TENNOZ ART WEEK 2024 / ”Touch on an Absence” Exhibition View / Photo by Takanori Tsukiji 

“Touch on an Absence,” a new visual installation by contemporary artist Tabaimo and three international animation artists, was performed as the main program at TENNOZ ART WEEK 2024, an art event held in Tokyo’s Tennozu district.

Working primarily in the genres of video installation and performance, Tabaimo is noted for creating animations using hand-drawn pictures characterized by distinctive colors and willfully writhing lines reminiscent of traditional Japanese woodblock prints. Her activities extend beyond fine art through collaborations with performing artists in fields such as dance, bunraku puppet theater, and contemporary circus, and her work has been highly acclaimed both in Japan and abroad.

I wrote in the introductory paragraph that the work was “performed” rather than “exhibited,” because this experiential installation required the audience to move around proactively and enter the world of the artwork, which evoked physical sensations in a manner reminiscent of wordless theater.

TENNOZ ART WEEK 2024 / ”Touch on an Absence” Exhibition View / Photo by Takanori Tsukiji 

Working with Tabaimo on this piece were three independent animation artists: Josh Shaffner (USA), Stephen Vuillemin (France), and Lea Vidakovic (Serbia). Tabaimo was impressed by their works in her role as a jury member for the Short Films category at the New Chitose Airport International Animation Festival in 2023, recalling that she was “struck anew by the profundity of animation as a mode of expression.”

Right around that time, Tabaimo had received a request to participate in the main program at Tennoz Art Week 2024 and was exploring acrobatic ways to create a large-scale work in the limited time she had available. She came up with the idea of collaborating on a new piece with the three animation artists she met at the festival—a solution that would also allow these artists’ creative activities to be showcased to a wider audience.

TENNOZ ART WEEK 2024 / ”Touch on an Absence” Exhibition View / Photo by Takanori Tsukiji 

TENNOZ ART WEEK 2024 / ”Touch on an Absence” Exhibition View / Photo by Takanori Tsukiji 

“Touch on an Absence” was available for viewing only by reservation and by a limited audience, and our tour of the work began right on time. The vast venue was partitioned with makeshift screens and designed in a way that obscured what lay ahead along the route.

As we entered the first room, an image of William Morris-style floral arabesque wallpaper was projected onto the wall, and we saw interior furnishings such as a door with a window and a dining table set up within the chamber. The setting reminded me of the closed rooms that have appeared frequently in Tabaimo’s works going back to her debut. Such an iconic introduction, a roundabout expression of the artist’s unique way of perceiving existence, works to lure the viewer into a fictional world where the nostalgic and sinister become entwined.

TENNOZ ART WEEK 2024 / ”Touch on an Absence” Exhibition View / Photo by Takanori Tsukiji 

The second room was a large, desolate space with an exposed concrete frame—a corner of a warehouse used to store works of art, where watery or organic materials are strictly forbidden. Tabaimo’s theme here was to use animation to bring water and living creatures into a space they should never exist in.

Displayed in all directions across the walls and floor, the footage was composed of “pieces” created by all four artists on their own before being unleashed into the space and mixed under Tabaimo’s supervision. One artist’s work featured plants with dripping organs, while another’s centered a jet-black pool of water that resembled tar. Yet another projected something unidentifiable shaking an elegant mansion, while another presented a lush forest with a rich ecosystem.

Thrown out of the dollhouse-like first room and into a rough, temporary space, us viewers were left to wander around with faltering steps, chasing visions (illusions) of “life” flying past us at an unpredictable pace.

We are accustomed to confronting a work of art based on the assumption that it’ll be consistent with the worldview of a single artist. This, in contrast, was a work imbued with tension; a sense engendered by how the different “pieces,” which at first glance seemed to be in total disarray, somehow appeared to exchange secret messages with each other. It was thrilling to see how the audience, who came unprepared and with the assumption that they’d be observing from a safe distance, were forced to recruit their own powers of insight and imagination to engage with the work.

TENNOZ ART WEEK 2024 / ”Touch on an Absence” Exhibition View / Photo by Takanori Tsukiji 

TENNOZ ART WEEK 2024 / ”Touch on an Absence” Exhibition View / Photo by Takanori Tsukiji 

TENNOZ ART WEEK 2024 / ”Touch on an Absence” Exhibition View / Photo by Takanori Tsukiji 

TENNOZ ART WEEK 2024 / ”Touch on an Absence” Exhibition View / Photo by Takanori Tsukiji 

After being pleasantly disturbed by this dazzling mystery, we were led to a third room where a screen was set up with seats in front of it. Animated films by the three artists that had impressed Tabaimo at the film festival in Hokkaido were to be screened along with “public conVENience” (2006), a well-regarded work from Tabaimo’s early career. The screening served as an answer to the spectacle we had just witnessed in the adjacent room, as well as a procedure for diving into the depths of the narratives the artists had woven into their respective creations.

Stephen Vuillemin’s “A Kind of Testament” stylishly depicts the inexplicable nature of contemporary factuality and partiality. A young woman stumbles across animated clips on the internet based on selfies she posted on social media, created by someone without her permission. Another woman with the same name as the protagonist admits to being the impersonator, but she dies before her mysterious motive can be revealed.

Lea Vidakovic’s “The Family Portrait” is an unsettling work that makes use of classical puppet animation techniques. On the eve of World War I, with the Austro-Hungarian empire on the verge of collapse, a man and his daughter are bewildered when the man’s brother pays them a visit together with his large family. After plunging the tranquil home into unpleasant chaos, the visitors apparently intend to stay.

In Josh Shaffner’s “In Dreams,” a burn victim wrapped entirely in bandages is being cared for in a state-of-the-art hospice. In his dreams, disasters such as floods and drug-induced suffering intersect with scenes of a natural paradise, which gradually become abstract. According to the artist, the emotional stress of losing a loved one led him to spend six years creating this meditation on death and time.

TENNOZ ART WEEK 2024 / ”Touch on an Absence” Exhibition View / Photo by Takanori Tsukiji 

The three artists are all astonishingly skilled animators and exhibit unique expressive abilities. I was overwhelmed by the vivid reality of the memories and visions at the root of their narratives—a common thread that emerges in their works, despite the vastly different ideas and styles involved.

The expressive techniques of animation can, in the visual space, generate imagery that could never exist in reality. What emerges from this space is certainly nothing more than illusions. Nonetheless, the narratives constructed by animation artists are hypothetical realities that could occur in the world we live in today. They are also stories imbued with the soul of language, capable of transforming the reality of the future.

As demonstrated by the fervent enthusiasm for Japanese anime shown by fans around the world, animation has the potential to resonate among people across generations and geographies through its narrative appeal. (This power, of course, can sometimes be leveraged to deliver the benefits of a product or service to a wider audience, too.)

Furthermore, if the art of animation, through its words and visions, can transform the way we view our inadequate world, then it must have value worth delivering to those in desperate need of such transformation. The “Touch on an Absence” program served to convince me of the power of animation and its underlying narratives.

Note: In an interview about “Touch on an Absence,” Tabaimo says she was inspired by ideas from social constructivism and the narrative approach that she came across while thinking about the title of the work. This is a theme I’d like to see her explore in depth in the future.

Reference: Nigate na mono kara umareru dokutoku na sekai (“Creating Distinctive Worlds Out of Things You Dislike”) | Tabaimo, contemporary artist, QUI, Jul 13, 2024 https://qui.tokyo/art-design/tabaimo-touch-on-an-absence

Translated by Ilmari Saarinen