Standard-definition video (black and white, sound)
Not on view
Created for the first Japanese exhibition dedicated to video art, Video Communication: Do-It-Yourself-Kit, this work documents protests outside the Chisso Corporation headquarters in central Tokyo. Hazardous byproducts from the company’s chemical plants had caused severe mercury poisoning—and, consequently, a neurological disease—in Minamata’s livestock and inhabitants. Nakaya filmed the sit-in with a handheld video camera and installed a battery-powered television monitor on-site, allowing the demonstrators to watch themselves by playing back the recordings of their actions. Nakaya’s experiments with video led to the founding of Video Hiroba, a Tokyo-based collective active between 1972 and 1975.
Signals: How Video Transformed the World, March 5–July 8, 2023
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Guerrilla television
During the 1960s and 1970s, groups of young artists, filmmakers, and activists based in the US and abroad experimented with newly available portable video cameras as an alternative to corporate television broadcasting.
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