SIDE CORE x Yokohama Museum of Art: KAIROS

Overview

The Yokohama Museum of Art has re-emerged after its first major renovation, spanning about three years, since opening in 1989. To document the transformation of the building at this major milestone in its history, we worked with artist collective SIDE CORE to film it with a 360-degree camera. The resulting video work will be released online when the museum fully reopens on February 8, 2025.

The video offers a behind-the-scenes look at the museum while it was hidden behind a construction enclosure during renovations, showing interior spaces before and after renovation. SIDE CORE invited the multinational artist group TOKYO ZOMBIE, musician KOM_I, and artists Moriyama Taichi and Kikuchi Ryota into areas of the museum that could not ordinarily be accessed. As they interacted with the evolving architecture throughout the three- year renovation, they also experienced personal growth and reached new stages in their lives. These participants play the role of guides, marking the passage of time during the museum's long-term closure.

This marks SIDE CORE's first project using 360-degree video, and delivers fresh perspectives on the museum's transformation that only artists could offer. Please do not miss the opportunity to enjoy this unique work during its limited-time online release.

*This work can only be viewed online. Not on display in the museum.

Click here for online work

1. This work has sound.


2. As this work is a 360-degree video, the viewpoint can be moved and zoomed by touching or moving the mouse/trackpad on the screen.


3. This work consists of two parts: random playback of short videos and a long video (approx. 23min.). Please press and hold the screen during random playback to switch to a long video.


4. Please check the operating environment for this work.

Artists’ Statement

KAIROS

While this project seems to have progressed more or less as planned, we do not perceive a clear, structured process leading from past and present. Instead, we feel as though we are endeavoring to form a vague, ambiguous link between the present and the past. The particular haziness of these connections across time may partly reflect our personal circumstances, but in actuality, these three years have been extremely turbulent. Wars of aggression have erupted in multiple locations worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged the world only to fade abruptly from memory, and the deepening of global anxiety and uncertainty shows no sign of abating.

Perhaps because of these circumstances, the artists involved in this project have changed profoundly, and seem like entirely different people compared to three years ago. For this project, we used 360-degree cameras to film artists performing inside the Yokohama Museum of Art. Intentionally mixing past and present footage during editing, we rediscovered three-year-old images of both the museum and the artists that look blurred and faded from today’s perspective. As we experience this sequence of moments, which are not clearly marked as belonging to the past or present, from the out-of-body perspective of the 360-degree camera, we explore a VR-based experience of time only possible in a museum space.

SIDE CORE

From "KAIROS", 2021-2025, Video