This exhibition was designed to celebrate the opening of the Nakanoshima Museum of Art by focusing on the four decades that have gone by since the museum was first conceived in 1983, and the three decades that have gone by since the Planning Office was opened in 1990. In addition to events in society, these decades witnessed dramatic changes in the way we lead our lives as individuals. The year that the concept for this museum was announced, 1983, was also the year when the first “camcorder” video cameras were born. Over the following years and on into the 1990s, as they became increasingly compact and capable of recording more and more footage, these video cameras became household items. Videos shot at home came to be called “home videos,” a moniker that no doubt has a nostalgic ring for some of us today.

Tails Out, the title of this exhibition, is derived from the way tape is wound on a reel. A tape is “tail in” when it has been rewound so that the start of the recording is on the outside of the reel (with a cassette, on the outside of the supply reel). and the end of the recording (the tail) is buried inside the reel. Tapes that are tails in are ready to play. Conversely, a tape is “tail out” when the recording has been played, and rather than being rewound, has been left with the tail—the final part of the recorded content—on the outside of the take-up reel. Tapes that are tails out have already been played, and are ready for the next step—perhaps moving on to record further video. This two-year project entailed collecting videotapes left tails out and long forgotten in Osaka households, and creating new works from them after rewinding (tail in) and returning them to a tails out state by replaying them.

As a museum opening pre-event to prepare for this exhibition, we put out a call from October 12, 2020 to March 31, 2021 for people to send in home videos collecting dust in dark corners of their abodes. We received more than 300 videotapes and data files of video shot during the same period that it took to bring our museum to fruition.

We then asked three contemporary artists to create new works from the videos people had sent in. These artists—Hayashi Yuki, Yu Araki, and Yasuri Yanase—were born respectively in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, which means they grew up in different eras and were exposed to different imagery and influences. From the many home videos collected, they distilled commonalities and contrasts, changes over the years and unchanging aspects of humanity, and hidden contexts hinted at in the material, and then, as if taking up the story again from the tail of already recorded tapes, spun these elements into new video works. For the exhibition concept art, illustrator Rin Mizutani, who is known for his style of adding animals and characters to photos of the real world, superimposed an imaginary creature on a scene taken from one of the videos to create an image reflecting his understanding of the project that resonates with the works of the three artists participating in this exhibition.

The home videos we collected are private records that, taken together, reflect the way time has passed and society has changed. Creating works from such private materials is not about concealing or consuming them, or treating them as if they did not exist, but is rather a different way of highlighting the present itself—a present predicated on its past. The people who submitted the 300-plus videos that made this exhibition possible have all been credited next to the title of the exhibition as a reminder of the past reality the videos depict and the way they connect to the exhibited works.