Art and
Communication

Fujiko Nakaya has been intensively involved with video since the 1970s. In 1980, she joined the artist collective Video Hiroba and opened SCAN, the first gallery for video in Japan. The video works on view in the exhibition reflect Nakaya's eagerness to experiment with the new portable and video technology. In Pond (1976), she superimposes two images and uses a feedback system that questions the relationship between viewer and viewed through the simultaneity of recording and playback. The video Soji-ji (1979) shows Zen monks reciting sutras and reproduces their collective chanting, which flows in the same rhythm despite individual breath. Her video sculptures in turn play with the viewer's perception. Although the individual monitors of River (1978) always show the same section of the image, the sections combine before our eyes to form a single flowing body of water.