As a way to highlight the video letter exchange format that accompanied the rise of video discussed in the Community of Images exhibition, CCJ and JASGP commissioned a group of four contemporary video artists to produce today’s video letter exchange. A nod to the Video Letter (1983), a remarkable 64-minute compilation ­exchange of video letters that took place between video artists Shuji Terayama and Shuntaro Tanikawa, the contemporary exchange is led by Philadelphia-based artist Nadia Hironaka, who organized an exchange with US and Japan-based artists Shinpei Takeda (San Diego), Hikaru Suzuki (Tokyo) and Yu Araki (Kyoto). Before the screening, Philadelphia-based Japanese-Taiwanese artist Eiko Fan will perform her Live Wood Sculpture.

CCJ is pleased do collaborate with Asia Art Archive in America to present the Video Letter Exchange made by four contemporary artists led by Philadelphia-based artist Nadia Hironaka, who organized an exchange with US and Japan-based artists Shinpei Takeda (San Diego), Hikaru Suzuki (Tokyo) and Yu Araki (Kyoto).

Bring the family to a fun low tech video art-making session! Inspired by the works from the exhibition, we will be making immersive light installations and crowdsourced animation. All you need to bring is your imagination and your smartphone. Be prepared to collaborate, draw, build, and play. Artists Aki Torii and Tad Sare will lead this workshop.

ご家族でこの夏楽しいローテク映像アート作成セッションに参加してみませんか？展覧会の作品からインスピレーションを得て、臨場感あふれる光のインスタレーションや、クラウドソースのアニメーションを制作します。持ち物は、あなたの想像力とスマートフォンだけです。コラボレーションしたり、絵を描いたり、組み立てたりして楽しみましょう！

As part of the opening events for the Community of Images exhibition, JASGP and CCJ are hosting a one-day symposium at University of Pennsylvania that is being co-presented by the Center for East Asian Studies and the Asian American Studies Program. In addition to presenting original research from the curatorial team that shaped the exhibition, this symposium will feature a roundtable panel related to  Asian American independent film and media arts movements that developed during the same time period among Asian diasporic communities in the US. Exploring these contemporaneous Asian American filmmakers and video artists, the objective is not to link them or their works directly to the Japanese artists, but rather discuss in parallel as contemporaries who emerged from the same generation and were simultaneously navigating questions of race and self-identity through the context of media.

Confirmed presenters include:
Ann Adachi-Tasch (Collaborative Cataloguing Japan)
Rob Buscher (University of Pennsylvania)
E. Samantha Cheng (Independent Producer)
Peter X. Feng (University of Delaware)
Go Hirasawa (Meiji-Gakuin University)
Nina Horisaki-Christens (Getty Research Institute)
Julian Ross (Leiden University)

Join us in this screening with curator Suzanne Delehanty who organized Video Art, the international video art survey exhibition in 1975 at the Institute of Contemporary Art. Co-curators of the screening program, Ann Adachi-Tasch, Nina Horisaki-Christens, and Julian Ross will be present.

In this special screening within the Community of Images exhibition with artist and musician Yasunao Tone, curator Go Hirasawa will organize a program featuring Tone’s film and film scores. Yasunao Tone will be at the screening.

Please join in this special panel discussion co-organized by the Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation and Collaborative Cataloging Japan, with speakers Barbara London, Suzanne Delahanty, Rebecca Cleman, and Nina Horisaki-Christens. The discussion will revolve around the Video Art Talk Shows, a program series organized by Shigeko Kubota at the Anthology Film Archives in the mid-1970s. In the Community of Images exhibition, documentation of two events were digitized and will be presented.

In partnership with Twelve Gates Arts. and part of the Community of Images exhibition, the screening and artist talk The Curfew Lookbook with Shehrezad Maher will be presented on Tuesday, June 4, 2024, from 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM at Twelve Gates Arts, 106 N 2nd St, Philadelphia, PA. 

Join us in this discussion between artists Idalia Vasquez and Sinta Storms about their process of making art as migrants to the US, and how they define their expressive forms within the multiple racial identities they carry. In the conversation, we will explore how the term ‘diaspora’ functions when thinking about the locality of their practices.