; Yoko Ono, whose “action” consisted of holding her baby; and Nam June Paik, who destroyed a piano. Yokoo also viewed scores of experimental and Surrealist films in the SAC hall. His direct involvement with Sogetsu Art Center in the 1960s came mainly through his poster designs for theater and dance events (Terayama Shuji, Hijikata Tatsumi, and Kara Juro) and for the multimedia symposium “Expose 1968: Nanika itte kure, ima sagasu” (Expose 1968: Say something, I’m trying, 1968). He also designed the cover of a volume of poetry by Mutsuo Takashi that was published by the SAC. In addition to graphic work, Yokoo made experimental animations in collaboration with SAC engineers and musicians such as Akiyama Kuniharu and Ichiyanagi Toshi. Two of these, Anthology No. 1 (1964) and KISS KISS KISS (1964; soundtrack by Akiyama), were screened at the Center’s Sogetsu Cinematheque 11: Animation Festival (September 21–26, 1964).

Yokoo’s posters are highly sought after by museums and collectors. As a result, many have been dispersed in archives and collections. The posters and films presented below highlight Yokoo’s involvement at the Sogetsu Art Center. The material has been selected by archivist Uesaki Sen and film scholar Hirasawa Go, who located and brought together these materials from the Sogetsu Foundation, the National Museum of Art, Osaka, and Aomori Museum of Art. Three works from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art are also included here. They were acquired when the Museum presented a solo exhibition of Yokoo’s work in 1972.

Major highlights of this presentation are the two animations mentioned above, Anthology No. 1 and KISS KISS KISS, shown here for the first time in public in their newly restored state. Hirasawa and Uesaki, during the course of their research for post, discovered the 1960s film reels in storage at the Sogetsu Foundation (the Sogetsu Art Center’s original home) and set about restoring them. The result is the highest quality presentation of these two works since they were first created.

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The SAC’s film activities began in 1957, when Teshigahara Hiroshi and Hani Susumu founded the Cinema 57 group, which screened independent films while also making their own work, Tokyo 1958. The screening activities eventually led to the establishment of the Art Theater Guild, which specialized in showing art films. In November 1960, the animator Kuri Yoji and others held the screening event “Three-Person Animation.” This was followed in July 1961 by the start of the Sogetsu Cinematheque, which presented experimental films, documentaries, and works for television. In February 1966, the Sogetsu Cinematheque invited Henri Langlois of the Cinémathèque Française to curate the International Avant-Garde Film Festival, which presented historical and contemporary experimental films from around the world and influenced many artists in Japan. Underground Cinema, a festival presented in June of that same year, introduced experimental works by filmmakers such as Iimura Takahiko, Kanesaka Kenji, and Stan Brakhage and led to the popularization of the term “underground cinema” in Japan. In November 1967, the first Sogetsu Film Art Festival—renamed “Film Art Festival 1968” the following year and canceled in 1969 due to political protests—served to expand the space in which established and emerging filmmakers working in experimental and avant-garde genres actively shared their work.

The following section presents ephemera, posters, and film excerpts related to eight representative film events at the Sogetsu Art Center. Do you have information that you would like to share about these films and events? Are there materials that you would like to see added to this feature? Please share your thoughts and links in the discussion area.

Three-Person Animation (1960)

Royal Belgian Film: Special Award-Winning World Experimental Film (1964)

Animation Festival (1964)

Underground Cinema: Japan and U.S.A. (1966)

1st Sogetsu Experimental Film Festival (1967)

Expose 1968: Say Something I’m Trying (1968)

Tokyo Film Art Festival (1968)

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