Along with the Opus Pia audio CD, this DVD (a first for Carpark) realizes one of Takagi Masakatsu’s core beliefs: tiny miracles in daily life.
Only 23 years old, Takagi Masakatsu has presented his sound and video works in art galleries and clubs throughout Japan, America, and Europe. Opus Pia is the beginning of one of his lifelong projects. The first Opus Pia series contains Pia #1-11; each piece is a meditation on sampled moments taking place throughout the world. One can liken each “Pia” to a little travelogue or slice of cinema verite. Takagi has composed “opus pia” #1-11 out of raw footage from his travels (this “opus pia” taken primarily from nepal and cuba.) shots of life, with and without people, move seamlessly with takagi’s own piano and computer music to create a captivating dance that blurs the distinction between documentary and fiction.
In Takagi’s own words, “as SILICOM (name of unit i’ve been working in since 1999) I’ve created video works with lots of computer effects. In this Opus Pia, I didn’t use any effects on the image. I just used the intact video images. It is kind of hard for me to present these movies because I used to regard them as a ‘material’ not a ‘stand-alone work.’ this time, I used my oldest computer sounds, as I could recognize the vision of linking by computerized sounds and natural images in my last travels around the world.” Alternating between the harmonically sublime and the day to day, Opus Pia makes our world that much smaller.
