"Rituals are common to all human societies. A fixed performance of words, actions and gestures, they exist in everything from funeral rites and inherited traditions to even the smallest routines that punctuate our daily lives. This year, Art Week Tokyo's video programme, titled Rituals, or the Absurd Beauty of Prayers, is centred around this subject. The ten chosen works were handpicked by Keiko Okamura, a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo."
"Many works explore funerary customs, such as those by Hiroko Okada, who eerily reimagines the role of the okuribito. In Japanese custom, this person is responsible for cleaning and preparing the deceased for their final journey. Using AR and VR technology, Okada invited participants to become their own okuribito, with her resulting video documenting the first day of the project."
""Video has the ability to simplify, and appeal directly to emotions," she says. "Short clips capture our attention instantly, but they are also endlessly churned out... In contrast, these video works present situations too intricate for words-layers of overlapping time and feeling, in their full complexity.""
Art Week Tokyo presents a video programme titled Rituals, or the Absurd Beauty of Prayers that probes rituals from daily routines to funeral rites. Ten works curated by Keiko Okamura will screen on a loop at the SMBC East Tower as a gently woven compilation. Several pieces examine funerary customs: Hiroko Okada uses AR and VR to invite participants to act as their own okuribito and documents the project's first day; Maiko Jinushi films power shovels removing gravestones when grave contracts expire and descendants do not pay. The programme emphasizes video’s capacity to convey layered time and emotion.
Read at The Art Newspaper - International art news and events
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