Takahiko Iimura – Seeing / Hearing / Speaking

A multimedia/interactive DVD: Seeing / Hearing / Speaking has two parts: a new video, Seeing/ Hearing / Speaking, and three Other Related Videos produced during 1978-2001.

"Based on a sentence taken from the seminal book of Jacques Derrida, French philosopher, 'Speech and phenomena' translated by David B. Allison, I produced first video Talking to Myself in 1978 (revised in 2001). The video was highly appreciated as 'the strongest, most effective statement one could make from the work of Derrida' by Professor Allison. The sentence I quoted, that Derrida calls 'phenomenological essence', is that I hear myself at the same time that I speak. The new DVD, not just a transfer of video, extends further with text, and graphics, which work interactively. In 'Hearing / Speaking', for instance, you can choose among the monitors with the picture of face, head, ear and mouth in the video-installation, and can read/see different programs. ' Seeing / Hearing / Speaking DVD, which I have enjoyed very much indeed. It is, I think, a true masterpiece…because through your DVD one becomes able to grasp not only the theoretical or intellectual aspect of your relationship with Derrida's thought, but the ' vertigo' (as Allison says) of the 'deconstruction' (to use Derrida's jargon) of your own identity, i.e. a feeling, not an abstraction: a pre- or proto-theoretical full way of understanding and of living, i.e. an intuition of the 'difference' or 'differance' in Derrida's sense." – Daniel Charles, author of John Cage