STOM SOGO
Films by the Japanese moving-image artist Stom Sogo (1975-2012)
6:30pm / Monday 29 July 2013
In this
month’s programme we celebrate the life and work of Japanese artist and
filmmaker ‘Stom Sogo’. Stom Sogo was born in Osaka in 1975 and moved to the
United States in 1992. He quickly became a seminal figure in the community of
experimental filmmakers that evolved around Anthology Film Archives in New York
– befriending and working with contemporary filmmakers like Moira Tierney,
Dónal O’Céilleachair, Julius Ziz, Masha Godovannaya, Andy Lampert, to name but
a few – and the grand old master Jonas Mekas. He was a poetic, passionate and
prolific moving-image artist whose potential was cut short by his untimely
death in Japan in July 2012.
For more
than a decade he created films and videos with a distinctive, often aggressive,
but beautiful vocabulary of looping, re-shooting and overlaying primal imagery
of bodies, faces and intimate moments – but with expressionistic, jolting editing
rhythms blended with a simultaneously impressionistic colour palette and
sound-scape.
SILVERPLAY
2002
“[A] movie’s
reality should be as nasty and fucked up as possible, so we want to get fuck
out of the theater and hope for something better in life…. I try not to have a
message or even word in my movie. But I usually have some sick stories behind
each of the movies. Those are just mental eye candy that it taste sweet first,
seizure second.” –Stom Sogo
His work was
a highlight of MoMA’s ‘Big As Life’ 8mm survey, the 2002 Whitney Biennial and
many editions of the New York Underground Film Festival.
PERIODICAL
EFFECT 2001
I myself had
been in communication with Stom many times via e-mails and letters and he had
sent me his films to add to our collective programmes. But by spring 2011 we
had never actually met. After the earthquake in March 2011 I realized that the
frequent trips I had been making to Japan were coming to an end and Stom and I
were determined to meet. He had already been in Ireland to take part in one of
the screenings at Vivienne Dick’s ‘Live@8’ Club in Galway in 2008, but
unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it to that event at the time.
If I may
reflect here for a moment on the one valued meeting I had with Stom.
LIGHT
WITHOUT COLOURS
We met one evening in Tokyo in late spring 2011.
Over a mountain of rice and beer we explored the world we had in common but had
never physically shared - Anthology. We then realized, with excitement, that we
had not yet explored the same territory in Japan and determined that the next
day we would scour Shibuya for small venues to host experimental screenings.
We spent the next afternoon slowly working our
way towards Shibuya. The closer we got the more galleries and potential
screening venues would crop up and we would pop in somewhere and have a quick
chat with a programmer or manager. We were forming a plan. The plan also got
more ambitious as we started taking in the occasional bar aswell. Shooting,
negotiating, drinking, shooting, negotiating, drinking - we were getting up a
good rhythm.
One of the clearest memories I now have of that
weekend is sharing a taxi with Stom back to Ebisu. It was about 2 or 3am and we
were just pulling away from the Shibuya club and Stom slumped back in the back
seat of the cab, exhausted but with a big smile on his face and he said 'Oh
great! After so many years we never met, and now we have 3 whole days in
Tokyo!'
I arrived
back in Ireland a few days later with a pouch of fliers and contact details to
follow up on from our ‘reconnaissance’. I sent a few e-mails to make sure he
had got home to Osaka in one piece, but given how sporadic communication had
always been with him I was not alarmed at receiving no reply.
One morning
late last year I heard the news that just over a year after I saw him he passed
away in his apartment in Osaka. Although the news took a while to reach his
wider filmmaking community, once it was circulating it traveled like wildfire
and everybody expressed a need for his work to be ‘collected and saved’, so to
speak.
SLOW DEATH
2000
In the year
since his passing he has had retrospectives and screenings in Anthology Film
Archives itself, Rotterdam Film Festival, Galleries in New York and St.
Petersburg and now, thanks to his friends and collaborators Moira Tierney and
Andy Lampert, who has facilitated many of the screenings and is currently
archiving his work, we are proud to be able to present him in the Experimental
Film Club.
There will
be a Super8 projector set up in the auditorium for the event. Moira Tierney
will be acting as projectionist. We will be screening Super8 films provided by
Moira and Anthology.
Alan Lambert, July 2013
Alan Lambert, July 2013
SILVERPLAY
2002
“Total
anarchy, pushing the limits, going out/within further and further, marveling at
all the beauties and laughing at all the absurdities. To me this is what Stom
was all about at all times.“ - Raha Raissnia
“Stom was
both cunning and tender, even now I use him to measure imposters. He certainly
laughed at the solemnity with which the courtiers behave. He always wanted
more, again.” – Albert Herter
FILM INFO:
IMITATION
OF SOUTH, 16 MINS, 2002, BLACK & WHITE, SUPER-8MM
SLOW DEATH,
15 MINS, 2000, BLACK & WHITE SUPER-8MM
GUIDED BY
VOICES, 10 MINS, 2000, COLOUR, DVD
TTT (TRY
THIS TABLET), 16 MINS, 2004, COLOUR, DVD
C FOR CIAS,
11 MINS, 2008, COLOUR, DVD
