Higashi-Nippori

Higashi-Nippori, 2023
RGB filtered B & W Super-8 film, color, sound, total running time 5 minutes
Link

Higashi Nippori investigates the difficulties of making something straightforward. Three black and white Super-8 film cartridges were shot in single takes from a fixed position in an apartment in Tokyo, Japan, for each of the film's three sections.

Each cartridge was filtered for one of the three additive primary colors: red, green, and blue. Superimposed atop one another and colorized accordingly, the three elements should combine to create a single color take; nonetheless, deviations between the three pieces of footage caused improper registration and undulating color shifts.

The film's first section was shot at high speed, showing clothes drying in the wind on a laundry balcony. The second section is a time-lapse of three consecutive days of the sun rising behind the living room's sliding paper screen. The third section is a view from the apartment's balcony, looking down at treetops moving in the wind.

Although clothes drying, the sun rising, and the wind blowing a treetop seem like uncomplicated topics for a film, numerous factors problematized the objective of creating one color take, from the camera and tripod vibrating,  gradually shifting its position on the floor to the elements in front of the camera moving.

The soundtrack is the narrative backbone of the work and forms a domestic counterpoint to the shifting of distorted visuals, even though the audio is highly fragmented and is constructed from recordings made at different times while sitting still on the apartment's living room floor or standing on the laundry balcony. As with the images that don't precisely combine, the addition of disparate sounds—rice cooking, a heavy metal band in a nearby park, a passing recycling truck, a child’s tantrum, cicadas, crows, and an answering machine message from FedEx—enhances the surreal qualities of the film and foregrounds the contrast between inside and outside, private and public.

The three pieces of film footage periodically come together in proper registration and create a singular image, along with a plausible audio accompaniment; however, most of the time, the elements that comprise this film are in various disjunctive states and call attention to the film's assembled nature.

Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock vs. Brad Pitt at Sunset

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tonight 8/5/2022: Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock vs. Brad Pitt at sunset (approximately 8:36 PM) at All Star Fine and Recorded Arts: 3022 E 35th St, Minneapolis, MN 55406 Instagram. Listen to the audio here. Live Zoom link click here Meeting ID: 867 4296 5027. View a book version of the film here.

All Star Fine and Recorded Arts is not scared to go up against the big guns. So, we are proud to announce that Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock’s film, Mistaken Landscapes, shot from Shinkansen Bullet trains in Japan over six years, will drop on August 5th, the same release date as Bullet Train, a new action comedy starring Brad Pitt.

Based on the 2010 Japanese novel Maria Beetle by Kotaro Isaka, Bullet Train (filmic value yet unknown) is not to be confused with the extraordinary 1975 thriller, The Bullet Train, starring the legendary Ken Takakura and Sonny Chiba. Regardless—Takakura, Chiba, Pitt—we stand our ground.

Like the big motion picture companies, we, too, will bring a sampling of Japanese landscape into American theaters; however, our version emerges from the heartland minus the comedy, less predictably and more abstractly. Mistaken Landscapes will be projected onto the gallery window from inside All Star Fine and Recorded Arts, inverting space and turning the interior of this Minneapolis gallery into a view of the passing Japanese terrain. The corner location and visibility from pedestrians and drivers ideally places All Star Fine and Recorded Arts as the conduit between travelers on different continents.

About the film: the images comprising Mistaken Landscapes were made with an iPhone while traveling on Shinkansen bullet trains in Japan between 2014 and 2020 and exploit the iPhone’s High Dynamic Range capabilities.

High Dynamic Range, or HDR, has been an iPhone option since model four came out in 2010. When HDR is enabled, the camera quickly takes three images each time you press the shutter button—one underexposed, one at the correct exposure, and one overexposed. The three different exposures are combined, yielding a single image with an increased dynamic range of color and contrast.

Even though the three HDR exposures are made almost instantaneously, the Shinkansen travels at speeds up to 300 km/h (186 mph); consequently, the view out the window shifts during the image-making process. The brief lag between exposures causes inaccurate imagery alignment, with misregistration areas appearing featureless, and gray.

