{"id":5639,"title":"Annotations 3--Frequencies: Investigations into Culture, History and Technology: Identity in the Video of Takahiko Iimura","kind":"biblio","url":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/annotations-3-frequencies-investigations-culture-history-and-technology-identity-video-takahiko-iimu","version":"b9b3fb594427b29dc4eabdc0f1ddb478c1d9989763424451b1f090f5073875d4","modified":"2026-09-13T21:52:04.4434246+00:00","credits":[{"role":"Author","name":"Takahiko Iimura"}],"authorKeys":["Iimura, Takahiko"],"subjects":["Texts by Author"],"metadata":[{"label":"Publisher","value":"Institute of International Visual Arts","url":null},{"label":"Place","value":"London, England","url":null},{"label":"ETC archive","value":"ETC1137","url":null}],"citations":{"page":"\u0022Annotations 3--Frequencies: Investigations into Culture, History and Technology: Identity in the Video of Takahiko Iimura.\u0022 Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2026. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/annotations-3-frequencies-investigations-culture-history-and-technology-identity-video-takahiko-iimu.","publication":"Takahiko Iimura. Annotations 3--Frequencies: Investigations into Culture, History and Technology: Identity in the Video of Takahiko Iimura. Institute of International Visual Arts. 1998.","risUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/citation/5639.ris"},"links":[{"label":"Scanned document","url":"https://archive.org/details/ETC1137","relationship":"linked document; contents not retrieved","contentType":"application/pdf"}],"sections":[{"name":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"characters":24425},{"name":"summary","source":"existing VHP generated summary","generated":true,"characters":709}],"content":{"section":"body","source":"VHP record body","generated":false,"text":"\u0022Takahiko Iimura at the Lux; film, video, cd-rom, installation.\u0022 [1] Recently, I made two video works which concentrate on the notion of identity, language and cultural politics. The first one was made in 1994 and the second in 1996, and they are related to each other in form and content. The first work is entitled AIUEONN Six Features. \u0027A\u0027, \u0027I\u0027, \u0027U\u0027, \u0027E\u0027, and \u0027O\u0027 are Japanese vowels; although the final \u0027NN\u0027 is not a vowel, it sounds like one and comes at the end of the phonetic Japanese alphabet. There are three different types of character systems in Japanese: one, called kanji in Japanese, originated in China and the other two, called hiragana and katakana, are both phonetic alphabets which were developed in Japan. Katakana is used primarily for foreign words, but hiragana, which originated in the tenth century, is an important component of Japanese along with kanji. I use hiragana simultaneously with the Roman alphabet in this video. The five vowels are quite basic in both Japanese and Indo-European languages, but their order is different: we say \u0022A-I-U-E-O\u0022, and you say \u0022A-E-I-O-U\u0022. The Japanese phonetic alphabet is based upon these vowels. Vowels play a much bigger role in Japanese than in Indo-European languages. My name Iimura consists of two words: \u0027II\u0027, the first, contains two vowels, and \u0027MURA\u0027, the second, contains both vowels and consonants. The Chinese characters in my name translate as \u0027Rice Village\u0027. I have worked in various media including experimental cinema since 1960 and video art since 1970. Now in the 1990s, I have started to work with computers. My work typically involves computer manipulation used to distort images of my face which are first recorded on video, then recreated by computer. Concerning content, I have frequently had a problem dealing with issues of identity in my work, particularly in a Western context. I have less of a problem in Japan where one\u0027s identity is given naturally and it is not questioned. I first went to the United States in the mid-1960s and have worked in and out of that country ever since. In the US identity is not given, but something that one must personally create. Such identity comes about not only through one\u0027s actions, but also via the language one speaks which attracts special attention because one presents oneself through it. In my work I have examined both language and media simultaneously. I produced a series of short video pieces concerning my identity, Self Identity (1972-74) and Double Identities (1979) -- each are one to several minutes in length. In Self Identity I appear in the monitor and in Double Identities in the monitor within another monitor verbally questioning my own identity. For instance, in the first piece of Self Identity, I alternately say: \u0022I am Takahiko Iimura\u0022 and \u0022I am not Takahiko Iimura.