THE AGE OF GUILT AND FORGIVENESS

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2016
HD video | 22min 51sec | Japanese with English subtitles

The Age of Guilt and Forgiveness takes Alain Resnais’ film Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) as a reference and starting point. When commissioned to make a documentary on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Resnais instead invited Maguerite Duras to write the screenplay for a drama dealing with memory and the trauma of Hiroshima. The Age of Guilt and Forgiveness is an attempt to look at history, particularly the burden of history in the context of contemporary Japan’s position, seventy years after the end of WWII. Mainly shot in Hiroshima and Jaipur (India), the film stages a conversation between two lovers to comment on Japan’s twentieth century history and the country’s role within a changed geopolitical situation. It also addresses the question of guilt — personal and collective guilt in the present and the past — and the notion of forgiving in a relationship and in the context of national and personal history.

The installation setting of the film The Age of Guilt and Forgiveness goes under the title A Maze and Observatory as a Memorial of the Past (2016, Sundial and staircase construction, black vinyl shadow)
Two staircase-constructions, both cast a shadow made of black adhesive vinyl on the floor. They are a reference to the Observatory of Jantar Manta in India, where the final scenes were filmed.

Video link:
https://vimeo.com/161664946

exhibition view Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2016

exhibition view Art Sonje Art Center, Seoul, 2018