As viewed from a speeding Shinkansen, the world streaking by already appears unreal; however, the slippage generated by the HDR shift pushes the images into territory bordering on hallucinatory. This selection, pulled from 11,417 images, manifests a range of scenes from urban to rural and a spectrum of misregistration from subtle to severe.

Forming a counterpoint to the rhythmic shifting of the distorted visuals, the audio of this film is constructed from recordings made while sitting still on the balcony of a Tokyo apartment. As with the HDR images that don’t precisely combine, the addition of sounds—a child’s tantrum in the courtyard, a neighbor’s koto lesson, rice cooking, and an answering machine message from FedEx—enhances the surreal qualities of the film and foregrounds the contrast between movement and stasis, outside and inside, travel and home.

The star actor in this film is the visual/aural landscape itself.

As You Wish

As You Wish (Project for KUNSTrePUBLIK's Angst hat grosse Augen, [Fear has Big Eyes] Angst in Form/Art in Public Space), 2010, four one-color, offset printed posters wheat paste glued in varying configurations throughout Halle, Germany, individual poster dimensions h 84.1 centimeters (33.1 inches) x w 59.4 centimeters (23.4 inches). Installation and installation images by Daniel Seiple, 2010

Poster #1 translation: 10,000 Marks Reward. Who is the murderer? Since Monday, 11th June this year, the following have disappeared: the school-children Klaus Klawitsky and his sister Klara, who live at 470 Müller Street. Various evidence leads us to believe that the children were victims of a similar crime to that committed last autumn against the Doering sisters.

Poster #2 translation: particularly serious case of theft, theft from kindergarten, theft from parking meter, unknown perpetrators broke violently into a gazebo, a tv was stolen and probably drinks, theft of potting soil, theft of camping furniture, chainsaws stolen, screwdriver stolen, wallet stolen, two trees, two peonies and several carnations plants stolen, two trees stolen, two peonies stolen, several carnations stolen, kitchen appliances stolen, unknown perpetrators stole a chopper and solar lamps, photographic technology stolen, car headlight stolen, drinks were stolen, drill stolen, a hair-cutting machine was stolen, garden equipment stolen, chain saws and cordless screwdrivers stolen, diesel drained, unknown perpetrators broke violently into a gazebo and a tool shed and stole a drill, a screwdriver, a saw, a brush cutter, five solar lights, a tent, a fountain pump, and a garden gnome, saw stolen, brush cutter stolen, five solar lights stolen, tent stolen, garden gnome stolen, fountain pump stolen, fish dead, mailbox destroyed, a gazebo on fire.

Poster #3 translation: Puzzle title: ...but the foreigner didn't want to commit crimes, use your welfare system, ask difficult questions, cause anxiety, bring disease, crowd your cities, be insensitive to cultural differences, steal your jobs, dilute ethnic purity, contaminate the homeland, murder Klaus Klawitsky, his sister Klara and the Doering sisters, or steal your plants and potting soil.
Please try to understand and fill in the blanks! Answer: On Tuesday a foreigner came to Germany from New York through Madrid and made posters about angst.

Poster #4 translation: Then I can't remember anything. And afterwards I see those posters and read what I've done. And read and read. Did I do that?

The following essay was written by Daniel Seiple in 2010 for the Angst hat grosse Augen exhibition catalog:

Upon looking at the art of Stephan Apicella Hitchcock, one walks into a contortion of time between real and fictional narratives in which the artist interweaves his own travels with the history and structure of films, art history, people, and places. In the last year alone he has tick tacked around the globe from New York to Cairo, Beirut, Tokyo, Madrid, Berlin, and Italy. At each location a work has been created, an image shot, or souvenir taken. I am a detective retracing his steps, picking up the static images in order to recompose time, and piling into his writings that were left behind as if by a criminal teasing his pursuers.

