Chikei Hara | Morgan Quaintance Special Feature: Chorus of Speech Acts & Images (From Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Media 2026)
The Morgan Quaintance special feature at Yebisu International Festival 2026 explored urban and diaspora histories through experimental film.Summary
Screened as part of the Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Media 2026 at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, the "Morgan Quaintance Special Feature: Chorus of Speech Acts & Images" comprised six past works by the London-based artist and critic. Utilizing poetic montage and 16mm film, the program aimed to bring marginalized voices to the forefront of historical narratives. The core work, "Available Light" (2024), contrasted the privileged, preserved architecture of the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum with the precarious living situations of urban dwellers, deconstructing the myth of the home under global capitalism. By layering fragmented images, poetic language, and the artist's own experiences of displacement and housing insecurity, the works exposed the asymmetry between protected architectural heritage and the precarious reality faced by those on the urban periphery.
(Source：artscape)