Eri Saito

PR Guy​

2020, installation (single channel video, sound, poster, mirror film, figure)

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In the group exhibition Glory of 2020, composed of fictional propaganda art created to "boost" the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, I displayed a video of a man holding a torch emitting smoke, resembling the Olympic flame, running aimlessly. I also created a drawing connecting the points where the Olympic torch relay was scheduled to pass during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. From the speakers, the theme song from the 1981 film Chariots of Fire played intermittently, hummed lazily with sighs. This song, long used by the media, evokes images of people running in slow motion, making it an ideal accessory to evoke emotion. I placed monitors, the torch used in the video, and other elements within the kitchen space in an attempt to insert a trace of the Olympics into an everyday setting.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Olympic torch relay was held without spectators at nearly every location, with live broadcasts intended for viewing instead. Some areas were enclosed with white blindfold sheets, hiding the event from the outside, and it seemed to perform like a sacred ritual, demanding the audience's imagination. It appeared to transform into a more sublime and obscure ceremony.
Originally, the Tokyo 2020 Olympics was envisioned as a "reconstruction Olympics" following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, with a compact event designed to avoid unnecessary spending. However, the actual costs ballooned to the largest in Olympic history, and the word "reconstruction" gradually faded from the discourse. The starting point of the torch relay, J-Village (Naraha Town, Fukushima), is known for its soccer facilities but was also a key base during the cleanup of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster. The choice to start the relay in Fukushima was merely government propaganda to promote the idea of reconstruction, while the numerous tanks of contaminated water that were not shown on TV remain unresolved.
Inconvenient truths for the government are often hidden from the media, but what were the feelings of the people who watched that meaningless light through their screens?