Spectacle Theater is thrilled to present THE NEW COSMOS: A collection of six short film works by Takashi Makino, one of Japan’s most prolific and adventurous experimental filmmakers. Operating in a similar structuralist mode as Ernie Gehr and Paul Sharits, Makino’s films incorporate layers upon layers upon layers of sound, image, and light to create densely-textured, hypnotic works that can only be described as— to draw from the title of a 2015 work of his— “space noise”.
Born in Tokyo in 1978, Makino began making his own experimental films in 1997. After graduating from the Cinema Department at Nihon University College of Art in 2001, Makino moved to London to where he continued his studies manipulating images, music, exposures, and animation under the Brothers Quay. Shortly after returning to Japan in 2004, Makino began collaborating with American experimental music titan, Jim O’Rouke (Sonic Youth, Gastr Del Sol), in turn accelerating his filmmaking pace. Today, Makino has released over 40 films, from his earliest 2002 short film EVE to his most-recent 2022 work ANTI-COSMOS, making its New York debut as part of this program.
Makino’s work is renowned for its collaborative nature, not only in the sense that his films are often soundtracked by a murderer’s row of avant garde composers that includes Jim O’Rourke, Tara Jane O’Neil, Chris Corsano, Mats Gustafsson (Fire!), Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek), and Liz Harris (Grouper), but also in the sense that his work aims to create an ever-changing “third image” between his own projected images and those created within each viewer’s imagination. The artist has described his own work as a “creative collaboration with filmmaker and audience,” the sheer experience of it “giving birth to a new cosmos… an act of true creativity.”
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17 – 7:30 PM w/ Q&A THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23 – 10:00 PM MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27 – 7:30 PM
This program will include the following works:
EVE dir. Takashi Makino, 2002. Japan. 3 min. Music by Takashi Makino.
STILL IN COSMOS dir. Takashi Makino, 2009. Japan. 17 min. Sound/music by Jim O’Rourke, Darin Gray, & Chris Corsano.
INTER VIEW dir. Takashi Makino, 2010. Japan. 23 min. Music by Tara Jane O’Neil & Brian Mumford.
EMAKI/LIGHT dir. Takashi Makino, 2011. Japan. 15 min. Music by Takashi Makino & Takashi Ishida.
ON GENERATION AND CORRUPTION dir. Takashi Makino, 2017. Japan. 26 min. Music by Jim O’Rourke.
ANTI-COSMOS dir. Takashi Makino, 2022. Japan. 14 min. Sound by Lawrence English & Lasse Marhaug.