Art Week Tokyo: Rituals, Routines, and the Human Experience

Art Week Tokyo's video program, 'Routines,' explores rituals in human societies, from funeral ceremonies to daily routines. It highlights how artists use video to convey complex emotions and offer unique perspectives on life's profound themes.

Rituals prevail to all human societies. A fixed performance of motions, words and actions, they exist in every little thing from funeral ceremonies and acquired customs to even the tiniest routines that punctuate our day-to-days live. This year, Art Week Tokyo’s video programme, titled Routines, or the Absurd Elegance of Prayers, is centred around this subject.

Routines and Cultural Context

As the procedure unfolded, end-of-life routines came to the fore. Amongst them is Nayab Noor Ikram’s The Household (2022 ), in which the musician restages a childhood hair-washing regimen in an intimate performance that talks to the importance of inherited tradition in diasporic areas.

Routines are usual to all human cultures. As the procedure unfolded, end-of-life rituals came to the fore. “Although their backgrounds and strategies vary, I really felt that by approaching these techniques as rituals– practically like prayer– the works might be experienced as interconnected,” states Okamura. These works advise us to acknowledge the small rituals that define our own lives, and exactly how we can get a better understanding of the human experience with them.

Artistic Interpretations of Rituals

Every one of these works deal with diverse and profound themes: death and mourning; movement and variation; war and colonialism. “Although their backgrounds and techniques vary, I felt that by approaching these methods as routines– nearly like petition– the works might be experienced as interconnected,” claims Okamura. And what can these acts use when faced with such hefty topics? “Each musician reacts to their worries in their own way … Some works critique, others propose straight remedies. Personally, I think that quieter expressions, like rituals repeated plainly, repeatedly, can move people far more exceptionally than loud pronouncements.” Without a doubt, these works advise us to recognise the tiny routines that specify our very own lives, and how we can gain a much better understanding of the human experience through them.

Video Art as Emotional Expression

“To review grieving is to assess life,” claims Okamura, that initially came close to the curation without a motif in mind. Rather, she was wanting to highlight the breadth of artistic methods in a tool she thinks about an effective antidote to the multitude of material flooding our screens. “Video clip has the ability to streamline, and charm directly to feelings,” she says. “Short clips capture our interest instantaneously, but they are likewise constantly created … In contrast, these video works existing circumstances also complex for words– layers of overlapping time and sensation, in their complete complexity.”

The ten selected works were handpicked by Keiko Okamura, a manager at the Gallery of Contemporary Art Tokyo. Lots of jobs explore funerary customs, such as those by Hiroko Okada, who strangely reimagines the function of the okuribito. Using AR and VR modern technology, Okada welcomed individuals to become their own okuribito, with her resulting video documenting the very first day of the task.