Between Frames: Takahiko Iimura and the Aesthetics of Discrete Time

I first encountered Takahiko Iimura’s 24 Frames per Second (1975–78) at a screening held at an art space in Sendagaya, Tokyo, most likely in the late 1990s. As a recent art school graduate, I had only a rudimentary understanding of experimental cinema. Nevertheless, I was struck by this "film without images"—a mode of cinematic expression unlike anything I had previously seen. To understand its structure, I closely observed the intermittently flickering numbers on the screen and gradually became attuned to the disconnect between the mechanical rhythm of the film projector and the tempo of my internal clock. At the same time, I grew curious about how audiences from the 1970s—when the work was first created—as well as those in various screening contexts, might have perceived it. If we accept that our perception of time is shaped by generational, cultural, and geopolitical factors, then this work becomes a compelling site for comparative inquiry into the experience of temporality across different viewers.

In stark contrast to the corporeal and sexual themes of his image-based films from the 1960s, Iimura turned in the 1970s to a series of perceptually and structurally focused films. Starting with the short compilation Models Reel 1/2 (1972), he produced works that foregrounded the material and conceptual foundations of cinema, such as 400 Frames—presented in an exhibition format that emphasized the film strip as object—and his “Paper Film” series, including Plus & Minus (1973), 1 to 60 Second (1973), and 1 Frame Duration (1977). These works engaged directly with cinema’s structural units, particularly the frame, interrogating the medium’s ontology.

This period also marked Iimura’s initial foray into video, prompting a sustained exploration of the differing material and conceptual properties of film and video. His semiotic video series posed critical questions about perception and representation, often using the "camera-monitor" configuration to explore the dialectics of seeing and being seen. In Observer/Observed (1975), one of the works in To See the Frame, the viewer is explicitly invited to become aware of the monitor’s frame, disrupting passive consumption and fostering reflexive viewing.

Iimura’s intermedia practices challenged conventional art criticism, which often categorizes works rigidly by genre or medium. In today’s digitized and hypermediated world, we may revisit his practice with renewed critical distance and historical awareness, enabled by a flattened media landscape.

While primarily based in the West during this period, Iimura contributed semi-journalistic writings to Japanese magazines and newspapers, reflecting on his experiences abroad. In these writings, he expressed fatigue with freelance work, revealing ambivalence toward making a living as a writer-for-hire [1]. Interestingly, it was through the act of writing—on standard Japanese manuscript paper formatted for 400 characters—that he conceived the blueprint for some of his films. Just as On Eye Rape (1962) involved punching holes in found footage to obscure images with light, Iimura remained more interested in intervening in the medium’s material substrate than in its imagery.

Works like In the River (1969–70), which re-filmed a portable viewer showing ritual bathing in Kathmandu, and Shutter (1971), focusing on the projector shutter, reflect his growing interest in the structural conditions enabling cinema. He eventually turned his attention to the interval between frames—the moments of darkness—echoing the literary notion of “reading between the lines.” In film, the alternation between illuminated frames and darkness (occurring 24 times per second in standard projection) becomes central. Iimura’s work thus trains perception on both the image and the physical conditions of viewing: the darkness of the theater, and the black screen—not as the painterly presence of all colors, but as cinema’s total absence of light.

His experiments are often compared to those of Tony Conrad, particularly The Flicker (1966). Conrad even appeared in Iimura’s Register Yourself, N.Y. Tape (1978), where individuals recorded self-portraits on video. For 24 Frames per Second, Iimura filled squares of manuscript paper with numbers 1 to 24 in sequence, repeating the process. One 400-character sheet thus represented 16 seconds and 16 frames. This became the film’s blueprint or score. He employed film as an algorithmic device, enumerating time in tandem with optically recorded sound. This flickering method, dormant for a time, reemerged in a recent installation of A Chair in Kyoto [2] —clearly indebted to Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs (1965)—demonstrating Iimura’s fluid movement between visual art and expanded cinema.

Having lived for years in New York, Iimura engaged deeply with conceptual and minimalist art, and the discourse of expanded cinema. Even his writing resonated with the spirit of Fluxus artists, who sought to merge art with everyday life. While his work has been interpreted through Zen or yin-yang dualism—understandably, given his Japanese identity—such readings are not required to appreciate his contributions.

Ultimately, one might simply surrender to the experience: to the interplay of darkness and flickering numbers Iimura once inscribed on paper, now transposed to a screen-based, sonic environment. As Scott MacDonald noted, when university students at Syracuse watched a related work, 1 to 60 Second, they spontaneously voiced interpretations, discussed the significance of the numbers, and collectively sought to decode the logic [3]. The work became a site of communal engagement.

In our contemporary age—marked by digital saturation, hyper-efficiency, and mobile multitasking—Iimura’s films offer space to reflect on how embodied humans inhabit fragmented time: time parsed by numerical sequences. His work invites not only contemplation, but dialogue on the lived experience of temporality in the digital era.