1976 - 1980
Duchampiana calling Video Sculptures
In 1972 I visited Marcel Duchamp’s grave. I took my blue book, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage , with me. It was a very windy day. I took a train from Paris to Rouen, then took a cab to his cemetery. I asked a woman,“ Where is Marcel Duchamp’s grave?” She looked at me and said,“ Who is he?” Then, she opened the telephone book. I was very shocked. Alone, after a long search in the vast cemetery, the weight of my portapack crushing on my shoulder, I finally found Duchamp’s grave next to that of Jacques Villon, his brother. Marcel’s ironic epitaph surprised me . . .“ D’ailleurs, c’est toujours les autres qui meurent.”Despite the cool unsentimentality of Duchamp’s own attitude toward death, I was very moved. My father’s family, of monk’s lineage, owns a monastery in the hinterlands of Japan, so I used to see a lot of funerals. I often did homework inside a temple room where fresh bones were stored. How I played with ghosts . . . all these childhood memories flashed back into my head, I put my Duchamp and Cage book on his grave, as in the oriental family custom of putting rice cookies on the dead ancestor’s altar.
Chronology Video Sculptures
1976
■ [Jan. 24‒Feb. 17 ] Shigeko Kubota: 3 Video Installations. Duchampiana, René Block Gallery, New York. First showing Duchampiana series.
◎ Nude Descending A Staircase (Hereafter Staircase) / Video Chess (Herafter Chess) / Grave
■ [Apr. 1‒3] Living Video Environment Video Installations by Shigeko Kubota at her studio (Part of The Moving Image New York City organized by Anthology Film Archives)
◎ Staircase / Grave
■ [Apr. 19‒June 20] Projects: Video III, Museum of Modern Art, New York.
◎ My Father
■ [June 9‒26] Rooms, MoMA PS1, New York.
◎[unknown]
■ [June 10‒27] Women’s Video Festival NYC, Women’s Interart Center, New York.
◎ My Father / Grave
■ New York-Downtown Manhattan: SoHo-Berlin Festival, Academie der Kunste, Berlin.
◎ Grave
■ [July 23‒Aug. 1] [solo show], and/or Gallery, Seattle, Washington.
◎ Staircase
■ [Aug.] Traveled throughout the West with Robert (Bob) Harris. Video taken then became the base for Three Mountains.
1977
■ “Indie” Award, Association of Independent Video and
Filmmakers, New York.
■ [Jan. 22‒Feb. 26] Meta-Marcel by Shigeko Kubota 3 Video Sculptures: Window, Door, Mountain, René Block Gallery, New York.
◎ Window / Door / Mountain
■ [Mar. 21] Married Nam June Paik. Hospitalized for masterectomy in the same year.
■ [June 19] 13th Annual Avant Garde Festival of New York , The World Trade Center, New York.
◎[unknown]
■ [June 24‒Oct. 2] documenta 6, Kassel.
◎ Staircase
■ [Sept. 18‒Oct. 16] Duchampiana: 3 Video Sculptures Shigeko Kubota, Long Beach Museum of Art, California.
◎ Staircase / Grave / Meta Marcel: Window (Hereafter Window)
■ [unknown] Duchampiana, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City.
◎ Staircase
1978
■ Taught Video Art, School of Visual Arts, NY and Kunst Akademie in Dusseldorf.
■ [Jan. 21‒Feb. 3] Shigeo Kubota 4 Video Sculptures: Duchampiana, Japan House Gallery, New York.
◎ Grave / Window / Chess / Video Poem
■ [Feb. 6‒19] PAN-CONCEPTUALS ’78, Gallery Tamura, Tokyo."
◎[unknown]
■ [Mar. 16‒May 2 ] Projects: Shigeko Kubota, Museum of Modern Art, New York.
◎ Staircase
■ [May 20] 14th Annual Avant Garde Festival of New York and the 2nd Annual Cambridge River Festival, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
◎[unknown]
■ [July 14‒18] Shigeko Kubota: Video Poem, Galerie René Block, West Berlin.
◎ Video Poem
■ [Oct. 5‒29] [solo show] Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.
◎ Video Poem / Staircase / My Father
■ [Nov. 10‒Dec. 31] Shigeko Kubota: Nude Descending a Staircase, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York.
◎ Staircase
■ [Dec. 3‒Jan. 21, 1979] Couples, Institute for Art & Urban Resources, P.S.1, Long Island City, New York.
◎ Window (Snow)
1979
■ Received Rockefeller Fellowship.
■ Received D.A.A.D. (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) Fellowship, and stayed in Berlin.
■ [May 22‒June 3] Shigeko Kubota, Taka Iimura, New Video, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
◎ Three Mountains
■ [Sept. 28‒Oct. 21] Three Mountains & Snow, Aspen Center for the Visual Arts, Colorado.
◎ Three Mountains / Window (Snow)
■ [Oct. 28‒Dec. 16] Videoweeks Essen ’79, Museum Folkwang, Essen.