interview with hikaru fujii

Hikaru Fujii photographed by Shunta Ishinami_WORKSIGHT. Image courtesy of the artist.

Hikaru Fujii (born in 1976), lives and works in Tokyo. Fuji’s films, installations, workshops, and writings explore the relationship between art and social activism. When revisiting a specific historical incident or present-day situation involving domination and exploitation, the artist undertakes extensive research and fieldwork to explore the potential of critique over that power and the sociopolitical systems supporting it. Recent selected solo and group exhibitions include:Forgive Us Our Trespasses / Vergib uns unsere Schuld: Of (Un)Real Frontiers, Of (Im)Moralities and Other Transcendences, HKW, Berlin (2024);WAR IS OVER, Tanga Hodai, Oita (2024); Nomadic, The Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok (2024); Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles, L’espace Van Gogh, Arles (2024); WORLD CLASSROOM, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2023); All silence is a hidden space, The Cloisters Apartments, Shanghai (2023); Les Nucléaires et les Choses, KADIST, Paris, France (2019). 

His work is found in the following collections: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (South Korea), KADIST (France/ USA), Seoul Museum of Art (South Korea), Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art (Japan), The National Museum of Art, Osaka (Japan), The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (Japan), Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo and others. 

VERA GAN: You have a long interest in subjects such as museums, archives, history, and artifacts as records of the human past and the different efforts to preserve it. What are the origins of your interests, and when did they occur? 

HIKARU FUJII: My engagement with archives and history dates back to my student years in Paris. However, the Fukushima nuclear accident following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake confirmed its significance for me. We were as terrified as we were confused by the uncertain information regarding the radiation. The fear grew as it was related to human life. Our government repeatedly used the phrase “no immediate impact", but it was difficult to believe. We knew we needed to prepare for possible catastrophes in the future. 

As a result, I began researching the court records of Japan's first environmental pollution lawsuit. I dug through the judicial archives from 1967 when the word “environment" had not even taken root. This research culminated in the video installation We have suffered, and youhave benefited from our suffering. By invoking memories of the past, I sought to prepare for the difficulties that may lie ahead in the scientific tribunals that are about to occur in the potential future. It was necessary to project and consider the past, in which victims were able to prevail against the perpetrators, the giant corporations, onto the future of those of us living in the here and now. 

We have suffered, and you have benefited from our suffering. Images courtesy of Hikaru Fujii.

There are other moments of recalling memories of past significant disasters. Throughout history, humanity has constantly repeated the same course of action in the face of catastrophe - it tells the bigger story of reconstruction. Under the powerful message of “Japan will overcome this hardship," we rise to create a new future. However, in the case of a nuclear accident, such a narrative of reconstruction becomes a dangerous trap. A nuclear accident cannot be resolved simply by decontaminating the radiation that is pouring out. Nor can it be ended with irresponsible statements like “the nuclear fuel is under control" that are certain to go out of control. A nuclear accident has irreversibly destroyed the memories, culture, and way of life of the land, the environment, and the community for thousands of years. My works such as Les Nucléaires et les Choses and The Anatomy Classroom are an attempt to weave together the disconnected time of before and after the accident by creating a new archive - summoning artifacts from the past that attest to the violence of the nuclear accident. They reveal the violence of the nuclear accident, which is concealed by the reconstruction narrative that only speaks of a bright future. 

Les Nucléaires et les Choses. Photo: A. Mole, Shizune Shiigi.

VG: You frequently work with collaborators from different professional backgrounds. How do you understand the term “interdisciplinary" from your own experience? Any difficulties or merits you recognized? 

HF: The Japanese government and TEPCO, Tokyo Electric Power Company rejected calls for international cooperation to resolve the nuclear disaster. In contrast to their domestic introversion, Les Nucléaires et les Choses and The Anatomy Classroom are open to domestic and international experts in collective thinking. My job as an artist was to create an intersection for cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas and sensitivities with philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and international political scientists. 

The biggest difficulty is the Japanese government's politics, that limit disaster management to domestic policy, amplifying concealment, invisibility, and forgetting. The fact that even today, more than 10 years after the disaster, no artwork dealing with the nuclear accident has been exhibited at the Japan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, where the Japan Foundation, an affiliate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is involved, is symbolic. In other words, I had to rely on foreign funds to produce two of my works. 

VG: Many recent discussions on contemporary art and archives, with terms such as archive fever and archival impulse, reflect on the (re-) interpretation of history and memory. Have you encountered any terminology or theory you feel related to among copious discussions, and why? 

HF: Yes, I've read Jacques Derrida's Archive Fever many times, and I admit that I am not unrelated to the “archival impulse" Hal Foster discussed in the past, which extends to the international art scene. Still, it is essential to be aware of the difference in the tension of making critical use of archives in Asia, where political and economic forces often surpass the art scene. To give an example, imagine the difficulty of openly discussing the memory of the “Nakba" that happened to the Palestinians in Germany after October 7, 2023. In Asia, we need to be skilled at fending off attacks on the art, such as censorship, self-censorship, and intimidation. We must observe the shifting political threats and gamble with the audience's imagination, using fiction, rhetoric, lies, aesthetics, and metaphors. 

