9s Gallery is pleased to present "WRONG HERO," a solo exhibition of media artist Sakiko Fujishima from October 19 (Sat) to October 27 (Sun), 2024.
Sakiko Fujishima is an artist who creates experimental works, moving back and forth between analog and digital, 2D and 3D, and reality and virtual reality.
In her early works, she used piping and factories as motifs, colorfully expressing dense patterns in a "self-indulgent order.
In recent years, he has been creating works that capture the "voices of individuals" on social networking services, which was triggered by the work he presented during the lockdown of COVID-19, in which he invited participants on social networking services and held a demonstration in a virtual space.
WRONG HERO" *Screenshot of the work in development
Artist Statement
"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.
"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman." - Virginia Woolf
In a recent survey conducted on social networking sites, we received many voices related to gender. There, for example, were the voices of women who spoke of the "pain of being prioritized over their eldest son," and men who spoke of the "pain of being valued 'because he is the eldest son' rather than because he is." These voices tend to be buried in the net, bound by the roles imposed on them by society. WRONG HERO" isan attempt to makesuch voicesvisible inthe realm of games and art.
I have always had the feeling of being treated as an "NPC (non-player character) for others" in society. They are like supporting characters who just follow the script and complement the story of the "protagonist". But do we really have no choice but to follow our assigned roles?
The protagonist of "WRONG HERO" is a woman who has chosen to "abandon being a princess and become a hero. She fights, even though she is dismayed that she is a girl, and through dialogue with the villagers, she gradually updates her NPC-like perspective. Her very existence brings to light buried voices, as if she is "flagging" a new reality.
In Japanese society, despite the fact that half of the population is female, only men are placed in decision-making positions. While it is important for individuals to strive to change their roles, it is not enough to move to the "next level. Without changing the "rules" of society, as well as "stereotypes" and "unconscious prejudices," it is difficult to escape from fixed gender roles.
This exhibition is a place of experimentation where buried voices are picked up and the audience is confronted with imposed roles. The audience as players may find that they not only have to question their own choices, but that the system itself needs to be modified.
Virginia Woolf said, "It was women who remained anonymous," but we are getting tired of that role by now. The protagonist in WRONG HERO is no longer going to be a "princess" waiting to be saved, and men don't need to be forced into the role of "brave men who must be strong. It is time for everyone to create their own new quests, free from the scripted "hero" or "supporting role".
WRONG HERO" *Development screen
Gallery Comment
Starting October 19, 2024, 9s Gallery will present "WRONG HERO," a solo exhibition by media artist Sakiko Fujishima.
Sakiko Fujishima is an artist who created quite a stir when she presented a virtual demonstration in 2020, in which the number of reposts to a social networking post is considered as the number of participants, and avatars are placed in a virtual parliament building for that number of people, which are then posted on the social networking site. With the Corona disaster making it difficult to go out and gather, the virtual demonstration attracted attention as an attempt to unite the small voices of individuals into a single sprech call and deliver it far and wide.
Furthermore, Fujishima, the organizer of the virtual demonstration, received thousands and thousands of comments on the demonstration via social networking sites. While the arguments that people make at demonstrations have great power, the circumstances that led each individual to make those arguments are inevitably overlooked. In virtual demonstrations, however, the raw voices of the people are accumulated in their original form. Fujishima has been vigorously creating works that scoop up and visualize such "individual voices" in both the real world and virtual space.
His new work, "WRONG HERO," presented in this exhibition, was conceived as a way to experience the "personal voices" buried in the timeline as text in a form other than text alone.
To this end, Fujishima will present a new work, "WRONG HERO," in the form of a video game. Video games, which are often regarded as entertainment, also have significant characteristics as media art. They are personal and immersive experiences in which the player participates and assumes the mask/persona of another. With this characteristic, Fujishima presents a new perspective on social issues.
WRONG HERO" was also inspired by the discomfort Fujishima felt while playing video games as a child. In the 1980s, the overwhelming majority of players' alter egos, or protagonists, were male*. Whether it is a world of swords and sorcery or a science fiction world of crashing enemy planes one after another, there are implicit gender norms embedded in the world.
The protagonist of WRONG HERO is a woman. Through her, the player interacts with NPCs and is subjected to gendered prejudices. The NPCs' words and actions are the voices Fujishima collects on social networking sites from people who have been subjected to gender prejudice.
However, when the NPCs see the protagonist playing an active role "despite being a girl," they change their minds. The film takes full advantage of the videogame format to allow players to experience their own and others' wounds. We can also see how the individual voices of the NPCs change in response to the protagonist's actions.
In the other work in the exhibition, players themselves can interact with NPCs in their own words. The dot-picture NPCs from "WRONG HERO" appear realistically on the monitor and respond to the player using a generative AI. Communication with others, who face us not as the female protagonist of "WRONG HERO" but as ourselves, will provide clues for our solidarity, even if we do not fully understand each other.
As in the case of the "Magician of the Earth" exhibition held in 1989 and its ripple effects, the practice of dialogue among others on the same footing has been tried, failed, and progressed repeatedly in the contemporary art world amid the wave of multiculturalism. This work is also a cutting-edge example of such practice.
This is 9s Gallery's first exhibition focusing on media art. We invite you to pick up a controller and participate.
Art is "unknowable. Therefore, participating in art is also an activity of "understanding" the "unknowable. And it is perhaps the only chance to cross the barrier of our inability to fully understand each other.
*Notes
The gender ratio of characters in video gamestends tobe predominantly male from the 1990s to the early 2020s. (A 2002 survey of games from the 1990s found that 13.8% of characters were female, 71.5% were male, and 14.7% were of unknown gender (animal or alien). ( "Shirts vs. Skins: Clothing as an Indicator of Gender Role Stereotyping in Video Games," MASS COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY 2002, 5(3), 279-293)
In the late 2010s, more games allow players to choose the gender of the main character than games in which the main character is fixed to either gender; in a study of games from 2012~2022, 31.87% of the characters were female, 61.7% male, and 5.18% non-binary, 1.26% of characters allow players to choose their gender.(" Gender Representation in Video Games", Justin C.M. Brown et al. UCLA, 2022.)
However, for games with a fixed gender of protagonist,males are undeniably more common than females, and furthermore, games with protagonists of neither gender are the least common. in a survey of games exhibited at Game Fair E3 in 2019, 66% of all games had a gender of protagonist that was selectable games, 21% had a male protagonist, and only 4.8% had a female protagonist.( "Female Representation in Videogames Isn't Getting Any Better," Wired, 2019.)
There are also prior studies that havenoted that male characters tend to be portrayed more aggressively than female characters and female characters tend to be portrayed more expositionally than male characters. ( "Video Game Characters and the Socialization of Gender Roles: Young People's Perceptions Mirror Sexist Media Depictions. ", Karen E. Dill & Kathryn P. Thill, 2007)
Exhibition Outline
Dates: 2024/10/19 (Sat) to 2024/10/27 (Sun)
Opening hours: 12:00 - 19:00
Opening Party:2024/10/19 (Sat) 16:00 - 18:00
Closed: 2024/10/21(Mon)
Venue:9s Gallery by TRiCERA
The Wall 3F, 4-2-4 Nishiazabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0031
Access: Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line Roppongi station 10 min. walk, Hiroo station 10 min. walk
10 minutes walk from Nogizaka station on Tokyo Metro Chiyoda Line
Contact: 03-5422-8370
For inquiries about this exhibition
