I get the picture. It seems like what you’ve said now encourages me a lot. An article on Switch pointed out your works are quite similar to the music that came out through a sampler especially after techno music. Are you by any chance conscious of music when taking photos and
videoing?

I really feel my works hold the similarity to music through a sampler. I am very much interested in music.

While watching your video work, I thought you should’ve done music yourself on that.

Yoshihide Ohtomo said like that, “you’d better do music yourself so it’ll be better”. But, still, he’s great in compiling music. In the future, I think I’ll do it on my coming works little by little.

Do you have sort of a rhythm in editing videotapes and films?

Yes, initially, I was suppose to make 20-minute videotape. Later on, I was asked to shorten it to 15 minutes, which I was not able to do because I had made it for 20 minutes. It was edited with my rhythm according to 20 minutes. As a result, I made ‘in the couch’ at 20 minutes.

Back to Switch, the article said that you can make us feel the real synchronicity with our mind of the generation. Images on your visual works are processed through a very private and instinctive way of editing.
Who watches those images discover something new as in sampling music.Probably because young people in our generation can perceive the information delivered in images more real than that in words, I reckon your works hold a synchronicity with our generation.
Do you have any thoughts about synchronicity?

Certainly, I’m conscious of it. As I mentioned previously, I don’t create the works by following a certain concept. After collecting a number of images taken in Japan, foreign countries and some very daily landscapes, I do cut-up with them according to my instinct and intuition. So, they’re not arranged and premeditated in advance at all.

Somehow, I still feel good when people take my works that way. But, I don’t want to be fixed as a representative of the time. An famous critic asked me to join a photo book ‘ Shutter & Love’ because he liked my photos.

Well, that’s kind of Generation-X stuff, isn’t it? Dosen’t go well with your work?

No. So, I told him about myself, my works and the like. Later, he gave me a call and said he couldn’t use my photos for the photo book. He said they weren’t suitable to the book.

That was rather good, I guess.

Yes, If my photos’d been published on it, I would’ve been stuck in the category representing the time.

As I heard you are going abroad soon, where are you heading for next?

I’m going to travel around Europe with Werner Penzel who first led me to this visual world as my career.

That’s great!

Is it? I was surely going to follow his perspective to get where he was. At this time, I’m sure I can acquire something completely different from the last time. And it’ll be my valuable experience. I suppose I’ll be back by April due to a lack of money. I hope I’ll be able to live up to your expectations.