Technique: stop motion - 11 min. 47 sec
This video work is a part of the installation “Dream Of Nagisa”. It was exhibited in the Mito Peninsula Art Project held on Shodoshima Island, located in the Seto Inland Sea of Japan. For the exhibition on Shodoshima, the artist took over theshoji screens that had been used in the old Izumi-tei, which was demolished in the summer of that year, and reconstructed them to create the exhibition space. In the actual exhibition, the doll of the main character was placed in front of shoji screens, and the dreams he is having on his journey were projected onto the shoji screens.
The content of the film is inspired by a mermaid legend that takes place on Jogashima, a small island in the eastern part of Shodoshima. Under a moonlit night, a mermaid, a messenger of the gods, charms a man who comes to the island with her beautiful song, and the man who sees the mermaid dies of a disease that follows. Using this story as a basis, I changed the main character from a “human man” to a “doll abandoned in the sea,” and created a story in which the mermaid, who continues to stay on the island as a messenger of God, tries to take the man out of the island. Most of the video was created using stop motion. By placing pen drawings in the background of the screen, I expressed the ambiguity of memory, and by beautifully sculpting the mermaid's face as each day of the play progressed, I represented the beautification of memory.