Film Screening: A Tribute to Video Artist Shigeko Kubota, 1937-2015

-- Introduced by Prof. Gennifer Weisenfeld, Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies (AAHVS)

Shigeko Kubota (1937-2015) was a Japanese video artist, sculptor and avant-garde performance artist. She lived in New York City. Kubota is known for constructing sculptural installations with a strong DIY aesthetic, which include sculptures with embedded monitors playing her original videos. She was a key member and influence on Fluxus.

Works to be screened: 

Marcel Duchamp and John Cage

(1972, 28.5 min, B&W and color, sound)

In elegiac work, Kubota explores the relationship between two of the most influential figures in 20th century art and music. The core images are Kubota's own photographs of the famous 1968 chess match between Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, in which the board, wired for sound, functioned as a musical instrument. Recordings of Cage's compositions accompany the stills and video footage, which Kubota electronically processes to abstraction.

Video Girls and Video Songs for Navajo Sky 

(1973, 26 min, B&W and color, sound)

Kubota narrates this surrealistic video diary of her month-long sojourn with a Navajo family on a reservation in Chinle, Arizona. She talks to the women as they cross the desert in a horse-drawn carriage to fetch water from the nearest well, and captures footage of tribal songs and dances, children's pranks and a local rodeo. Despite the language barrier between the Japanese Kubota and the English-speaking Native Americans, the artist befriends her subjects through sheer force of personality. Kubota relates to her subjects less like a documentary observer and more like a distant relative, with humor and affection. 

My Father

(1973-75, 15.5 min, B&W, sound)

 "Father, why did you die?" With this deeply intimate statement of grief, Kubota mourns the death of her father. Video and television are central to her ritual of mourning, and allow her father to assume a presence after death. Kubota and her father, who was dying of cancer in Japan, are seen watching television together on New Year's Eve. The suffering of father and daughter is rendered even more poignant when contrasted with the everyday banality of the pop music and New Year's celebrations on TV. After his death, Kubota weeps alone in front of a video monitor. Awash with tears and personal pain, My Father is a cathartic exorcism of grief, with video serving as witness and memory. 

Sexual Healing

(1998, 4.5 min, color, sound)

This chapter of Kubota's ongoing video diary is an intimate and humorous portrait of her husband, artist Nam June Paik, as he undergoes physical therapy after an illness.

Cost: Free and open to the public

Sponsors: Asian Pacific Studies Institute (APSI), the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI), and the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies program (AMES)