Drawing from the Japanese practice of shakkei, or ‘borrowed landscape’, here we engage with a number of carefully selected sites in Japan — from ancient Shinto spaces of ritual in Ise to the futuristic Umeda Sky building in Osaka — to enact a series of of spatial performances, fourteen in total. All of the performances in Video Shakkei are improvised and involve two figures moving in relation to the geometric, atmospheric and cultural conditions suggested by each site. A constrained set of props are used to interrupt, reflect, filter and trace the actions involved. Given the brevity, constraint, emphasis on image and the fact that, with the two figures, each performance is enacted twice, we consider the performances in Video Shakkei in terms of a spatial enactment of the poetic form of Japanese haiku. The project is also accompanied by a series of expanded haiku acting as both documentation and visual score for each performance.

Each performance in Video Shakkei was recorded simultaneously from differing points of view using two hand-held video cameras and two embedded miniature cameras. The footage was then edited together as a series of video composites modelled on the multi-scaled architectural drawing. Embodying an expanded technique of time-based architectural drawing, the videos relate architectural space to performed event, and this to narrative sequence. The result is a hyper-digitized, absurdly choreographed and poetically rendered image of place.

Documentation of all fourteen spatial performances along with information about our related artists residency and installation work at The Centre for Drawing (Wimbledon College of Art) are below. Please also see our Publications page for information on the essay 'Particles of Moisture and Other Substance Suspended in Air and Visible as Clouds' where we outline a history, theory and practice of site-related creative practices accompanied by a series of drawings relating to Video Shakkei. The project was supported by the CCW Research Fund - University of the Arts London & The Irish Arts Council

Installation work exhibited at The Centre for Drawing (London, UK, 2010).

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/21224