Mayumi Nakazaki
visual art / film
email → nazurinpon at gmail.com
Upcoming / Recent News
Oct. - Nov. 2024 “Traversing” collaborative duo exhibition together with Miku Sato at Bradwolff Projects in Amsterdam.
May 2024 Received project grant from AFK ( the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts) for upcoming shooting of video installation work ‘Mapping’.
Dec. 2023 ‘In My Drawer’ at Socio-1, Ibaraki Film Arts Festival, Ibaraki Japan
Nov. - Dec. 2023 ‘Boats’ #ArtSpeaksOut program ‘climate’ section COP28 Ikono t.v Germany
Oct. 2023 ‘Crossing’ at International film festival Interseccion https://interseccion.gal/ A Coruña, Spain
Aug. - Sep. 2023 ‘Crossing’ at SMIFF Seoul Metro International subway Film Festival, Seoul Korea
April 2023 ‘Boats’ in ‘One Minutes’ program at 26th International short film festival Oberhausen, Germany
Article by RamenParaDos Oct.2023
‘Crossing’ portrays the Shibuya crossing today after the pandemic, crowded and with everyone wearing a mask, even taking into account that it was never mandatory in Japan. However, the most curious thing about this short film is that the one-minute scene is presented to us in complete silence. Thus, the artist offers us a minute of absence of noise in this area which, in itself, is a place where there is a multitude of sounds. However, the viewer's mind completes the images with the sounds of this passage, such as people walking, talking, and the noise of vehicles.
In the interview, we had the opportunity to ask Mayumi Nakazaki a series of questions about this short film, starting with the choice of the topic. The filmmaker lives in Amsterdam and, during the pandemic, she found the lack of collective sense in the West in the face of a global health problem such as Covid-19 very curious. In Japan, the use of a mask was never an obligation, because people are already raised with the concept where if a person gets sick, they put on a mask to prevent contagion to other people and there is a deep respect for older people in this sense. However, in the West, the feeling about this catastrophe is more individualistic, something that especially caught the artist's attention that it had to be an obligation for this type of security protocols to be complied with. She commented on the anecdote that in Japan there was a concept of being beautiful with a mask. This led to them taking more care of the visible parts without a mask, such as doing their eyebrows. In this way, many people preferred to see others with a mask, since without it they considered in some cases that they were totally different. On the other hand, the filmmaker revealed that, at first, the film was thinking of having music. However, she thought the use of masks enhanced the minute of silence that ultimately resulted in the short film. Not only because it is a negative aspect as a global problem of these dimensions, but because people appear to be quieter when wearing a mask. When choosing the crossing map, the author confessed that she had opted for Shibuya station. There she was able to comfortably position herself behind glass doors to make the recording right at that moment where the traffic light opens to give way to pedestrians. Although there are Western elements in her work, much of Mayumi Nakazaki's films are based on Japanese culture and customs. The director recognized that choosing Japan as the protagonist of her videos leads her to mix her memories and her fantasies, offering a different and very personal point of view of the Japanese country. (google translation)