Kohei Kobayashi: right is blue, blue is left, left is yellow, yellow is right

Picking up trash, cutting grass, riding a bicycle and rolling vinyl tape in some place like a new residential area - all of these behaviors or acts are common in our daily lives. Nonetheless, these kinds of acts which Kobayashi shows straightforwardly in his film works entitled “2-8-1” (2009) and “2-8-2” (2009) make us feel as if we are the witnesses of the puzzling situations in the films.

Another incomprehensible thing regarding the exhibits is that the camera work seems to be unnatural. For example, sometimes the screen moves in small motions because of hand movement and cameras suddenly zoom in/out. Nevertheless, what we see on the screen after finding such questionable camera work is only a trivial thing, such as grass. The camera runs as if it does not care a bit about even people whom it captures in frames.

It can also be said that such camera work exposes the technical immaturity in taking films which would never be tolerated in common film/movie making. Kobayashi’s films make us feel as if someone who was a novice at using a video camera shot the scenes in front of him/her freely. Such an inexperienced shooting method even impairs viewers’ concentration.

However, at the end of the fifteen-minute films, we notice that we ourselves have concentrated on them more intensely than ever before. In other words, only after finishing viewing the whole films, we recognize that such an immaturity shooting technique adversely plays a role as frames which make us pay attention to the images themselves which appear on the screen. Yes, we notice this while feeling the little stress remaining in our bodies after looking the films throughout.

We cannot predict what will happen in Kobayashi’s film creations. No, although something seems to have already happened in the films, it is impossible for us to grasp what it is. What was the subject of the films? What did Kobayashi aim at recording on the films? What were the people taken in the films doing? Such unnatural camera work would evoke for us a tense feeling which we often get from unpredictable frames in documentary movies. Nonetheless, indeed, it is a known fact about documentary films that images are put into one “movie” through an “editing” process, but Kobayashi’s works presented in this exhibition are puzzling also in terms of the process. Why were these creations “edited” in that way? Why were they made in the form of fifteen-minute films? His works raise such questions as above with us, which contributes to making us feel uncomfortable continuously until the end of the films. His creations seem to negate camera work and editing (montage) which have been cultivated in the history of movies and force us to realize that the way of viewing films which we have taken for granted is no longer valid.

In Kobayashi’s films, the acts of people which were taken in daylight set our expectations for feeling unpredictable suspense. Nevertheless, we cannot find any suspense in the films. In addition, the “suspenseful” technique which was used in the creations contributes to intensifying an unsettled image of the films. Whether we like it or not, we, the viewers, have no choice but to continue to gaze at the frames while continuously recognizing that we are in a state of “looking” at the images. Nonetheless, the act of “looking” at the films may in fact be the most “suspenseful” conduct.

(Translated by Nozomi Nakayama)