Akiko Okumura

Film

The film is made up of short scenes based on strange, even fantastical events, experienced by people I know. Some of these are verbally recounted, others re-enacted. The narrative begins with an interview with a Japanese lady aged seventy who, as a child, used to spend every day watching the will’o’the wisp forming in her home village.

She says the will’o’the wisp has stopped appearing in the village, and that the folklore has disappeared along with it. During my research into supernatural phenomena, however, I discovered that most Japanese people, while neither superstitious nor religious, still have their stock of tales of this kind, stories that are often uncertain and absurd. I see these events as a “strangeness inlaid in ordered life.” What interests me, beyond the actual authenticity of the facts, is that these phenomena live on in people’s thoughts.

For me, paranormal phenomena are essential elements for exploring today’s world. This film works towards a dialogue between the old world and the modern world by setting fantastic events against everyday realities. The two types of landscape show both the rupture of an epoch and the evolution of another one, and make this encounter the material for a new, possible story.

Akiko Okumura

Akiko Okumura was born in Japan in 1986; she lives and works in Lille, France. After her graduation from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Saint-Etienne and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Tourcoing, she had her first solo-show in 2012 at Bureau d'Art et de Recherche in Roubaix. Her installation and sculptural work explores the boundaries between the natural sciences and art. In 2014, she began working with film at Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains. In her first film, made in Japan, she describes the transition between ancient folklore and urban supernatural phenomena. The film has been presented at contemporary art events and film festivals such as CPH:DOX in Copenhagen and FESTCURTAS BH in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.