TAKES FROM JULIAN DAYS - FUJI VIEW
Toni Kleinlercher
2019
Artist Statement
Focusing on Fujisan, from October 1, 2003 to September 30, 2004, I took a picture every day from my balcony in Tokyo's Nippori district for over a year, mapping it to the minute, using the Julian day-counting system. These takes, the photographs, have now, 2019, been used to construct a video montage, a compilation of the daily pictures. In the mentioned time span 326 Fuji -View-photos were taken. On 39 days within this year I was not present. During these 39 days I asked people, who I randomly met, to draw the outlines of the Fujisan on a piece of paper with my official Japanese stamp on it. A selection of these pictures of anonymous origin, formally based on On Kawara's "date paintings", is now part of this project. As well as the video, which consists of 326 + 39 compiled Julian-dated frames.
Ki wo tsukete Again and again the head of his seat neighbour taps on his shoulders. She struggles with sleep. He remains calm, does what he often does on the train, learns kanji. Ki wo tsukete! Take good care of yourself, he is reading, trying to memorize the characters. Now the little head of his seat neighbour finds its place. She's asleep. Her head on his shoulder. It's nothing unusual. His gaze wanders slowly through the compartment. No one is talking, no one is telephoning. Only a few have opened their eyes. The rattling of the train lulls most of them to sleep.
Artist Bio
*1958 in Schwaz/Austria. Currently living and working in Vienna. Starting from various investigations using coding and overwriting techniques as a poet and as a visual artist, Kleinlercher's thematic preoccupation extends from ethnographic approaches to literary condensations to meditative series of works, which ultimately deal with the question of dissolution through equality in emptiness.