Ieva Raudsepa

TOKYO HIGHWAY SCENE (10’25’’, 2022)
video

Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 film Solaris begins a day before Kris Kelvin sets off for a space station orbiting the oceanic planet from which the movie takes its name. In an episode shot from the perspective of a driving car, we see a city of the future. The images of the vast and fast-paced transportation network in this imaginary metropolis were shot on the highways of Tokyo in 1971. 

Rapid technological development and large-scale infrastructure projects carried out in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s fed into the idea of Tokyo as a city of the future in the popular imagination outside of Japan. The construction of Shutoko – the Metropolitan Expressway in Tokyo – began in 1959, and the expressway system is still being expanded.

We meet the narrator of Tokyo Highway Scene when she is in a taxi, going to give a lecture at a conference. At the event she will speak about her research on fictionalised images of Tokyo representing the city of the future in movies from the late 20th century — in what ways did people imagine “the future” in the past and what can we make of it today? The main character of this story finds herself in a moment of great uncertainty: Is there anyone who is looking forward to the moment that comes after this one? 

Made during the ARCUS Project 2021, Artist-in-Residence Program, Ibaraki.

Weather forecaster — Marija Linarte
Camera & colors — Reinis Helmuts Aristovs
Music — Pavel Milyakov
Graphic design — Heikki Kaski
MUA — Ilona Zariņa

Sound recording — Edvards Broders

Audio post-production — Pēteris Pass 

Stills (e-mail me for a link)