NOTES ON FILM
BY YOSHIKO CHUMA
compiled by Sarah Möller, based on a conversation from March 3, 2026.
NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN LANDSCAPE
In 1976, crossing the border into the US, arriving on the island of Hawaii – a never-before-seen landscape, an in-between Japan and the American mainland.
Seeing a landscape, a country, a person, a thing for the very first time as a threshold between void and image, between imagination and memory.
A parallel to film: a perception imprints into memory – light inscribes on celluloid.
THE SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS
Soon after, moving to New York City.
From a point of knowing no one to a network of singular unique connections.
Among them, the photographer and filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt.
Entry point into film – not through classes and workshops, but through lessons of intense observation.
Artistic interest in movement as a sequence of singular moments/stills, exceeding into duration, where perception involves both memory and anticipation.
During a stay at a summer house in Maine 1979, where Burckhardt, the dance critic Edwin Denby, and other artists and friends met, a first 16mm film was made: The Girl Can’t Help It.
In 1980, invited to the 37th Venice Film Festival, in the Sound and Image program. Together with composer Alvin Curran, cinematographer Jacob Burckhardt, and performer John Nesci, the installation and film The School of Hard Knocks were produced.
The American idiom The School of Hard Knocks becomes the company’s name – a journey across five decades begins, continuing to this day.
MANHATTEN PROJECT
The work of the company is strongly shaped by the political sphere of the Cold War, the Manhattan Project, the Vietnam/American War, and the related protest and visual culture.
While visual material from the first two atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remained classified by the American government for a long time, the later nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll were extensively documented and widely disseminated using the latest camera technologies.
Edited slow-motion footage of these tests entered major art institutions in the United States (the work of Bruce Conner), whereas the Japanese Godzilla genre reflected the endlessly recurring nuclear threat in the fictional format of the feature film.
Photographs and moving images from the Vietnam/American War influenced both the protest movements and the conduct and perception of the war itself.
Film as document: blurring boundaries between history and memories, representation and fiction, where images not only record events but actively shape their perception and memory: Cinema has power.
The practice of blurring and crossing borders in many ways becomes a central principle of Chuma’s work and that of The School of Hard Knocks.
CROSSING BORDERS
Quote
“I learned that beautiful things for me are not necessarily beautiful to everyone else, but they could well be something very scary. For the last 40 years I have been crossing borders to generate work. Crossing the border to New York/ the US in the late 70s, crossing the border between East and Central Europe in the earlier 90s, crossing the border to Palestine for over 10 years since 2005, crossing the border between Albania and Kosovo in 2007, crossing the border to Afghanistan in 2014, crossing the border to Maracaibo, Venezuela in 2014. All these borders were not wanted to be crossed by anybody because we said they were very dangerous and scary. Crossing these borders were some of my most beautiful experiences. Abstraction and representation feature the invisible performance – the most extreme vision of the School of Hard Knocks. These abstract, sculptural qualities of ensembles are emblematic of my being indifferent to the “representational” characteristics of body movements. Crossing these artistic borders were my most beautiful experiences. I intentionally confuse documentation with history, recreating steep segments from my documented events over the borders – endless peripheral borders.”
Crossing geographical borders, that often mark conflict lines and produce exclusions; moving at the periphery, investigating its political and aesthetic dimensions.
Crossing artistic borders: challenging and blurring distinctions between disciplines and practices; between materials and media. Text, film, music, sculpture, and dance intersect; documentary footage, fictional elements, and abstraction meet.
Arranging and overlaying these elements allows for the connection of spatial and temporal dimensions, which are often perceived and experienced as disparate.
CAST, LOCATIONS AND EPISODES
Over forty years, these crossings of borders have produced a series of open-ended episodes, with different casts – individual personal connections – at various locations.
A collection of images, archived in memory as well as in different media: photographs and moving images, on 16mm film, video, and digital material, captured with the mobile phone.
One of these episodes takes place in Potsdam on a warm August day in 2022 (cast: Yoshiko Chuma and Sarah Möller, from the conversation on which these notes are based):
A shared walk, crossing the former border between East and West Germany, framed by Prussian castles and parklands, forming today the subtle background hum of new claims to power.
Destination is the castle Cecilienhof, where in July and August 1945 Harry S. Truman, Winston Churchill, his successor Clement Attlee, and Josef Stalin met after the fall of Nazi Germany.
At that time and place, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were decided upon, and the Potsdam Declaration, calling for Japan’s surrender, was formulated.
Until then, Potsdam had been a name in this declaration; now there is an experience: from abstraction to image. Shockwave Delay.
CHEF DE CUISINE – COOKING OFF BOOK
After more than forty years of artistic practice, Chuma has become a master of composition, able to delicately arrange these episodes, chapters and elements into complex choreographed constellations; an organized chaos, revealing unexpected connections, ambivalences, and contradictions – pitting note against note, placing several singular voices in parallel motion, creating a new harmony.
Like a chef de cuisine who no longer needs a recipe – “cooking off book.”