VG: While working with archives that have a relatively established narrative to some degree, how do you approach them? Anything you would avoid doing? 

HF: If we go back to the origin of the word “archive," we end up in the house of senior political officials in ancient Greece, “Archonte." In this place of authority, the archivists had the power to keep historical documents safe and interpret historical materials anew. In other words, by using archives, you can create the myths that restore the laws of ancient kingdoms and the stories of revolution. 

The crisis of archives in the post-truth age is that history=narrative, falsified by patriotic sentiments, have become the dreams that fill the blank future of the people and nation and are now driving the reality. What I can do about this alarming situation is limited. 

I have produced with the South Korean youth work titled The Educational System of anEmpire, and two films with Southeast Asian youth living in Japan, 2.8 Declarationof Independence | Reading in Japanese and The Heartless. I examine the violence that strongly exists in contemporary Japan, that glorifies the history of Japanese colonial rule. Alternatively, in Record of the Bombing, I explored the structural issue of the still invisible archives of indiscriminate bombings by the U.S. military during World War II. Through these activities, I am standing on the front lines of the dialogue-less confrontation of populism that is intensifying in many countries worldwide. 

2.8 Declaration of Independence | Reading in Japanese. Images courtesy of Hikaru Fujii.

Mujō (The Heartless). Photo: A. Mole, Ito Tetsuo.

Record of the Bombing. Photo: Shizune Shiigi.

VG: As said, you focused on the past, and I found out you are particularly interested in the tragic part of history. Is this unintentional? What specific aspect of human tragic history draws your attention? 

HF: I don't use the word “tragedy." I'm more interested in “catastrophes" that imply the meaning of disasters, such as wars, large-scale accidents, and pandemics caused by new viruses. Catastrophes not only shatter the earth and its infrastructure but also reveal human nature. In my work The Classroom Divided by a Red Line, I focus on the discrimination amplified by the fear of the invisible threat of radiation. The discrimination against evacuees from Fukushima was terrible. How to record the emotional scars of the victims and preserve this archive for future generations was also an issue for the curators at Fukushima's historical and anthropological museums.I was concerned that by documenting such damage, I would be complicit in reconsolidating the victim's emotional scars or trauma, this issue has remained untouched for about a decade. I created this work because the COVID-19 pandemic brought to the foreground, the discriminatory attitudes toward Asian people in Europe and the U.S. (in Japan, there have also been incidents where people were throwing stones at the homes of infected individuals.) At that time, I was not intrigued by the “tragedy" itself, but the structures and mechanisms that create them. 

The Classroom Divided by a Red Line. Images courtesy of Hikaru Fujii.

VG: Why do videos hold the position of the primary medium within your art practices? Have you discovered anything intrinsic within the moving image medium that is significant for your art practices? 

HF: Just like the clergy, kings, and nobles of the past surrounded by paintings, presently, people's daily lives are overflowing with video footage. The democratization of images has progressed dramatically with the invention of video. It is now installed in smartphones and has become a modern stationery. It's a medium open to everyone, equivalent to a pen. It is no exaggeration to say that my art creation started from thinking about the potential and violence of this most mundane and intimate medium in today's modern society. A critical analysis of the media and forms of expression with technology to which I am subject, provides the impetus and energy to create new works. My works surrounding today's archives also re-examines the visual theory of seeing and recording through the camera. 

VG: When we study archives and history, especially in Asia, we often encounter forces such as colonialism, Euro-centralism, and globalization. Some think this is a common problem for Asian contemporary art in terms of considering its own modernity. Can you share your thoughts on the modernity of art based on your experiences and expertise in history? 

HF: I completely agree with you - that the influence of colonialism and Eurocentrism in Asia cannot be ignored. These ideas are deeply ingrained in our culture. There are many paintings from as early as the 15th century by Japanese painters depicting Portuguese merchants and missionaries who came to Japan, and the works are often recognized as paintings that record the first encounters between “East and West." However, Hiroko Hagiwara, a scholar of Black Art, has a different perspective. She focuses on the colonialist and racist “North-South" interactions in these paintings, particularly the depictions of Black and Asian people. Inspired by her work, I created a piece titled Southern Barbarian Screens, with a Black actor, where I examined the urgent issue in Asia to question the history of capitalist globalization of the past 500 years. Asia is today the ideal society for Europe's far-right leaders who are hostile to immigrants. In our society, migrants can be monitored thoroughly with digital technology, minimize the social capital to be returned, even legalize human trafficking, and exploit to the utmost limit. Naturally, they have systems in place to quickly deport immigrants when they are no longer needed. In response to this “modernization" of Asia, is not contemporary art required to respond?

Southern Barbarian Screens. Images courtesy of Hikaru Fujii.