Video Letter Exchange between Buenos Aires, Argentina and Fukushima, Japan (2021)

• 68%
• 2021
• Hikaru Suzuki
• Franca Malfatti

As part of a workshop run by Nele Wohlatz at the University of the Arts Hamburg, this series of video letters was sent from April to August 2020 between the filmmakers' respective hometowns of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Fukushima, Japan. Their contents extends from the artists' somewhat restricted daily lives during COVID, to their dreams, anxieties, and explorations of their local environment. In Suzuki's case, his hometown of Fukushima sustained severe damage in the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, which is a recurring subject in his wider work. "All of a sudden, I found myself participating in an attempt to make a video letter without leaving my room," he writes. While the letters are mostly filmed in a single location, they in part take place in digital space, building up an impression of three-dimensional intimacy with their "writers.