Mainichi
CURATED ARTCAST
Carlos Maciá, Thierry Fournier, Román Torre
Curator: Pau Waelder
This selection is part of series inspired by the concept of the infra-ordinary, introduced by writer Georges Perec in a 1973 text in which he stated “what speaks to us, seemingly, is always the big event, the untoward, the extra-ordinary” and called for paying attention to “what happens every day and recurs every day: the banal, the quotidian, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the infra-ordinary…” In Japanese, the word mainichi can be translated as “everyday” and refers to the ordinary, be it the activities that are carried out every day to the daily newspapers. Traveling allows us to discover new places, but also connects to the everyday in a manner that makes it extraordinary: when we visit a foreign land or city for the first time, even an ordinary activity such as going to grab a coffee or taking the subway can become memorable. A massive and exotic city to the eyes of a Westerner, Tokyo has captivated the imagination of many artists and filmmakers. This selection focuses on the work of three artists who have explored the infra-ordinary in the Japanese metropolis by developing different approaches to a particular cinematic language.
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Pau Waelder
Art critic and curator, researcher in contemporary art and new media.
PhD in Information and Knowledge Society, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and Bachelor in Art History from the University of Barcelona. He has developed his career with a continuing interest in contemporary art and digital art, which he has explored from different perspectives: curator, critic, academic researcher and also working with contemporary art galleries.
Carlos Maciá
Swimming Pool
The serene ambience of a swimming pool that the artist used on daily basis during his three-month stay in Tokyo inspired him to record this video that focuses on the architecture of a secluded space. In a city known for its massive population, the lack of any human presence allows the camera to explore the minute details of the pool, following a ray of sunlight that traversed the space at different times of the day. Through this observation of what would usually go unnoticed, Macià explores the two main subjects of his work: painting and architecture.
Carlos Maciá
Shimokitazawa
A sudden summer storm while walking around the district of Shimokitazawa in Tokyo inspired Carlos Macià to record this video with his pocket camera, as the storm went by. An unscripted scene, it is apparently uneventful yet somehow mesmerizing. The artist states that he drew inspiration from the long take of a house door in the film Caché (Michael Haneke, 2005) and the daily photographs of a street corner in Brooklyn taken by one of the characters in the film Smoke (Wayne Wang, 1995). Its improvised making, to which testify the format and resolution of the video, speaks of the beauty of the everyday and suggests countless narratives.
Carlos Maciá
Artist
Carlos Maciá (Lugo, Spain. 1977) lives and works in Madrid, Spain. He graduated in Fine Arts studying between the UPV. Polytechnic University of Valencia and the UCM. Complutense University of Madrid. He has exhibited regularly since 1998. The most important individual exhibitions have been; A necesidade da cor. Luis Seoane Foundation. A Coruña, Spain (2017), Brea Flúor. Luis Adelantado Gallery. Valencia, Spain (2016), Cidade Cinza. Sala Projeto Fidalga. Sao Paulo, Brazil (2015), 249 Litros. MARCO. Vigo, Spain (2015), Pavillon Suisse. Fondation Suisse. Paris, France (2013) or ST. Provisória. Carpe Diem, Arte e Pesquisa. Lisbon, Portugal (2011). And the most important group exhibitions have been; Modelo X Armar. CGAC. Santiago de Compostela, Spain (2017), Casa-Estudio-Calle-Barrio, CentroCentro. Madrid, Spain (2016), El Público. Centro Federico García Lorca. Granada, Spain (2015), Del rombo al cuadrado hay solo dos líneas. Rosa Santos Gallery. Valencia, Spain (2015), Hospitalidad. CGAC. Santiago de Compostela, Spain (2014), On Painting. CAAM. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain (2013) or Sin motivo aparente. CA2M. Móstoles, Spain (2013). He has received around thirty prizes, among which are Honorable Mentions in Generation 2007 of Caja Madrid or ABC 2006. He obtains Grants such as CAM 2008 with destination Japan or the Union FENOSA 2005 to New York, USA. He has also been awarded a grant by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation of New York, USA, during the 2012/13 period. He has participated in numerous artist residences, the most important was Ateliê Fidalga in Sao Paulo, Brazil (2015). His work has been supported by different public institutions, for example; ACE. Spanish Cultural Action (PICE Program 2015, PICE Program 2013), Ministry of Culture of Spain (2011), Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Spain (2011, 2008), Regional Council of Madrid, Spain (2017) or the Madrid City Council (Program of artistic production Matadero 2011). He has made his artistic work compatible with projects for companies such as; Loewe, Swatch, Purificación García, Renault, Legal Music, El País, Goethe Institut, etc.