\u0022 In the former statement, my voice is synchronised with the image and therefore identified. The latter is done with an off-screen voice and therefore is not identified with the image. At the end, I use both synchronised and off-screen voices to say: \u0022I am not Takahiko Iimura\u0022, which sounds like \u0022I am not not Takahiko Iimura.\u0022 (It is actually \u0022I I am am not not Takahiko Takahiko Iimura Iimura.\u0022) This is equivalent to a positive: \u0022I am Takahiko Iimura.\u0022 Thus, the double negative becomes a positive. The same logic applies in the first section of Double Identities, but the picture is different because there are two representations of the same face, one in the monitor within the monitor, the other is outside the monitor within. Thus, it is a conversational piece between two images of same person. I am not only questioning the identity of who says \u0027I\u0027 in relation to the picture, but also the \u0027I\u0027 which is heard by others. Roland Barthes once wrote, \u0027The \u0022I\u0022 of the one who writes is not the same as the \u0022I\u0022 which is read by \u0022thou.\u0022\u0027[2] I could have said this in a similar manner: \u0027The \u0022I\u0022 of the one who says \u0022I\u0022 is not same as the \u0022I\u0022 which is heard by \u0022thou.\u0022\u0027 A I U E O NN Six Features is a video piece in which I have simultaneously examined the relationship of words in the Japanese and Roman alphabets with the sound and the image. The words are the basic letters of vowels which, as I said before, do not have any particular meaning. They are visual representations, yet the form of Japanese hiragana and the Roman alphabet is quite different. The sound on the video comes from an undistorted voice which is initially synchronised with the image, but is later desynchronised. Of the three elements - letters, sound and image, which are distortions of the \u0027real\u0027 image made by a computer (a System G developed by Sony) - the image is the most appealing. I produced the first version of A I U E O NN in 1982 using exactly the same structure but without a computer or picture distortion. The computerised version is much more playful and entertaining. Though the images appear to dominate the piece, the sound works differently. The de-synchronised voices may initially puzzle the audience, but the repetition shows that de-synchronisation was done intentionally. We, as viewers, are conditioned to experience a voice synchronised with an image, but when a film is dubbed into a foreign language, unsynchronised voices commonly exist. For example, when an American western is shown on Japanese television, John Wayne \u0027speaks\u0027 Japanese, and likewise Toshiro Mifune \u0027speaks\u0027 English on American television. Such manipulation is not just technical as cultural politics is also at work, since I see Wayne more often on Japanese television than Mifune on American television. A I U E O NN Six Features, has been exhibited in several different formats: as an installation, a performance piece and a single tape. When it has been used as an installation, different shapes could be created depending upon the arrangement of the video monitors: several monitors could be placed in a horizontal line, or along three walls in a room, or in a vertical circle on a wall with a rectangular projection screen at the center. Finally, an interactive version can be assembled in which a viewer can select, via computer, an image which is then projected onto the center of a screen. In a performance context, I would stand next to the screen where the image is projected, and utter the voice which corrects the \u0027wrong\u0027 pronunciation; the real and the projected images, side by side, are contrasted and a \u0027correct\u0027 and a \u0027wrong\u0027 pronunciation occur simultaneously. One may wonder what is \u0027real\u0027 or \u0027correct\u0027. Performance allows me to move between live and recorded versions, and gives me a chance to return to the place where the image originates. I have two versions on single tape; one two and a half minutes long and the other is seven minutes long. The shorter version consists of only the voice synchronised with two sets of images; the first set using Japanese hiragana, the second the Roman alphabet. There is no de-synchronisation of image and sound as the intention is only to show the difference between languages in the Japanese and Roman alphabets, in relation to the image and voice. This version is, in fact, quite straight forward and effective. However, many people who do not know Japanese initially have trouble understanding the structure of the de-synchronised version. Its structure is based on the permutation of the six vowels alternating between Japanese hiragana and the Roman alphabet, providing a gap between image and voice. This may create confusion, albeit an organized confusion. This concept of a gap between image and sound is related to Jacques Derrida\u0027s seminal work Differance (with \u0027a\u0027), in which the difference between \u0027Image\u0027, \u0027Letter\u0027 and \u0027Voice\u0027 works in space and movement.