Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 film Solaris begins a day before Kris Kelvin sets off for a space station orbiting the oceanic planet from which the movie takes its name. In an episode shot from the perspective of a driving car, we see a city of the future. The images of the vast and fast-paced transportation network in this imaginary metropolis were shot on the highways of Tokyo in 1971.

 

Rapid technological development and large-scale infrastructure projects carried out in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s fed into the idea of Tokyo as a city of the future in the popular imagination outside of Japan. The construction of Shutoko – the Metropolitan Expressway in Tokyo – began in 1959, and the expressway system is still being expanded.

 

We meet the narrator of Tokyo Highway Scene when she is in a taxi, going to give a lecture at a conference. At the event she will speak about her research on fictionalised images of Tokyo representing the city of the future in movies from the late 20th century — in what ways did people imagine “the future” in the past and what can we make of it today? The main character of this story finds herself in a moment of great uncertainty: Is there anyone who is looking forward to the moment that comes after this one?

 

Made during the ARCUS Project 2021, Artist-in-Residence Program, Ibaraki.

Weather forecaster — Marija Linarte

Camera & colors — Reinis Helmuts Aristovs

Music — Pavel Milyakov

Graphic design — Heikki Kaski

MUA — Ilona Zariņa

Sound recording — Edvards Broders

Sound postproduction — Pēteris Pass

Curator — Elīna Sproģe

 

Ieva Raudsepa is an artist from Rīga, Latvia. Ieva holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Latvia, an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and has graduated from the Meisterschüler*innen postgraduate program at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig.

 

Ieva works with video, photography, and text. Recent exhibitions include Superior Comfort (2024, Berlin), Letters at OxfordBerlin (2022, Berlin), Material Curing at Thames-Side Studios Gallery (2021, London), Closed for Crisis/ Take Care of Each Other at LOW (2021, Rīga), Future Ghosts at Human Resources (2019, Los Angeles), Post-Soviet Visions: image and identity in the new Eastern Europe at the Calvert 22 Foundation (2018, London). Ieva’s work has been featured in TANK Magazine, i-D, YET Magazine, Wallpaper, It’s Nice That, and elsewhere. She was a participant at Pla(t)form 2022 at the Fotomuseum Winterthur and an artist in residence at ARCUS in Moriya, Japan from 2020 to 2022.

The exhibition is organised by the Exhibition Hall "Riga Contemporary Art Space" of the Association of Cultural Institutions of the Riga State Municipality and supported by the Riga City Council, ARCUS Project, BBrental, VKKF.