Gewaltopia - Images of Protest

  • Director: Motoharu JONOUCHI
  • with an introduction by Julian Ross, Centre for World Cinemas, University of Leeds

Gewaltopia: Motoharu JONOUCHI's Images of Protest

Motoharu JONOUCHI was one of the leaders of the legendary VAN Film Science Research Centre where artists enacted cross-disciplinary collaborations to explore the art of film. JONOUICHI recorded artistic events, such as ‘happening’ art, as well as socio-political protests and the spaces around them. We present a selection of his political works.

 

Document 6.15
Japan 1961, 16mm, 19 min, Japanese with English subtitles, German premiere

A living space and film lab set up by JONOUCHI and his collaborators, members of the VAN Film Research Centre were invited to make Document 6.15 for a demonstration event mourning the death of student protestor Michiko KANBA. Led by JONOUCHI, the collaborative film was conceived as part of a performance with slides and live-sounds. For a screening a year later, Jonouchi re-edited the material and invited Yasunao TONE, Takehisa KOSUGI and Toshi ICHIYANAGI, all leading noise-musicians, to perform live alongside performance art by Yoko ONO and Shou KAZAKURA. At one of the screenings, one of the speakers was stolen, causing a riot, but JONOUCHI proceeded to continue with the screening amidst the chaos, reveling in the unplanned intervention.


Gewaltopia Trailer
Japan 1968, 16mm, 12 min, Japanese with English subtitles

The title Gewaltopia Trailer has a dual meaning in the Japanese language; one meaning for the word yokoku (trailer) could mean a compilation of extracts to promote a film, but it can also mean a prediction, a prophecy for the future as a Gewaltopia (violence + utopia). The film accumulates footage from JONOUCHIs earlier films and arranges them in different contexts, a characteristic method for JONOUCHI who often re-edited his films for each screening and provided different soundtracks. The jarring aural atmosphere, exemplary of the emergent noise-music scene, haunts the screen in an oppressive hypnosis and will seduce you into entrancement.


Hi-Red Centre Shelter Plan
Japan 1964, 16mm, 19 min

Art group Hi-Red Centre comprised Genpei AKASEGAWA, Natsuyuki NAKANISHI and Jiro TAKAMATSU, who enacted 'happening'-style performance art in unusual spaces during the early 1960s in Japan. The film is an extremely rare document of one of their early events, where they hired out a room in the Imperial Hotel and invited many friends and professionals in the art scene to participate in the occasion. The performance parodies Cold War fears and the construction of private bomb-shelters, as they diligently measure each guest's weight and proportions in pretence that they are to build human-size shelters for each individual. Key figures of the art scene make an appearance.


Shinjuku Station
Japan 1961, 16mm, 19 min, Japanese with English subtitles

The Shinjuku district was the epicentre of Tokyo’s art scene and the political fever pitch where protests took place on a regular basis during the 1960s. Jonouchi’s compilation footage of the area defies documentary imagery and transforms itself into something altogether more poetically subjective, attempting to capture the chaos of the location through his camerawork and editing. In 1974, Jonouchi projected images of the past onto himself whilst reciting Dada-influenced and virtually inaudible poetry generating a cacophony of images and sounds, drawing from and participating in the maelstrom of political and artistic expression during the era.

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