Beyond the frame: intermedia and expanded cinema in 1960-1970s Japan

This thesis examines what intermedia meant for artists and critics in 1960s-70s Japan in order to investigate the intermediality of Japanese expanded cinema. While demonstrating the ability for mediums to interact, intermedia highlights the particularities of a medium through the process of juxtaposition. The historical theorisation of medium interactions are outlined in Part I, which addresses the distinctiveness of intermedia from others and provides an overview on the ways Japanese artists and critics responded to intermedia in the 1960s. While proposing a discourse on medium interactions pre-existed intermedia's arrival as a term in Japan in the form of synthesis arts (sōgō geijutsu), I will delineate the meaning of intermedia in 1960s Japan using three events that incorporated the word in its titles: Intermedia at Runami Gallery; Intermedia Art Festival; and Cross Talk Intermedia. Performances with projections, projections onto bodies and projections onto balloons are analysed in Part II as recurring tendencies in Japanese expanded cinema to demonstrate the ways the potential for performative action inherent in the apparatus of film projection was accentuated through staging an interaction with performance. Seeking alternative surfaces for projection, the works revealed the amorphous qualities of light projection usually concealed in the experience of film. Part III discusses relations between film, audience and space that are established in the spatial projections of Japanese expanded cinema. I will analyse film emancipated from the prescribed codes of the cinema space in the pavilions of Expo '70, psychedelic shows in underground discotheques and early film installations, to discuss how film projection participated in the critical turn to environment (kankyō) in Japanese contemporary art. Through its historical overview, the thesis will show the intermediality of Japanese expanded cinema was demonstrated by its performative and spatial approaches to film projection that staged an opportunity to compare film with other mediums.