The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT10) Catalogue

Artists The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 68 (above and opposite) Mujō (The Heartless) (stills) 2019 Four-channel video installation with archival footage: 16:10, colour, black-and-white, sound, 10:29 minutes / Courtesy: The artist and Yoshiko Isshiki Office Linking art and social activism, Hikaru Fujii’s films and videos are the product of extensive field research and nuanced collaboration with a wide range of specialists and community members. Fujii’s works typically document theatrical workshops in which members of various communities respond to and re-enact documentation of moments of history relevant to East Asia from a contemporary perspective. The artist’s workshops have focused on such topics as the firebombing of Tokyo, the educational system of the Japanese empire in its various colonial outposts and the display of Asian peoples as ‘human exhibits’ in world expositions. Since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011, Fujii’s points of departure have included more immediate concerns, particularly the ecological consequences of capitalism. Mujō (The Heartless) 2019 is based on a workshop conducted with Vietnamese students living in Japan as they interpret historical footage of a Japanisation camp in occupied Taiwan. These ‘civilian training centres’, or ‘national dojos’, were established throughout Taiwan during the period of Japanese rule (1895–1945), providing a citizenship education program encompassing language instruction, physical training and religious ritual. During the workshop, the students were encouraged to choreograph and re-enact gestures from a 1943 propaganda film from the collection of the National Museum of Taiwan History. 1 Arrayed across four screens, the performers isolate and sustain certain gestures from the historical material, with different parts of the group variously chanting, praying, marching and ‘spiritually cleansing’ in an overlapping fashion. In filming the workshop, Fujii chose to follow four individual participants closely, focusing on two young women and two young men, as a counterpoint to the group mentality fostered in the historical training camps. Tight cinematography, framed around the heads and shoulders of these lead figures, emphasises individual gestures while obscuring the actions of the remainder of the group. Fujii introduces a further tension between the vibrant, collectively produced actions and his own signature camera shot — a slow pan across project participants, encompassing quiet scenes of discussion or anticipation, which introduces an empathetic, human element to the work. Nevertheless, with its exhausting re-creation of the sheer repetitiveness of the training rituals, many of which appear alien and highly aestheticised, and appropriately bracing sound design, the work remains a discomforting viewing experience. With little net immigration, Japan owes much of its ethnic diversity to the expansion of its borders after the restoration of imperial rule in 1868. Taiwan was absorbed into the empire in 1895, and remained under Japanese control until the end of the Pacific War. Assimilation policies came into place in the mid 1930s, and young men were encouraged to join Japan’s efforts to create a Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, described as a ‘holy war’ in the historical footage. The past decade has seen a significant influx of students from other parts of Asia, with China and Vietnam representing the two largest markets. International students have provided a vital boost to an aging workforce, supplying labour to the retail and service industries while further challenging perceptions of Japan's ethnic and cultural homogeneity. 2 In aligning historical and contemporary moments, Fujii introduces delicate questions at a time when censorship of one sort or another remains a spectre in artistic practice. Yet the artist attests to both a sense of responsibility in the proximity of art to social and political developments, and a belief that art creates a time and space ‘perceptibly different from that of politics or the everyday world’. 3 By working collaboratively, Fujii seeks to avoid imposing his own perspectives, while coming closer to understanding the group dynamics that he considers the real motor of history. Reuben Keehan Endnotes 1 Civilian Training Center in Tainan Prefecture 1943, 35mm film transferred to digital file, black and white, sound, 10 mins, Collection: National Museum of Taiwan History, Tainan. 2 Fujii has also noted that as elsewhere, including Australia, the circumstances of these students have become increasingly precarious with governmental reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic. 3 Hikaru Fujii, quoted in Chie Sumiyoshi, ‘Interview with an award winner’, Tokyo Contemporary Art Award , <https://www. tokyocontemporaryartaward.jp/en/winners/2020-2022/winner01_ interview.html>, viewed May 2021. Hikaru Fujii Born 1976, Tokyo, Japan Lives and works in Tokyo