Last day repeat screenings
May 31, 2021
Join us on e-flux Video & Film on Monday, May 31 for the repeat screenings and wrap of Faraway, So Close, a six-part program of films and interviews put together by artist Koki Tanaka as the sixth edition of the online series Artist Cinemas.
Faraway, So Close has featured films by Back and Forth Collective (Mei Homma, Natsumi Sakamoto, Asako Taki), Jennifer Clarke, Fionn Duffy, and Sarah McWhinney; Yuki Iiyama; Yoi Kawakubo; Darcy Lange; Bruce and Norman Yonemoto; and Xiaowen Zhu; and interviews with the filmmakers and texts by Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck; Francesca Girelli; Rika Hiro; LawrenceMcDonald; Akira Rachi; and Julian Ross.
The films will stream through Monday, May 31, 11:59pm EST. Watch them here.
Artist Cinemas presents Faraway, So Close
Convened by Koki Tanaka
Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, Framed, 1989
8:04 minutes
With an interview with Bruce Yonemoto conducted by Rika Hiro
Yoi Kawakubo, Waiting for Diogenes, 2020
74 minutes
With an interview with You Kawakubo conducted by Julian Ross
Xiaowen Zhu, Oriental Silk, 2015
30 minutes
With an interview with Xiaowen Zhu conducted by Francesca Girelli
Darcy Lange, Studies of Teaching in Four Oxfordshire Schools, 1977
31:59 minutes
With an excerpt from Lawrence McDonald’s essay “Exacting Reproduction: Darcy Lange’s Work Studies in Schools”
Back and Forth Collective (Mei Homma, Natsumi Sakomoto, and Asako Taki), Jennifer Clarke, Fionn Duffy, and Sarah McWhinney, Speculative Fiction: Practicing Collectively, 2020
25:45 minutes
With an interview with the collective conducted by Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck
Yuki Iiyama, Old Long Stay, 2020
170:20 minutes
With an interview with Yuki Iiyama conducted by Akira Rachi
About the program
How human can our lives really be when infection-prevention measures do not allow us to even mourn the deaths of our loved ones? I, you, we each have only one life to live. One birth, one death.
Ironically enough, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has proved that the world is a single, globally connected community. Infiltrating one person after another, the virus reveals what it means to be human as it circles the globe. Humans are beings that touch each other. We make friends, make love, occasionally make enemies, and have built our societies, our communities, and our families through contact-based communication. At the same time, the virus divides those societies that humanity has built up and exposes the problems within them. Over the past year we have fallen into despair while clinging onto hope. Although we have seen the utopias of mutual aid and care that can arise out of disasters, in some cases, widespread anxiety brought on by the uncertainty about where things are headed has also been turned into hatred toward others.
All kinds of concepts are getting thrown about now—from tele-working to social distancing to the new normal. Spread by epidemiologists and governments, these concepts can at times flatten the view of the world. The world has been overrun by the abstractions of concepts and numbers while our irreplaceable, individual lives go neglected. Yet, care for the other can make an abstract world more concrete.
The six videos presented in this program all either examine concrete life or show us how to recover it. What we need most right now is not the spread of more abstractions about the pandemic, but to look attentively at your concrete life, and then the concrete life of another. (Read the full text here.)
Faraway, So Close is a program convened by Koki Tanaka as part of the series Artist Cinemas. It ran for six weeks from April 9 through May 31, 2021, screening a new film each week accompanied by an interview and text with the filmmaker(s) conducted by invited guests.
Faraway, So Close wraps on Monday, May 31 with a repeat screening of all six films presented in the program, streaming till 11:59pm EST. Watch the films here.
About Artist Cinemas
Artist Cinemas is a new e-flux platform focusing on exploring the moving image as understood by people who make film. It is informed by the vulnerability and enchantment of the artistic process—producing non-linear forms of knowledge and expertise that exist outside of academic or institutional frameworks. It will also acknowledge the circles of friendship and mutual inspiration that bind the artistic community. Over time this platform will trace new contours and produce different understandings of the moving image.
For more information, contact program [at] e-flux.com.