TAB Event - Yukiko Tasaki "Eight Invisible Stories"

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At Art & River Bank
Media: Video installation

Yukiko Tasaki's solo exhibition, "eight invisible stories", is a video project consisting of monologues by eight people who all work in different fields. The eight people are either Japanese or English; thus, they differ in nationality, as well as sex, age, and the respective fields that they talk about. Although the viewers perceive an overall impression that is common to all the people who appear in the videos, they forget about this as they become absorbed in the world that each person in the video narrates. The videos have been shot at specific angles so as not to show any of the speakers' facial expressions. However, the actions captured in the videos, such as a hand gracefully stroking a stuffed animal, or flowers being affectionately enclosed within the palms of one of the speakers convey the idea that these people possess keener senses than the viewers. This is when we realize that the women and men who appear in these videos are all visually impaired persons.

Tasaki began this project in Scotland. While in Scotland, she sought a way to empathize with people by overcoming the language barrier. During that period, she happened to encounter and converse with a blind person. Regardless of the fact that they each possessed a problem in the circuit of communication (one with language, the other with vision), fertile images expanded within Tasaki's mind and she felt her heart resonate with that person. The sensation of getting close to the other person grew within her via 'something' that was neither language nor vision: a sensation that arose when these two people tried hard to work toward understanding each other, even though it was not a full understanding. Using that sensation as her criterion, Tasaki began to explore her artistic expressions.

If we were to only look at Tasaki's work from the viewpoint of her composition in which she conducted interviews with blind people, her work might remind us of Sophie Calle's "The Blind". It is true that this work shares common elements with Tasaki's, from the point of view that it also causes viewers to doubt their understanding towards 'visual perception' itself. Furthermore, as found in Tasaki's work, Calle's work indicates that communicating with visually impaired persons on the subject of visual perception is possible. However, Tasaki's project even surmounts these ideas through her attempt to reach out to the deepest and most profound characters that exist in others. Needless to say, it might still be worth us applying Tasaki's composition to the understanding of different cultures and societies. But rather than going in that direction, Tasaki's modest approach allows us to realize that 'others' who are inclined toward a 'cultural studies' approach in their works begin by simply capturing 'nonself recognition'. By doing so, they are excluding the possibilities of mutual understanding. Such thoughts should lead us to quietly turn our minds to the modest stories that Tasaki has collected, through which, slowly but reassuringly, something is being woven out.

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