Generator

Under the name Nivhek, Liz Harris (Grouper) maps richly detailed inner worlds where enigmatic vibrations and voices glide dimly in and out of the void. Double album After its own death / Walking in a spiral towards the house consists of opaque assemblages of Mellotron, guitar, field recordings, tapes, and broken FX pedals. In pacing, palette, and poignancy, these sides rank among Harris' most stark, primordial work: fragile, feverish, ominous, and otherworldly. Accompanied by visuals from experimental filmmaker Takashi Makino which were made exclusively for live shows of this album.

A live performance film capturing an intimate concert by composer, pianist and music producer Ryuichi Sakamoto in New York City. The performance marked the first public unveiling of Sakamoto’s new opus, async, hailed as one of the best albums of 2017 by Rolling Stone and Pitchfork.

Shadow presences gradually emerge in Japanese filmmaker Makino Takashi’s abstract cinema composed of layers upon layers of natural imagery that awaken the senses.

“The rain” and “white noise” , “the outside of water” , “the inside of water” , everything become to together and drifting. A dark dark film in rain forest inspired by a music term to “Tranquil”.

Borrowing its title from a treatise by Aristotle, the latest film by Makino Takashi is an abstract work that finds its drive in the clash between light and darkness. Entirely composed of superimposed images of Tokyo’s landscape and water sites, the film takes its rhythm from the cycles of repetition that are the pillars of life and civilisation. As light emerges from the chaos, Jim O’Rourke’s ambient drone sets the tone for what is to come.

Short film by Takashi Makino

Filmed entirely on location in Australia, Double Phase follows a discrete visual chronology captured by Takashi Makino. It considers how the complexity of ’natural world’ continues to be reductively framed within contemporary society. Pushing back against the simplistic and monocular sensing of the world, Makino responds with an intensely affective projection of lived experience. Moving far beyond the capacity of lived day to day experience, the film collides image after image into a cascade of almost-cosmic complexity. A reminder that we must always be reaching out and extending ourselves into the world that emerges before us. (Asia TOPA 2020)

An experimental film by Takashi Makino.

[Space Noise] is a performance in which the double 25 FPS award winner confronts high-resolution video images and 16mm live projection. A duel between the all-dominant immaculate digital and the irregular organic material dissolves in multiple layers of chaos. Enormous quantities of light movements from film loops capture the screen in thousands of pixels of digital projection and create new images in constant change and enhancement. The sound accompanying them live only repeats and spreads the noise, developing images by whirling speed. Noise, located on the tape as a constituent part of the film, becomes the aim of Makino’s quest – Noise-Image. This quest for a new film experience intensifies with additional effects – a smoke curtain reveals the fullness of the light beams’ rainbow spectrum, while a neutral single-eye ND filter creates a three-dimensional illusion.

Experimental film by Takashi Makino

A physical film for showing at cinema. The soundtrack, which was mainly produced in the range of frequencies below 1000Khz, physically vibrates the viewer's body. Anti-cosmos means similar with Noise, the power that breakthrough the cosmos/order. Inspired by "Cosmos and Anti-cosmos" by Japanese philosopher Toshihiko Izutsu. The soundtrack, which was mainly produced in the range of frequencies below 1000Khz, physically vibrates the viewer's body.

Engine materializes Liz Harris’s self-confessed obsession with engine sounds from cars and trains, and noise explosions heard at drag races. For Harris, that is the sound of excess, power, sex, destruction, capitalism, and oil becoming an airborne pollutant. All the same those are the sounds of transformation, from which comes life. With an original film by Takashi Makino shown in the background, Engine is a large stage machine of guttural bass tones and constant revving up that mimics our heartbeat and breathing, and pumps the blood in our veins.

"I represented light and life coming out of the darkness. I aimed for the fusion of multiple exposure and animation."

This film has no images, but keep illuminating and keep moving like a life, imaginative creativity itself.

A presentation of an expanding formation of "Elements of Nothing". The systematic harsh noise shaped by water and trees gives birth to a storm of novel imagination in the viewer's emotions.

10&11/03/2017 at Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum Images and music by Makino Takashi, music by Jim O'Rourke