Cuculí

"Cuculí is the main output of a three-month residency at the Tokyo Wonder Site (Tokyo, 2010) and several trips I made throughout Japan. The video, however, wasn't produced during the residency itself, but a few months after, while I was in another short residency, in a small town in the Netherlands. It was a completely antagonic experience compared to Tokyo, and keeping a distance allowed me to approach Japan not as a subject but rather as a point of view.

Being in Japan left a stain on me. It was my first time in Asia and probably the first time in a country with such an unfamiliar culture. At first, its effect was that of perplexity. Amazement, respect, confusion, disbelief and a long list of other feelings arose.  

I think this piece shows a concern about Japanese visual codes, besides an aesthetical concern. How can images trigger your thoughts when you don't know these codes or you're not used to them? As many of my works, Cuculí is a lot about language: the impossibility to communicate through a common language and the mysteries generated by a lack of conventions.

An iconic work obviously connected to this video is Chris Marker's Sans Soleil. In fact, it was so influential that I even ended up quoting part of it in my film. To me, Sans Soleil is one of these films that you wish you had made, and I'm sure it will remain influential even in my future works. 

In most of my practice, I don't tend to address any specific facts, places, people or moments in history. I look at my narratives from a fictional perspective. Of course, there's always a point of departure – Japan, in this case –, but I do my best to keep a distance. In the end, my works have more to do with myself in the present than with anything else. Those subjects tend to be just excuses to speak about things I don't know how to talk about, or things I don't even know how to define."

Daniel Jacoby in a statement to PLATFORM:VB (October 2013)