Underground International: Kurt Kren and Tomonari Nishikawa

“Through the alternately contemplative and psychedelic works of Kurt Kren, a pioneering Austrian filmmaker, and Tomonari Nishikawa, a contemporary Japanese filmmaker living in the US, we explore the social and material undergrounds in which avant-garde film has been embedded, from a co-op basement in 1970s Amsterdam to the irradiated soil of present-day Fukushima. In their films, space and time compress and distend as the dis/junctures between the human eye and camera eye are explored, excited, exploited, excoriated. The seams burst open. The differences between reality and experience, apparatus and nature deliriously dissolve.”

Underground International was conceived as a cinematic duet to highlight the intergenerational convergences and transcontinental connections animating the structural filmmaking tradition. The program included films from Austrian filmmaker Kurt Kren⁠⁠(opens in a new tab)⁠ (b. 1929; d. 1998) and Japanese filmmaker Tomonari Nishikawa⁠⁠(opens in a new tab)⁠ (b. 1969), as well as a conversation between Nishikawa and co-curators Patrick Harrison and Megan Hoetger.