TOKYO HIGHWAY SCENE (10’25’’, 2022)
video
The starting point for this video was an episode from the 1972 Andrei Tarkovsky movie “Solaris”, which he shot in 1971 on the highways in Tokyo and in the movie it represents an imaginary future city.
The rapid development of post-war Tokyo made the city into an image of the future in the cultural imagination. I was interested in the way that people were able to imagine “the future” in the past and what can we make of it today? From the perspective of now, the future no longer looks like a promise of technical utopia and progress, but more like life in a constant state of emergency.
Due to travel restrictions, I was not able to go to Japan and I made the video in Riga. Similarly to the episode from “Solaris”, parts of my video are shot from the perspective of a vehicle moving through the city and this becomes the backdrop for a story about someone from an imaginary future driving through Tokyo. The character of this fictional story finds herself at a moment of great uncertainty: Is there anyone who is looking forward to the moment that comes after this one?
Made during the ARCUS Project 2021, Artist-in-Residence Program, Ibaraki.
Weather forecaster — Marija Linarte
Camera & colors — Reinis Helmuts Aristovs
Music — Pavel Milyakov
Graphic design — Heikki Kaski