In June of this year a cryptic advertisement was distributed in Halle, Germany which became the impetus for my writing. A text on the top half is littered with blank spaces like a MadLib, and on the bottom half answers are provided: “Warning! Very soon a person will be coming to Germany/The Czech Republic from a foreign country through Madrid.” Months earlier, Hitchcock had submitted a proposal to KUNSTrePUBLIK to make a series of posters for the Angst exhibition that played upon fears caused by the welfare crisis, local unemployment, and the outsourcing of jobs. The advertisement continued: “Foreign _________ are often blamed for ________ during difficult economic times. (…) On that note does it help to ________ another _________ artist?” The blanks appear to lead to a personal reflection: When this foreigner, presumably Hitchcock himself, visits Halle for the first time, what angst will he find? Will he experience xenophobic suspicions at the shop that prints his posters? Is his proposal already complicated by his identity as a foreign worker, a tourist, or an imported artist? What business does he have trying to voice local concerns for a place he’s never been to, anyway?

Several years ago a series of photos surfaces that document every step from the pitcher’s mound to the dugout of the Encino Little League Baseball Field, in Encino California – where the character Stacy from the movie, Fast Times in Ridgemont High (1982), loses her virginity. In 2009, the photos are presented at a gallery in Berlin as the artwork of Stephan Apicella Hitchcock. Although the photographer never reveals himself in the photos, his presence is eerily felt as the viewer is invited to step into his shoes. Furthermore, the visitors are invited to take one of the photos home, until no more remain. Over the course of the opening the work transforms from unified to fragmented to gone. The evidence of Hitchcock’s walk to the dugout is now dispersed as a series of clues, creating an invisible line forever connecting those who took the photos.

Three years after the first appearance of the Encino photos, I watch a short film by Hitchcock, which focuses on the grave of moviemaker, Yasujiro Ozu, in Kita-Kamakura, Japan. The image jitters and colors undulate, betraying the construction as a contrived, not-so-singular moment. Fleetingly, the images do come together and perhaps the untrained eye might suspect faulty playback equipment or improperly exposed film. But upon traveling to Japan myself, I realize it would be next to impossible for crows, which are generally heard in autumn, to sing with cicadas that only chirp in summer – as it is recorded on the soundtrack. As I deconstruct the work, it becomes evident that Hitchcock shot the grave three times with each take filtered in a different primary color. In what becomes Nonsynchronous Five Times (2007-08), Hitchcock superimposes each sequence in order to create the impression of one singular, color take. As I ponder the potential reasons for this elaborate construction, I recall Ozu’s own methodical nature and use of a fixed camera.

And then, just as I have the feeling of coming closer to Hitchcock’s world, of which I only describe but a few artworks, a profile for the man appears on Facebook which announces the sale of all of the artist’s works that are “still in his possession, as well as the ownership rights to works that were generated, but destroyed.” The various lots reflect a prolific production. They are offered free of charge, first come first serve. At the conclusion of the auction, all descriptions, negotiations, transactions, correspondences as well as the artist’s friends are deleted leaving little evidence to substantiate any exchange (Part Tool, Part Trap, 2009) or artwork at all. Although I would imagine that with a little bit of digging, one could find evidence of the auction on the buyers’ profiles, or deep in Facebook’s servers. Everything leaves a trace.

In summer 2010 in Halle, four posters are spotted around town, conspicuously written in an old German script. The first is a poster of a poster, a screen grab of a film still from Fritz Lang’s dramatic thriller, M, when Hans Bekert (played by Peter Lorre), a murdering pedophile, steps into the frame and casts a shadow over a his own wanted poster. If the poster is by Hitchcock, it is a trademark move of setting his personal and artistic process within a cinematic narrative. Not quite an attempt of Wellsian (non)fictional drama, he dangles a bit of his own cultural research and presents a typographic parallel with the street signs in Halle.

The next poster to catch my eye is a crossword puzzle. I scribble it down in my notebook and take it to the coffee shop to decipher. The answers confirm my hunch and Hitchcock’s message in the advertisement: A foreigner has indeed arrived and made posters about Angst! On the poster next to this, a word search presents the local police blotter concurrent to the week that Hitchcock has visited Halle. In contrast to the serial murders by Bekert, the crimes in Halle portray a more or less blue-collar town with either desperate or juvenile criminals thieving items like potting soil and brush cutters as well as smashing mailboxes. But rather than finding the criminals, the poster sets up the game of finding the crimes, and with a spirit similar to Bekert’s letter announcing his deeds to the newspaper.

