Hotel Aporia (2019)
Ho Tzu Nyen's Hotel Aporia features a cast of historical figures from Japan's interwar period, including World War Two kamikaze pilots, philosophers of the Kyoto School, filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, and animator Ryuichi Yokoyama. They were all caught up in the heady mix of Japan's militant nationalism, anti-modernism, and cultural propaganda. Letters and correspondence between the artist and his Japanese collaborators, the writers Tomoyuki Arai and Yoko Nose, form the narrative basis of the work. Experimenting with the epistemological and affective capacities of animation, Ho superimposes animation images of featureless faces onto found footage clips from Ozu's fiction films and Ryuichi Yokoyama's animation propaganda films. This is a single-screen cinematic presentation of Hotel Aporia. Its original form, first presented at the Aichi Trienanle, is a video installation projecting layers of animation and hybrid-animation images onto multiple screens within a heritage building.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is Hotel Aporia about?
- Ho Tzu Nyen's Hotel Aporia features a cast of historical figures from Japan's interwar period, including World War Two kamikaze pilots, philosophers of the Kyoto School, filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, and animator Ryuichi Yokoyama. They were all caught up in the heady mix of Japan's militant nationalism, anti-modernism, and cultural propaganda. Letters and correspondence between the artist and his Japanese collaborators, the writers Tomoyuki Arai and Yoko Nose, form the narrative basis of the work. Experimenting with the epistemological and affective capacities of animation, Ho superimposes animation images of featureless faces onto found footage clips from Ozu's fiction films and Ryuichi Yokoyama's animation propaganda films. This is a single-screen cinematic presentation of Hotel Aporia. Its original form, first presented at the Aichi Trienanle, is a video installation projecting layers of animation and hybrid-animation images onto multiple screens within a heritage building.
- Who directed Hotel Aporia?
- Hotel Aporia was directed by Ho Tzu Nyen.
- How long is Hotel Aporia?
- Hotel Aporia has a runtime of 1h 24m (84 minutes).