STATEMENT

Creating experimental films and installations, I approach my practice by focusing on the biological and physical sensations of people communicating mainly through sign language and other visual means. I have expanded the range of my activities in recent years, engaging with forms including theater.
　　I have no concept of sound, being unable to hear sound lower than 100 decibels with either ear, and was raised in Japan in a deaf family,* the members of which all had different identities and degrees of hearing loss. I am bilingual, communicating in Japanese Sign Language and Japanese.
　　Although my works take a variety of forms, including moving images and performance, they all share the basic concept of exploring the eloquence of the human body and space on the one hand, and the invisible oppression that exists behind them on the other.
　　I am released several silent works, including LISTEN, which conceptualized the music of the Deaf community while questioning the definition of music as a whole, and The Tanaka Family, in which I captured in visual form both the individuality and universality of the bodies of deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing actors. By providing devices that make visible the phenomena raised by my works, and while committing to a sustained exploration of our commonalities and differences, I seek to bring to light the social structures that underlie our world.
　　The word “post-truth" received much currency in 2016 as symbolic of our age. It is defined as a state in which emotional appeals have greater political impact than objective facts, and inspired the related phrase “alternative facts.” Technological advances have made it easier to create fake videos. Even documentaries can be thought of as narrative works, made in accordance with the intentions of the person who recorded what they saw and produced the film. When watching a documentary, what in it are we seeing as “truth”?
　　The work displayed here takes place at 5005, a workplace for sign language users co-managed by me in Nishi-Nippori, Tokyo. It delves into new possibilities for moving images by juxtaposing repeating images of the same moment with images that depict a single, unique moment and never repeat, and explores the reactions that occur when the images interact with their audience.
*Deaf family: A family in which all members are deaf.