You live wherever you live,
you do whatever work you do,
you talk however you talk,
you eat whatever you eat,
you wear whatever clothes you wear,
you look at whatever images you see...
YOU’RE LIVING HOWEVER YOU CAN.
YOU ARE WHOEVER YOU ARE
“Identity” ...
of a person,
of a thing,
of a place.
“Identity”.
The word itself gives me shivers.
It rings of calm, comfort, contentedness.
What is it, identity?
To know where you belong?
To know your self worth?
To know you are?
How do you recognize identity?
We are creating an image o ourselves,
We are attempting to resemble this image ...
Is that what we call identity?
The accord
Between the image we have created
Of ourselves
and ... ourselves?
Just who is that, “ourselves”?
We live in the cities.
The cities live in us ...
time passes.
We move from one city to another,
From one country to another.
We change languages,
we change habits,
we change opinions,
we change clothes,
we change everything.
Everything changes. And fast.
Images above all,
【The following is a voice-out】
change faster and faster and they have been multiplying at a hellish rate ever since the explosion that unleashed the electronic images, the very images that I am now replacing photography. We have learnt to trust the photographic image. Can we trust the electronic image? With painting everything was simple. The original was unique and each copy was a copy in a forgery. With photography in that film, it began to become complicated. The original was a negative without a print it did not exist. Just the opposite. Each copy was the original. But now, with electronic image and soon the digital, there is no more negative and no more positive. The very notion of the original is obsolete. Everything is copy. All distinctions have become arbitrary. No wonder the idea of identity finds itself in such a feeble state. Identity is out, out of fashion, exactly. Then, what is in vogue, if not fashion itself? By definition, fashion is always in. Identity and fashion are the two contradictory. Fashion? I have nothing of it. At least it was my reaction when the Le Centre d'art Pompidou in Paris ask me to make a short film in the context of fashion. The world of fashion, I’m interested in the world, not in fashion, but maybe I was too quick to put down fashion.
Why not examine it like any other industry, like the movies for example? Maybe fashion and cinema have something in common, and something else. This film will give me the opportunity to meet someone who has already aroused my curiosity, someone who worked in Tokyo.
Film-making should just remain a way of life sometimes, like taking a walk, reading a newspaper, eating, writing notes, driving a car, or shooting this film here, for instance, from day to day, carry along by nothing other than its curiosity, and notebook on cities and clothes.