On the fourth poster, again in the old script, I read what appears to be a self-referential and cryptic admission. I follow up the first poster later that night by watching M. The movie is haunting, not just because of the convincing story, but because of the ease at which the populace is moved to mob rule after the wanted poster stirs up public angst, paranoia, and vigilantism. Beckert eludes the authorities, but is eventually captured and tried by the local mafia. In front of this kangaroo court, as a wide-eyed and crazed Beckert gives his impassioned plea to the criminals who will have his head, I hear the words written on that final poster: Then I can't remember anything. And afterwards I see those posters and read what I've done. And read and read. Did I do that?

Nonsynchronous Five Times

Nonsynchronous Five Times, 2007 – 2008, three RGB filtered black and white Super-8 reels transferred to DVD, color, sound, total running time 6 minutes and 16 seconds

Nonsynchronous Five Times investigates the difficulties of making something straightforward. Three black and white Super-8 film cassettes were shot in single takes from a fixed position looking onto the top of filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu's grave marker In Kita-Kamakura, Japan. Each of the three takes was shot at high speed and with a filter for one of the three additive primary colors (red, green, and blue). Superimposed atop one another and colorized accordingly, the three elements should combine to create a singular color take; however, any deviations between the three pieces of footage caused improper registration and undulating color shifts. The objective of creating one color take was complicated by numerous factors: wind moving the tripod and camera, wind causing ripples on the water atop the grave marker, wind causing movement of the trees and their reflections in the water, as well as changes in light conditions from shifting cloud cover.

The soundtrack is the narrative backbone of the work, providing a real-time documentation of the process of shooting three film cassettes. We hear one cycle of Ozu’s gravestone being washed, the camera running at high speed, the camera being reloaded, and the camera filters being changed. This cycle occurs in the fall (note crows) and in succession three times, once for each of the film cassettes and its associated additive primary filter (RGB). The second sound element was recorded at Ozu's grave marker, yet half a year later in the summer season (note cicadas). Attempts to get clean recordings were often thwarted in both situations by sounds drifting into Engakuji Temple – ambulance sirens, trains, or people walking and talking.

At times, the three pieces of film footage come together briefly in proper registration and work in creating a singular image. As well, at times the sound of cicadas is indistinguishable from the sound of the camera filming. However, most of the time, the five elements that make up this film are in various states, ultimately calling attention to the film's constructed nature. The RGB composite image track is present only for the first three minutes of the film, after which the film proceeds as a soundtrack only - filming three cassettes took six minutes; however, the cassettes are superimposed, not shown consecutively and accordingly take up less than the actual filming time.

A Triangulation (Italy)/An Island

A Triangulation (Italy), 2003–2006, 45 rpm silver master plates, h 12 3/8" x w 22 3/4" (framed) An Island, 2006, C-print (from a Super-8 film frame) mounted to aluminum, h 6 1/2” x w 9” (image) h 9 1/16” x w 11 5/8” (framed)

Have you ever seen Buster Keaton going out a doorway? He turns right, then he suddenly turns left, then, spinning on his heels, he abruptly reverses direction and heads off to the right as he initially started. It is impressive to see his original intention, his deviation, his realization, and his modification occur in the space of a few short moments. As well as the physical agility demonstrated in this comedic instant, one also might detect a compressed set of emotions in the scene that range from desire, to failure, to subsequent redemption – the fundamentals of a classic narrative. In a sense, the improvisations that occur when actuality tempers our wishes are a skeletal array of touchstones for this project; nevertheless, they are points transposed from the period of a few moments in the space of a doorway and stretched out into several years on the Tyrrhenian Sea.

In 2003, I set off for the Aeolian Islands north of Sicily, the island of Lisca Bianca specifically, to find the character Anna who disappeared from Michelangelo Antonioni's 1960 film L'Avventura; however, I accidentally went to the wrong island. I returned a year later to the right island and swam ashore, but I found nothing. Sound recordings were made during both voyages of my boat’s small outboard engine as it labored in transit to the wrong and right islands and my grand journey eventually assumed the diminutive and archaic format of a 45 rpm record, Going Towards the Wrong Island and Going Towards the Right Island. The unique, silver master plates for the A and B sides of the record are presented in A Triangulation, their encoded sounds and story clearly visible, yet ultimately inaccessible, as the master plates cannot be played.