[3] The differences between the images and sounds become apparent with the delays between the letters and the voices in the installation. Although this video was made before I learned about Derrida\u0027s Differance, I find his thinking to be quite close to my work, so I feel it could be considered as a realisation of the concepts he discusses in Differance. My second video is called Performance: A I U E O NN Six Features. It is not a document of a performance, but a recreated version of the performance of A I U E O NN Six Features. I would not call it a performance video but rather a video performance in which the idea of the performance is realised in electronic terms. In the performance of A I U E O NN Six Features, there is a gap or \u0027differance\u0027 in the image and sound, which I have tried to \u0027correct\u0027 in the performance through image and sound. I used my \u0027live\u0027 voice simultaneously with a pre-recorded voice, so one hears two voices at once. On my real face - the image - I wear yellow make-up (as obvious reason as Japanese) but it is undistorted even though it intermingles with the computerised one. In one section, both images flicker aggressively and an electronic chemistry, which ends with an all-yellow real face, occurs. I use the word \u0027real\u0027 to describe my face, but this is questionable as it is painted yellow. My concern here is the problem of multi-culturalism in video. I made the piece bilingually using both the Japanese and Roman alphabets, but it is not a translation of Japanese into the Roman alphabet in any ordinary sense. I consider both languages to be original and visually unique-concepts which do not translate. Multi-culturalism is based on the multiplicity of culture; it regards each culture as a unique entity which may not be replaced with another culture. This applies to language as well, although it does not mean to deny the necessity of translation. Just as a vowel has no meaning by itself, so there is no need to translate it and I try to let a vowel speak a universal significance by itself. A letter or a character may be national or regional, but a sound is more universal. So even if one does not understand Japanese, one can immediately recognise the voice and relate it to an image. Image is crucial in these videos as one sees an Asian face and features. The intention of the distorted image is not only to create a visual shock, but to emphasise the cultural specificity of the face; one reviewer compared the face with \u0027classical images from Japanese woodcuts.\u0027[4] I was not particularly conscious of any cultural background at the time of making this video, but the result might imply that I had unconsciously, yet willingly revealed it working with the computer. (The following is an edited transcript of the question and answer session which followed the above presentation at the Frequencies\u0027 seminar series which took place at SOAS, University of London in November 1996.) Moderator: Thank you very much. I think there are some very important points about language and cultural politics to which you pointed, so people would like to ask some questions and comment about the materials. Q: You mentioned earlier, before the presentation of the video, that you would like to link it with identity. I was just interested in where identity came in with the visual presentation. Takahiko: Before this piece I made videos, one called Self Identity, another called Double Identities. As I said earlier, these are pieces I made in the United States. In both pieces I say, facing the camera, \u0022I am Takahiko Iimura\u0022 and \u0022I am not Takahiko Iimura\u0022, contradictory statements like Zen Koans. In other pieces from the same work I also say \u0022You are Takahiko Iimura\u0022 and \u0022You are not Takahiko Iimura\u0022. Someone once called this similar to when Rene Magritte said, \u0022This is not a pipe\u0022 in one of his paintings. That is, my image is not my real self, but also my point is that by rotating the pronouns from \u0022I\u0022 to \u0022You\u0022 to \u0022He / She\u0022 and combining them with affirmatives and negatives, I can relate them to the camera\u0027s point of view. In fact I made an installation called I=YOU=HE / SHE by equating all the pronouns. In this piece three cameras are set up from three different points of view: front, profile, and rear view ","offset":0,"nextOffset":12000,"totalCharacters":24425,"complete":false},"rightsUrl":"https://www.videohistoryproject.org/terms-service"}