Television 1975-1976 – Masao Mochizuki

Masao Mochizuki systematically documented a year of Japanese television, creating an archive of broadcasts consumed incessantly throughout the twelve months. Using a modified camera, Mochizuki captured multiple images in a single frame, resulting in 35,600 individual images.

These elaborate edits reflect the erratic fusion of culture, drama, and news that the medium of television broadcasts in its endless cycle, and with it the arbitrariness of viewer enjoyment.

The details of the stories and events portrayed are lost in a mass of fleeting moments, and the narratives are presented without any detail of their significance or severity. Important international news events are represented here alongside frivolous entertainment, while television constantly conveys its content with a detached rationality.

Television, a masterfully executed body of work, returns to us a document on the mechanism that has played a fundamental role in constructing our view of the world around us.