Abstract
This article foregrounds the Japanese artist Imai Norio (b. 1946)'s contribution to the development and critique of the moving image in the context of Japanese contemporary art and society in the 1970s. While existing art historical scholarship has primarily discussed Imai's work as a part of the collective activities of the Gutai Art Association (1954-72), I focus on his film and video works created after the dissolution of the group in 1972. The 1970 World Exposition in Osaka served as a critical turning point for Imai's practice, which sought to reclaim the moving image from the structures of capitalist consumer culture and the passive consumption of simulacra, through an emphasis on the materiality of the film stock and videotape, the intermedial relation between still and moving image, and the performativity of the body. I situate Imai's practice within the context of the emerging discourse on eizō, the technologically mediated image, and the practice of visual artists in the Kansai region who experimented with new methods of projecting and installing the moving image at the white cube exhibition space to challenge the conventional format of the screen and the restricted mode of spectatorship associated with the cinematic apparatus.