Residency UK
Yuko Mohri
Brairdcast Media: A History of Machine Translation is an exhibition at the Discovery Museum in Newcastle by Yuko Mohri (b. 1980, Tokyo).
The artist’s first international residency and solo exhibition in the UK, and exhibited as part of the AV Festival: Broadcast. Bairdcast Media: A History of Machine Translation, explores the early history of broadcast media in the United Kingdom. It focuses on the work of John Logie Baird, the pioneering inventor of early television, and his “Televisor,” a semi-mechanical analogue television system that utilised a patented mechanical scanning method. In 1925, Baird transmitted the earliest true television images, featuring half-tones of light and shade rather than silhouettes.
Read >> Publication
With access to the original ‘Televisor’ at the National Media Museum in the UK, Mohri created the “Gadget.” This piece incorporates the selenium cells of Baird’s analogue “Televisor” and the Nipkow disk, a mechanical, rotating image-scanning device used by Baird in his original invention. These components have been replaced by CCD sensors from a scanner along with a series of rotating glass discs covered in photographic images of a ventriloquist dummy’s head, reminiscent of ‘Stooky Bill.’ This dummy’s head was used during a broadcast in 1925, marking the first true television picture anyone saw. Mohri’s project playfully explores the journey from Baird’s first TV broadcast in 1925 to the internet and social media networks that now shape our world.
Brairdcast Media: A History of Machine Translation was commissioned and curated by Keith Whittle. It was produced in partnership with AV Festival: Broadcast and the National Media Museum, Bradford with input from Iain Logie-Baird and project assistance from Emma Watson. The project was funded by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, The Japan Foundation and Arts Council England.
Exchange Residency UK-Japan
Mio Shirai
A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling, is a two-person international touring exhibition first staged at the Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art by London-based Singaporean artist Erika Tan (b. 1965, Singapore) and Japanese artist Mio Shirai (b.1962, Kyoto, Japan).
The artists each spent the summer of 2008 in the others country of residence. The research and resulting commissioned film, video and photographic installations form part of The British Councils UK-Japan 2008, and the Japan-UK 150, two major festivals marking the anniversary of trade and cultural links between the two countries. The commissioned works subsequently toured to BankART 1929, NYK, Yokohama in 2009.
A Gift to Those… takes its title from the life story of one of the earliest known explorers, Ibn Battuta. In 1325 the Moroccan Battuta began exploring the limits of the known world and spent 30 years travelling some 75,000 miles, gathering knowledge about cultures and countries other than his own. Battuta dictated the story of his travels to a fellow scholar, which took the title ‘A Gift to Those…’ and also known as simply ‘The Journey’.Ibn Battuta’s travels significantly contribute to our understanding of medieval history, geography, and intercultural interactions. His adventures inspire scholars, historians, and travellers alike, highlighting the human curiosity and thirst for knowledge transcending time and borders.
The two artists followed in such footsteps creating works that combine observation with speculation, whilst examining our ability to comprehend the world through travel, exploration, and cross-cultural comparison. Allusions to the historical and the symbolic recur throughout the exhibition, reflecting back or forth in time to understand the present.
Miho Shirai’s short films are imbued with an enigmatic and absurd sensibility and suspense. They retell traditional stories and myths for a mature audience. To borrow the artist’s own words, her work seems to “wander from the right path”. Shirai’s work Forever Afternoon is based on this event and the imaginary story Alice in Wonderland. Alice, played by Shirai herself, symbolises the delegates who traveled through the northeast part of England 150 years ago and brought back different modes of thinking to Japan. The scene where Alice says to March Hare “that’s not very ‘civil’ of you” echoes the purpose of the delegates’ visit to England, which was to learn from European civilization. Shirai’s photography work visualizes the links established by these comparisons between Lewis Carroll’s theory and linguistic game, while her drawings reveal the virtuosity of her imaginative processes.
Read >> Website
A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling was co-curated and produced by Keith Whittle and Alistair Robinson, in partnership with BankART 1929, and in association with P3 art and environment and The Graduate School of Film and New Media, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music.
Residencies and exhibitions generously supported by The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, The Japan Foundation, The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, Arts Council England and Japan 150.
Residency Japan
Sybille Neumeyer
German artist Sybille Neumeyer presents the familiar – spaces and contexts but shifts our perceptions of such through an investigation of a proposition, or situation and discourse in any given work – as much as part of the creative act as interaction with the work. Her work makes visible what is often hidden and engages us with forces that though often seemingly intangible or insurmountable are too important for us to ignore.
Participant in an Artist in Residence at ARCUS International Residency Programme, Ibaraki, Japan, 2013. One of Japan’s longest-established artist residencies. It aims to support promising artists from around the world while promoting art in the Ibaraki area. Three solo residencies and exhibitions were held featuring Sybille Neumeyer (b. 1982, Germany), Nandesha Shanthi Prakash (b. 1970, India), and Rodrigo Gonzalez (b. 1984, Mexico). These exhibitions resulted from their residency at the ARCUS Project, where artworks and projects are developed through encounters with people, the land, and culture. The aim is to create critical spaces that are open and international.
Read >> Arcus AIR 2013
Watch >> Arcus AIR 2013
Neumeyer’s residency proposal tackles some of the key questions about culture and nature and is fertile ground for process and research. Her ARCUS project focused on relations between human and nature. During her stay in Japan, Nuemeyer investigated layers of history, present and future: how do our connections to food, land, environment shift? Observing the local situation and rethinking global structures, I am trying to enable a dialogue between personal experience knowledge and the understanding of our environment beyond a natural bodily perception. Slipping in the role of a silent observer, Nuemeyers interest is articulated in simple and small materials.
The curators for the 2013 programme were Keith Whittle from London, UK, the International Guest Curator, and Naoko Horiuchi from Japan as the Guest Curator.