Pleasure

Summary

The Reversal of the Gaze: Emergence within the Theatrical Space
Pleasure is a seminal early work by Naoko Tosa that radically examines the relationships between image, body, space, and the gaze. This piece was utilized within the stage productions of “NOISE,” a theater company led by playwright Koharu Kisaragi, positioning it at the critical intersection of theater and media in the 1980s.
This context is of decisive importance. Here, the video is not screened as an independent work; instead, it functions in synthesis with the body, language, and sound within a live theatrical space. Pleasure exists not as an image on a screen, but as an element that alters the very quality of the theatrical environment.
In this work, live-action footage of waves, flames, and eyes is processed through 3D Digital Video Effects (DVE) to construct a visual environment that envelops the audience. Of particular significance is the recurring imagery of the “eye.” Normally, the audience is the subject that views the image. However, in Pleasure, this relationship is inverted. The audience does not look at the image; the image looks at the audience.
This effect is further intensified by the theatrical space. The spectators are no longer safe observers outside the frame; they are exposed to the gaze of the image within the same physical space as the actors. In essence, the spectator becomes both “the one who sees” and “the one who is seen.” Here, the image is not merely visual information. It is a device that generates the gaze itself, acting as a force that destabilizes the spectator’s perceptual position.
From an art historical perspective, Pleasure illustrates the process by which video art was liberated from the monitor and integrated into the relationships between space, body, and audience. Simultaneously, it is an attempt to reorganize the structure of the gaze in theater through the medium of video.
Crucially for Tosa’s oeuvre, the problem of “emergence” already manifests here. What is generated in Pleasure is not the image itself, but a situation in which the following collapse:
The premise that the audience is viewing.
The position of the audience as being “outside.”
The unidirectionality of the gaze.
The work does not exist “inside” the screen; it arises within the relationship between image, body, stage, and audience. To put it most sharply for the perspective of Akira Tatehata: Pleasure is not a work that shows an image; it is a work that creates the conditions for the image to look back at the audience within a theatrical space.
If An Expression generates the relationship between sight and sound, ECSTASY generates internal physical sensations, and GUSH! reconstructs the form of the body within time, then Pleasure is the work that regenerates the very act of “viewing.” In this sense, it constitutes a vital precursor to the later Sound of Ikebana. While Sound of Ikebana visualizes invisible moments in natural phenomena, Pleasure manifests the moment when we are looked back at by the world we thought we were merely observing.
Ultimately, Pleasure is a work that deals with the exact moment when gaze and space are generated.

Reference

Pleasure PDF

1984 ビデオコム11+12月号

Exhibition

Collection

高松市美術館