Performing the Power of the Photography: “BeHere/1942” by Masaki Fujihata
Jakub Kłeczek
jakub.kleczek@umk.plNicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9499-1567
Abstract
The aim of this article is to analyze the art and research project BeHere/1942 (2022) by the Japanese media artist Masaki Fujihata. The collectively created intermedia system, which enables viewer participation, refers to a forgotten series of propaganda photographs documenting the internment of West-Coast Americans of Japanese descent in the Little Tokyo district of Los Angeles. BeHere/1942 employs creative strategies developed by Fujihata, who is an acclaimed pioneer of the use of augmented reality technology in media art. The project also constitutes a daring form of critique of the dominant media narrative about the historical event. The article examines the forms of experience in which the creators of BeHere/1942 enmesh the viewers. Particular attention is paid to interactivity, a new understanding of historical photography, and the act of photographing as a performance of power.
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Keywords:
Masaki Fujihata, “BeHere/1942”, augmented reality art, Japan–United States relations, photography and performanceReferences
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Authors
Jakub Kłeczekjakub.kleczek@umk.pl
Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9499-1567
Jakub Kłeczek - PhD, performing arts researcher, and media archaeologist. Assistant Professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń (Faculty of Humanities). Principal Investigator of the project “Intermedia performance from the perspective of media archaeology: The avant-garde of performing arts and popular spectacles of the 19th and 20th centuries” (founded by the National Science Center in Poland). Post-doc fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles (The Department of Design Media Arts) in 2022. He published Performans cyfrowy – historycznomedialne przemiany (Toruń, 2022), as well as over thirty research articles.
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