Ko Nakajima

The series, based on the first 16mm film that was shot in a studio with Nakajima’s family and birds, moves through media and processing transformations over many iterations over the years. Once transferred to video, digital effects were added using the “Animaker,” an electronic image synthesizer that he invented (also nicknamed “Ko-puter”). Total of 6 parts exist.

A document of the nascent collective Video Earth's activities relating to the programming, operation and organisation of cable access television networks across Japan.

The series, based on the first 16mm film that was shot in a studio with Nakajima’s family and birds, moves through media and processing transformations over many iterations over the years. Once transferred to video, digital effects were added using the “Animaker,” an electronic image synthesizer that he invented (also nicknamed “Ko-puter”). Total of 6 parts exist.

Video began as a medium that inspired discovery. This art documentary traces the expressive roots of “media art” in Japan — works of video, performances, and installations created using video technology that allowed for free and creative visual expression.

The series, based on the first 16mm film that was shot in a studio with Nakajima’s family and birds, moves through media and processing transformations over many iterations over the years. Once transferred to video, digital effects were added using the “Animaker,” an electronic image synthesizer that he invented (also nicknamed “Ko-puter”). Total of 6 parts exist.

The series, based on the first 16mm film that was shot in a studio with Nakajima’s family and birds, moves through media and processing transformations over many iterations over the years. Once transferred to video, digital effects were added using the “Animaker,” an electronic image synthesizer that he invented (also nicknamed “Ko-puter”). Total of 6 parts exist.

This work was created to commemorate the reversion of Okinawa to Japan.

This work was started in 1967 as a documentation of Nakajima’s life. The footage was edited into a single piece for the first time in 1974, in time to show the work to the curator Barbara London, who was visiting Japan. Generations of his family were lost and gained that year, with Nakajima's mother passing away, and then his child was born. The piece is an installation with two monitors; the left presents his mother and himself, and the right, his child and himself. Nakajima continues to work on the sequels of "My Life" with his grandchild.

After graduating from Tama University of Arts, Nakajima made this work with the intention of submitting to the Sogetsu Animation Festival. Without much funding to work with, Nakajima devised the technique “Kaki-mation,” a method of drawing directly on 35mm film. At this time, he frequented Studio Zero—the formative mainstream animation / cartoon production company of the period with members Shinichi Suzuki, Jiro Tsunoda, Fujiko Fujio, and others.

This work features the salt marshes of Montpellier France, and uses computer graphics to create fantastical imagery.

A work of Video Earth Tokyo, it is an interview with a homeless who lived in the Aoyama cemetery. Photography by Michael Goldberg.

Early experiment by Ko Nakajima.

A political work in which Ko Nakajima opposes himself to the Vietnam War.

A feminine crossdresser explores their sexuality.

The Rooms in the Photographs — Ko Nakajima’s Rooms Directed by Ko Nakajima, Photography by Hitoshi Kubo and Yosuke Nakagawa. Edited by Hitoshi Kubo. Courtesy of Keio University Art Center Produced in 2019 in conjunction with the research and exhibition organized by Hitoshi Kubo of Keio University Art Center, The Rooms in the Photographs — Ko Nakajima’s Rooms strings together a series of photographs documenting his studio in Tokyo and Nakajima’s performance. Conceived in conjunction with the research into Nakajima’s 1,500 photo documentation of artist Yutaka Matsuzawa’s Psi Zashiki Room in 1969, the project is an invaluable record of Nakajima’s extraordinary work space where video equipments, films and videos, printed materials, amassed over the years function as a system for Nakajima’s memory keeping. Seemingly random and chaotic placement of objects produced an idiosyncratic formula for the artist to access certain information—the studio and his brain functioned as one.

This is an animation using the “Kaki-mation” technique. This piece can be shown as a multiscreen piece with 3 screens.