video art – Keita HAYASHI

Keita HAYASHI "con-verge :joint" 2008

Keita Hayashi is a video artist working mainly in film. He has participated in projects in China, Korea and Japan, and is a graduate of Kyoto Seika University where he teaches part-time.

Observations ~ 

                      by Keita Hayashi & Nagahiro Kinoshita (fine artist)

Kinoshita:
Is it possible at all to understand something without cutting and splitting it? Is there a way? Faced with this problem, I feel at a loss.

Hayashi:

Talking about 'no cutting', we have a specific method called 'long take' in the field of filmmaking. In a 'long take' shot, one sequence goes on unedited and uncut for a quite some time. I have long since been intrigued by the attraction of an apparently tedious long take, where ordinary and unchanging scenery is continuously shown for several minutes, or even longer, without dramatized interpretations or narratives. However, 'no editing', 'no sorting out', and 'no cutting' do not necessarily result in 'no understanding'. When watching a long take sequence where no major changes happen, I suppose one might well grasp something even though no context is provided...

A Perspective on Keita Hayashi 

                                                      by Keisuke Sugiura (haiku poet)

Keita HAYASHI "oblique ray #1"LCD media player・SD storage 

"oblique ray #2" projector・DVD player

'What to show' and 'how to display it' are crucial issues when creating and presenting a work of video art. Keita Hayashi is one of those artists whose focus is more on 'how' than 'what'. He does not alway show his work on a conventional four-sided screen. Sometimes he makes a projection screen out of a building, or will even turn a whole outdoor urban space into one big screening system. I wonder to myself whether this should be called a work of installation art using video projection, or a work of video art using the format of an installation. But such a discussion would take us nowhere.

Keita HAYASHI "oblique ray"

In the course of our conversations, Keita told me he was interested in the blank space that accompanies haiku in printed form. He noted that the manner of visually displaying a haiku largely determines how the reader receives the content of the poem, and what image or vision it produces within the reader's mind.

Though his works of video art cannot be said to be two-dimensional to begin with, I nevertheless expect Keita will embark on creating even more novel artworks, having been impressed and inspired by the famous masterpieces of haiku produced by the great poets of the past which transcend the notion of two- and three-dimensions and attain the realm of the multi-dimensional.

Keita Hayashi: abridged resumé

– MA in Design, Kyoto Seika University

– Lecturer (PT) in Video & Media Arts, Kyoto Seika University

– Projects include: 

• 'Lightseeing – Tokiwa Art Project', Biwako Biennale, Japan
• 'Panoramic Eyes', Japan/ China/ South Korea (project organiser)