Working alongside the two reflective plates of A Triangulation is the third component of the project, An Island. A single reel of Super-8 film was shot in a continuous take during a 2006 return to the Aeolian Islands, yet the objective was not to travel once again to Lisca Bianca, but to navigate accurately to the wrong island. Although the film itself was never intended for presentation, the very last frame of the film, the end, was selected for enlargement. This singular frame is the trophy from a return trip to an island that formerly represented a colossal blunder on my part. As well, the last frame of the footage is a bookend, providing finality and closure.

The title, A Triangulation, refers to a navigation technique whereby the properties of triangles are used to precisely determine a location by means of compass bearings from two points a known distance apart. Within the context of this project, one might consider the technique of triangulation in relation to positions in time, as well as in regards to physical location; conversely, the numerous ambiguities, deviations, as well as the mysterious disappearance of Anna at the core of this series of expeditions, operate in stark contrast to the exactitude of the triangulating process. Along these lines, the vaguely titled, An Island, also plays with notions of accuracy by utilizing an indefinite article to describe the island that is neither clear, nor precisely defined. Although we know that An Island is not the right island of Lisca Bianca, it becomes questionable whether the original name wrong island is entirely useful, particularly given that the island was traveled to intentionally and successfully on the most recent trip. As with many different types of adventures, transformations have emerged en route: objectives have changed, techniques altered accordingly, and original presumptions questioned.

Landscape Film

Landscape Film, 2006, video, color, sound, total running time two minutes and 25 seconds

After initial screenings of Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner, Warner Brothers studios felt that the movie needed a happy conclusion, so the finale was re-cut and utilized second unit out-takes from Stanley Kubrick's opening montage in The Shining. In Landscape Film, Kubrick's opening montage is coupled with the alternate “happy ending” for Blade Runner, reuniting footage separated for many years and compressing the two films’ narratives into one. The reunited footage is presented as a projected film loop. Image caption left to right: Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, 1980; Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, 1982.

Tracking

Tracking, 2005, film, black and white, silent, total running time 18 seconds (left film) and 11 seconds (right film), presented as two nonsynchronous DVDs, looped

Two black and white Super-8 films are presented side by side in Tracking, the left film looking down, the right film looking up. The footage was shot on two consecutive passes while walking a long hallway in a Medical Examiners office. The films are slightly different in both length and speed, consequently allowing the top and bottom portion of the human body to fall in and out of step with one another. The title Tracking potentially refers to the process of following someone’s trail and/or the leaking of current between two insulated points.

A Response to a Set of Conditions

A Response to a Set of Conditions, 2004, Super-8 film diptych transferred to DVD, color, silent, total running time 2 minutes and 49 seconds (top: 9 film stills from left half of diptych, c-print mounted to Plexiglas and Sintra, h 9 1/2” x w 14”; middle: 25 film stills from right half of diptych; bottom: 2 film stills from right half of diptych)

A Response to a Set of Conditions is a silent film diptych comprised of Super-8 films shot in a morgue. The patterns of behavior depicted in the film intuitively utilize the morgue as a studio for developing awareness of motor skills (left film) and the real-time linguistic game presented in the right half of the diptych demonstrates cognition through the process of discerning new word combinations from labels on two pathology sample containers.

The following routines presented in the left film each run for the length of the camera’s manual wind: circumnavigate the morgue with a pencil balanced on the end of a ruler; hold raised, extended legs in front of the Wastemaster sink disposal grinder; grasp a bucket of pathology samples and maintain arm in horizontal position; negotiate figure eights around floor drains with a luggage cart loaded with an empty cardboard box; twirl a bone chisel with one hand; spin to the point of dizziness on a swivel chair; turn a radio dial rapidly back and forth from one end of the spectrum to the other; keep a roll of surgical tape moving constantly; walk figure eights around floor drains with fingers; repeatedly unbutton and button top two buttons of shirt.

The following word combinations are presented in the right film: no ear; no hear; he no hear; no heart; no art; he no art; heart art; normal art; normal ear, normal ear art; no ear muse; use no muse; he use a heart muse; mal muse; normal hearts museum.