Photo by Kasagi Yasuyuki
audio visual installation .
chris chong chan fui + yasuhiro morinaga
クリス・チョン・チャン・フイ + 森永泰弘
Commissioned by NPO Koganecho Area Management Center
Exhibitions
: 2009 Intl Festival of Arts & Media Yokohama (CREAM), 31 Oct - 29 Nov, 2009, Japan [Premiere]
Artists include: Michael Snow, Chantal Akerman, Fujihata Masaki, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Christian Marclay.
"HEAVENHELL references the slum scene from A. Kurosawa's film High & Low (1963) as an act to reclaim the history of an infamous brothel street that had always been untouchable ... even to Kurosawa."
[6 channel installation, HD digital cinema projection]
Visual Direction : Chris Chong Chan Fui
Audio Direction : Yasuhiro Morinaga
Koganecho Area Managementment Center:
Yamano Shingo
Hirano Mayumi
Director: Chris Chong Chan Fui
Sound Designer & Producer: Yasuhiro Morinaga
Line Producer: Eijun Sugihara
Cinematographer: Toshiharu Kizu
Production Designer: Takeshi Kanabayashi
Editor: Azusa Yamazaki
Support from Tanjung Aru Pictures / CONCRETE / Graduate film & new media, Tokyo University of the Arts, Yokohama Urban History Museum
実験映画から映像インスタレーション、そして長編映画をも手がけるクリス・チョンは、伝統的な技法と新しいメディアの境界で表現活動を展開している。彼の作品は、身辺にある空間を即物的に捉えることから始まり、その展開の中で人々の活動が自然に物語として現れてくる。新作《HEAVENHELL》は、黒澤明監督の『天国と地獄』（1963年）の「地獄」のモデルとなった黄金町で制作される。当時、セットで撮影されたシーンを参考に、本作品は黄金町の過去と現在のイメージを同時に表現する。サウンド・デザイナーの森永泰弘が音響を担当し、視覚・聴覚的要素を通して、想像と現実の風景を重ね合わせながら、街の記憶に迫る。
From experimental to feature-length films and video installations,Chris Chong Chan Fui works on the border between traditional technique and new media. His work starts with realistically capturing personal space
and as it develops, human activity is revealed in a natural way as stories. His latest work
HEAVENHELL was produced in Koganecho, the model for the “hell” in director Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 film, Heaven and Hell. Chong referred to scenes shot on set at the time to create images of the Koganecho of the past and the present. Sound designer, Yasuhiro Morinaga was in charge of sound. They explore the memories of Koganecho through visual and audio elements as it intermingles scenes from imagination and reality.
ARTIST STATEMENT
In HIGH AND LOW (1963), Akira Kurosawa wanted to shoot the slum scene that symbolised the ‘low’ of Yokohama society on the infamous brothel streets of Koganecho. During the 60’s, Koganecho was considered so dangerous that even the residents around this community could not be a part of it. They have no history or experience of this street. It was not theirs. Kurosawa’s production team also found the area to be too dangerous to shoot and went as far as trying to build a surveillance camera so that it could remotely shoot the street without stepping foot into it. But the technology was not yet available then. The scene was later shot in studio. The residents were still left without a history of that street.
本作品は、黒澤明監督の『天国と地獄』（1963年）を参考に、黄金町で制作されたクリス・チョン・チャン・フイ（マレーシア）と森永泰弘（日本）によるメディア・インスタレーション作品です。
黒澤監督は『天国と地獄』の製作にあたり、戦後日本の歪みを象徴するシーンを黄金町で撮影しようと試みましたが、警察の護衛なしには立ち入ることさえも困難だった街の状況と、遠隔カメラの技術的な限界により、現場での撮影を断念したといわれています。
『天国と地獄』をリアルタイムで観ることもなく、当時の街を実際に歩くこともなかったチョンと森永は、黒澤監督によりセットで再現された黄金町を追体験すべく、「地獄」のシーンを現在の街の姿に重ねます。キュー（演技中の合図）とは無関係に回り続けるカメラの視点と、縦横無尽に鳴り響く過去と現在の音がひとつの時空間を構成し、架空と現実の間を行き来する時間旅行へと私たちを誘います。
HEAVENHELL (2009) is an audio visual installation that looks to re-claim this missing history by re-shooting the slum scene on the same street that Kurosawa was suppose to. The act of re-shooting is the act of duplication; an act of archiving. An act that gives the street back to the community and a development of an experience that was lost. The physicality of the installation is broken down into the basic elements of cinema shooting: close-up, medium-shot, and wide-shot, and using the original cinemascope format. This visual breakdown is used as a reflection of the original films procedural storytelling (S. Prince) of the police chase. A precise way of showing a procedure. A police procedure; a cinematic procedure. The sound also refers to the technologies during the 60’s period while crossing over to the contemporary. Crisscrossing sounds from the past and the present will set the tone for this time-travelling suspense installation. - cccf + ym
© Tanjung Aru Pictures 2013