Thierry Fournier
EX/IF #1 - MORI
Video, HD 16/9, 5’06”, 2014
The EX/IF short videos series were filmed in Japan. They relate situations where the human and urban environment behaves itself like an organism or a machine: the abstract urban flow of Tokyo filmed at night from the top of a tower (#1, Mori), a tennis training with a crowd where each player shouts the description of his action (#2, Service), a panoptic device on a building roof, where the accumulation of CCTV and surveillance sensors seems to be compensated by ambient music (#3, Cool). To account for the spontaneous nature of these phenomena, the videos are rendered without any editing, hence their title which refers to the raw metadata format of digital images.
Thierry Fournier
EX/IF #3 - COOL
Video, HD 16/9, 1’43”, 2014
The EX/IF short videos series were filmed in Japan. They relate situations where the human and urban environment behaves itself like an organism or a machine: the abstract urban flow of Tokyo filmed at night from the top of a tower (#1, Mori), a tennis training with a crowd where each player shouts the description of his action (#2, Service), a panoptic device on a building roof, where the accumulation of CCTV and surveillance sensors seems to be compensated by ambient music (#3, Cool). To account for the spontaneous nature of these phenomena, the videos are rendered without any editing, hence their title which refers to the raw metadata format of digital images.
Thierry Fournier
EX/IF #2 - SERVICE
Video, HD 16/9, 50″, 2014
The EX/IF short videos series were filmed in Japan. They relate situations where the human and urban environment behaves itself like an organism or a machine: the abstract urban flow of Tokyo filmed at night from the top of a tower (#1, Mori), a tennis training with a crowd where each player shouts the description of his action (#2, Service), a panoptic device on a building roof, where the accumulation of CCTV and surveillance sensors seems to be compensated by ambient music (#3, Cool). To account for the spontaneous nature of these phenomena, the videos are rendered without any editing, hence their title which refers to the raw metadata format of digital images.
Thierry Fournier
Artist
Thierry Fournier is a French artist living in the Paris area; he holds an Architecture degree from the Lyon Architecture College. His work forms the hypothesis of a life of things (objects, phenomenas, technologies …) to question the way in which the identity and the limits of the human are replayed in the relations with them. His vocabulary ranges from installations, objects, videos to prints, photographs and performances. He participated in numerous exhibitions in France and abroad, among which 22,48m2 Gallery (Paris, 2018), Le Fresnoy (Tourcoing, 2018), CAPA (Aubervilliers, FR, 2018), Villa Henry (Nice, FR, 2018), Bandjoun Station (Cameroon, 2018), Cité internationale des arts (Paris, FR, 2018), MMCA / Thessaloniki Biennale (2017), Saint-Denis Art and History Museum (2017), ZKM (Karlsruhe 2017-18, 2013), Saarlandisches Künstlerhaus (Saarbrücken, 2017), Strasbourg National Opera (2017) , La Terrasse (Nanterre, 2016), Ars Santa Monica (Barcelone, 2016), Lux Scène nationale de Valence (2015, 2013, 2009), Atsuko Barouh Gallery and Japan French Institute (Tokyo & Kyoto, 2014), New Cinema Festival (Montréal, 2015 and 2013), La Panacée (Montpellier, 2014 and 2013), Renaissance and Fantastic (Lille, 2015 and 2013), Centre Pompidou (Paris, 2011, 2008), etc. He also curates exhibitions, addressing the same questions through collective forms, claiming the transversality of the digital stakes in contemporary art, and developing a specific work about attention, spatiality and temporality. He co-heads the research group Displays at EnsadLab/Ensad (Paris) and Artem Collection at Nancy College of Art, both dedicated to the contemporary forms of exhibitions and public collections.
Román Torre
TOKIO II
Using the data collected by a fitness tracker during his stay in Tokyo over the course of a summer, Román Torre reconstructs his walks in the city using a customized software that pairs the GPS data with images from Google Street View. The result is a generative piece titled Tokyo: Digital Reconstructive Memory (2016). This video is a new version of the same idea, reconstructing several of Torre’s journeys around the city in a frame by frame animation with a new soundtrack. The artwork presents a raw view of the city dictated by the automated systems that collect our personal data and guide us through the urban space.
Román Torre
Artist
My work is not anchored to any particular format, my interests are varied and I try to take the direction that I need on each piece of an more or less intuitively way. I usually use that digital tools intensively and these ones clearly influence all phases of creating my proposals. After a few years traveling around some of the corners and creative possibilities of the use of technology applied to the visual experience, lately I’m especially interested in visual and speculative narratives inspired by digital society, science or sciencie fiction. I like to recreate that kind of situations consciously or unconsciously through installations, devices and other series of artistic formats that allow me to combine technical and visual research, with my interest in contemporary issues surrounding the human being in its technological, scientific and social environment. http://www.romantorre.net/v3/about/
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