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Notes

In HIGH AND LOW (1963), Akira Kurosawa wanted to shoot the slum scene that symbolised the ‘low’ of Yokohama society on the infamous brothel streets of Koganecho. During the 60’s, Koganecho was considered so dangerous that even the residents around this community could not be a part of it. They have no history or experience of this street. It was not theirs. Kurosawa’s production team also found the area to be too dangerous to shoot and went as far as trying to build a surveillance camera so that it could remotely shoot the street without stepping foot into it. But the technology was not yet available then. The scene was later shot in studio. The residents were still left without a history of that street.

HEAVENHELL (2009) is an audio visual installation that looks to re-claim this missing history by re-shooting the slum scene on the same street that Kurosawa was suppose to. The act of re-shooting is the act of duplication; an act of archiving. An act that gives the street back to the community and a development of an experience that was lost. The physicality of the installation is broken down into the basic elements of cinema shooting: close-up, medium-shot, and wide-shot, and using the original cinemascope format. This visual breakdown is used as a reflection of the original films procedural storytelling (S. Prince) of the police chase. A precise way of showing a procedure. A police procedure; a cinematic procedure. The sound also refers to the technologies during the 60’s period while crossing over to the contemporary. Crisscrossing sounds from the past and the present will set the tone for this time- travelling suspense installation.

chris chong chan fui + yasuhiro morinaga

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HEAVENHELL was commissioned by the Koganecho Area Management Center for CREAM International Festival for Arts and Media Yokohama 2009. Other participating artists in CREAM from Southeast Asia are Eko Nugroho (Indonesia) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand).

Photographs by Kasagi Yasuyuki