Sobyō/Eizō

Directed by Norio Imai

1973/2021

In this performance, Imai remediates photographic images appropriated from popular magazines into a series of line drawings superimposed on each other. Photographs that Imai took with his camera from female fashion magazines and weekly photography magazines are projected one by one on a large white paper attached to the wall using a 35mm color slide projector which displays each image for fifteen seconds. During the fifteen seconds, Imai traces the contour of selected parts of the projected image with a marker pen. Repeating this process for about twenty minutes results in an accumulation of line drawings overlaid on top of each other. Through the process of fragmenting and taking apart each image, Imai seeks to objectify the information environment shaped by today’s mass media.