Shigeko Kubota: Two-way Communication
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Anthology Film Archives
May 17-18, 2026 “Shigeko Kubota: Two-way Communication” presents a selection of films and videos made or programmed by Japanese-American artist-curator Shigeko Kubota (久保田 成子, 1937-2015) during her time as video curator at Anthology Film Archives from 1974 to 1983. The series encompasses three separate programs. The first – “Video is Vengeance of Vagina” – is drawn from the works that Kubota programmed at Anthology, and highlights women video artists whose practices examine sexuality from feminist perspectives. The second program – “Tokyo-New York Video Express” – traces a 1974 screening and performance event curated by Kubota in Tokyo in collaboration with the Japanese video collective Video Hiroba. The event featured works by Japanese and American artists, highlighting both shared and distinct cultural conditions across artistic and technological communities in the U.S. and Japan. The third program – “Video as Two-way Communication” – presents Kubota’s own video works, situating her curatorial work as an extension of her own bold and whimsical character, and reflecting her close collaboration with the New York avant-garde and experimental film and video community during the 1970s and 80s. The series will also include a special panel discussion – featuring Barbara London, Bob Harris, and Lumi Tan – that will reflect on Kubota’s legacy and the ways she used video as a bridge for community building and as a platform to encourage creative experimentation, individual expression, and cross-cultural solidarity among artists. The exhibition and public program are supported by The Japan Foundation, New York. |
Takahiko Iimura: Double Identity
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Film-Makers' Cooperative
April 17-18, 2026 Takahiko Iimura: Double Identity is a two-part screening program that brings together a selection of film and video works by the Japanese experimental filmmaker and avant-garde artist Takahiko Iimura (1937–2022), tracing his practice from abstract explorations of the body to structural and conceptual investigations of the moving image. Influenced by the Japanese concept of ma—the interval or space in between—as well as Jacques Derrida’s thinking on language and phenomenology, Iimura approaches the moving image as a site of feedback and exchange between camera and screen, observer and observed, drawing attention to what remains unknown between frames. The first program, “AI/Love,” explores Iimura’s interest in capturing intimacy through the lens, especially through close-ups of bodily movement. Through his camera, the body becomes abstracted and fragmented, estranged and defamiliarized from the viewer’s gaze, positioning the viewer within a voyeuristic point of view. The second program, “MA/Intervals,” turns to Iimura’s investigation of the semiology of moving images, using systems of counting, numbering, and marking frames to underscore the materiality of film while revealing the hidden apparatus that structures our experience of seeing. Iimura’s work challenges the mechanisms of visual perception and destabilizes the boundary between positive and negative, subject and object, bringing seemingly opposing forces into one. |
Toward Return |
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Pleasure Dome
August 27, 2026 at United Unlimited Is it possible to return to what was "normal"? Toward Return addresses the paradox of recovery: the desire to return to what once was, while acknowledging that healing is never linear. Through navigating forms of recovery—medical, cultural, personal, and ecological—the program considers what it means to repair deep wounds when living with relapse and uncertainty. Toward Return reflects on what it means to contend with setbacks and loss, at the same time striving toward wholeness and stability. Featuring experimental films and a media installation, the program demonstrates the potential of moving images to facilitate recovery, be it healing from personal injury, confronting political trauma, or reclaiming lost histories. From revisiting family archives to searching for safe homes, the selected works examine the complexities of coping with what has been damaged, replaced, or lost. |
