PARASOPHIA 京都国際現代芸術祭2015

Yoshimasa Ishibashi (石橋義正)
b. 1968 in Kyoto, Japan; based in Kyoto
www.ishi-pro.com

Work in the exhibition
Longing of Bodhi, 2015
Short film (viewer in motion) with multi-channel video, multi-channel sound, two dolls, LED lights, etc.
Approx. 20 min.–1 hr.

See all installation views at higher resolution: www.flickr.com/photos/parasophia/sets/72157656452130779

Yoshimasa Ishibashi studied filmmaking at the Royal College of Art in London as an exchange student from the Kyoto City University of Arts Graduate School’s Concept and Media Planning Course. His films include I Wanna Drive You Insane (Kuruwasetaino; 1997), which was widely acclaimed for being a “high-quality B-class film,” and Milocrorze: A Love Story (2011), a feature film starring Takayuki Yamada in three different roles. Outside of Japan and as a director, he is perhaps best known for his surreal comedy sketches featuring “The Fuccons.” Ishibashi is also the leader of the Kyoto-based artist collective Kyupi Kyupi, who bring together art, music, and video in their artworks and performances. Since their participation in the group exhibition Visions of the Body (Kyoto, 1999), Kyupi Kyupi have been invited to show their multidisciplinary and extremely vibrant, radical works in museums and international exhibitions around the world. Ishibashi’s latest project, MatchAtria (a collaboration with the dancer and choreographer Yui Kawaguchi), was presented at the Kyoto Art Center in April 2014 after premiering and touring in Europe.
At Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture 2015, Ishibashi presents his new work Longing of Bodhi. In this interactive video piece, the viewer moves through the gallery and cinematically experiences the travails of a woman flung hither and thither between nightmare and joy, corporeality and desire. The work is simultaneously a short film that the viewer inputs by physically moving through the exhibition space (which acts as a motion picture apparatus), an installation (a spatial development of a motion picture apparatus), and an experimental mechanism that permits erroneous or arbitrary interpretation by the viewer and elicits thought about the nature of film itself.

• Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art