From 22-26 May, the second iteration of the exhibition With or Without the Sun was held in collaboration with the Japan-Filmfest Hamburg. The exhibition is the manifestation of ongoing curatorial research into the history of the essay-film in relation to Japan, undertaken by Staffan Boije af Gennäs and Christopher Sand-Iversen. It formed part of the festival programme, one of the foremost expositions of the alternative Japanese film scene in Europe, and was hosted by Enfants Artspace.

The first exhibition was held in 2018 as part of SixtyEight’s Dictionary of Advanced Difference exhibition programme, and explored the development and legacy of the essayistic tradition of filmmaking, both in the west and in Japan.

The emphasis in this second iteration of With or Without the Sun, titled Essay-film and the Image of Japan, was shifted towards the Japanese aspect of the project, with the inclusion of two Japanese films not present in the first version, Pyuupiru 2001-2008 by Daishi Matsunaga and Asagi Kimura’s Hizume. Photographer Fabian Hammerl contributed a series of images taken during a two-month residency in Osaka at the end of 2018. The series was arranged with reference to the compositional approach in the 'Overflow' installation of Japanese photographer Takuma Nakahira, in whom Hammerl has a longstanding research interest.

View the first iteration of the project here