Meiro Koizumi

Allusions to Tohoku also flash through Meiro Koizumi’s double-channel film, Death Poem for a City (2013). A staccato relay of Tokyo street scenes plays on one side of the screen. Sound is as splintered as the images, with the din of arcade games cutting into sirens, electronic advertisements and conversations. Sometimes the handheld camera capsizes, drowning us in a muddle of streetlights. The reverse side of the projection screen shows people Koizumi sourced from Facebook and filmed in masks as they answer probing questions he delivers off-screen. In a sense, the figure of the artist embodies social media, which demands increasing amounts of personal information from us. Indeed, privacy is no option in Koizumi’s world: on either side of the screen, street and subject blare at each other. One masked man recalls seeing human remains while volunteering in Tohoku. The omnipresent disaster haunts Koizumi’s masked subjects, and in their disturbing moments of recollection, contextualizes Tokyo’s urban and technological malaise within the wider national crisis. (From: Frieze.com, review Roppongi Crossing 2013)