Date:
Location:
Yuriko Furuhata, McGill University
Expo '70 in Japan: Art, Surveillance, Multimedia
This talk begins with the uncanny parallel of two scenes: the multimedia security control room, and the artistic use of multiple screens in cinema and video. Focusing on the historical confluence of art, architecture and information technology around the time of Expo ’70 – Japan’s first World’s Fair that took place in 1970 – this talk will situate artistic practices of expanded cinema in Japan within the institutional, political, and technological context of the Cold War. Highlighting the utopian investments in the dual logic of immersion and surveillance supported by increasingly networked systems of communication, I will examine how Japanese artists and security agencies collectively participated in the formation of what I call the “control room aesthetic” in late 1960s Japan.
This event is co-sponsored by the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies