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Draft:Rika Ohara

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Rika Ohara is a Japan-born artist, writer and filmmaker. She has toured with and exhibited her media and dance installation-performances internationally; her first feature film The Heart of No Place won the Best Film (Best International Feature) award at London Independent Film Festival in 2010.  

Biography

[edit]

As a teen, Ohara aspired to be a manga artist, and following the dictum of "God of Manga" Osamu Tezuka, she exposed herself to art, literature, music and film – watching nearly 200 films one year in high school. During her first year at the junior high school attached to Ochanomizu University, Ohara participated in the university's Manga Club; her eight-page tanpen (short form) manga in the first edition of the club's doujinshi, based on a chapter of Hans Christian Andersen’s A Picture Book without Pictures (“Sixteenth Evening”), drew the attention of Tezuka himself, who sent an editor of a then-new magazine he was spearheading, Lyrica. When the editor pronounced her work "too artsy," Ohara decided to study art instead.[1][2]

She studied painting and photography with Czech Surrealist Vilem Kriz[3] and dance at California College of the Arts. Her MFA thesis project at California Institute of the Arts was a dance-theater adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé,[4] choreographed by Tracy Rhoades, who also performed in the role of Hérodias.[5]

While at California Institute of the Arts, Ohara created Neither Garlic nor Beans,[6] which was shown at Sushi Contemporary Performance and Visual Arts, San Diego, as part of its 1985 Neofest.[7][8][9] The piece's first performance in Los Angeles, at Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies, was called "one of the most obliquely intelligent and innovative performance debuts I've seen" by David E. James of ARTWEEK.[10] Astro Boy Meets Godzilla [11] followed, and in 1988 she presented Neither Garlic nor Beans in West Berlin, at Frauenzentrum Schokofabrik, Fischlabor and Tempodrome (as part of “Jugentag 88” organized by Sozialistische Einheitspartei Westberlin).

Rika Ohara, Tokyo Rose
Tokyo Rose promotional image, 1993

Returning to Los Angeles, Ohara began developing an analogue system to synchronize music and visual media for her live artworks; her later interdisciplinary performances would feature projected slide animation and/or video running the lengths of the pieces. In 1990 she formed the interdisciplinary theater group Nuclear Family[5] to expand Shelter into a series of dance-theater performances in video installations. This was followed by Tokyo Rose (1993), a 95-minute-long multimedia dance-theater piece.[12][3][13] Ohara then put the performance elements of Shelter on video, exhibiting the resulting videodance installation at Monaco Dance Forum (2001),[14][15] Rencontres Internationales Paris-Berlin (2001 & 2003) and New Territories Festival, Glasgow (2002).[16][3] During this time, she also began exhibiting media works at international film festivals:[5] 1,332 Feet Below the Sea (2001), an 18-minute science fiction animation, and live action shorts including Three Dance Pieces (2006) and Breakfast in Bed With John (2007), as well as The Potato Woman (2006), combining animation and live action, screened in Hungary,[17][18] Germany,[19] Romania, Turkey,[20] Brazil,[21] and the U.S.[22][23][24]

Narrative feature The Heart of No Place[25] – inspired by the life and work of Yoko Ono – was shot entirely on Digital8. It premiered at the Créteil International Women's Film Festival in 2009,[26] and won the Best International Feature award at the London Independent Film Festival (2010).[3] From research for narrative feature Carmilla,[27] Ohara wrote The Giaour[28] – initially developing the story as an opera, staging two excerpts in Los Angeles in 2015 before the screenplay was nominated for Best Feature Screenplay at ÉCU The European Independent Film Festival, Paris, in 2016.

Beginning in 1990, Ohara has written art, film and book reviews as well as feature articles for local and national publications including ARTWEEK,[29] High Performance Magazine,[30] Frontiers[31] and LA Weekly,[32][33] the latter as a staff writer (1992-7).[5] Ohara is also a recipient of California Community Foundation,[25] California Arts Council and COLA (City of Los Angeles)[34] fellowships[3] and has presented a lecture at University of Kentucky (1995) and her paper "The Heart of No Place as a Digital-Age Reinterpretation of Works by Yoko Ono"[35] at Somatics and Technology Conference at University of Chichester (2012) and University of Southern California (2013 & 2016). 

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Quentin Lee, “Rika Ohara on Yoko Ono and The Heart of No Place,” Chopso, 2019-06-13
  2. ^ IMDb: Rika Ohara Mini Bio
  3. ^ a b c d e EZTV Museum
  4. ^ Lee
  5. ^ a b c d IMDb
  6. ^ Irene Tsatsos, Common Threads, Shared Spaces: Five Years of Fellowships for Visual Artists from the California Community Foundation 2004-2008, 2009. pp. 30-31
  7. ^ Lair Davis, “Among the Best,” the San Diego Gayzette, December 26, 1985.
  8. ^ Paula Bryant, “Scratching a Cosmic Itch,” High Performance, Issue 31, 1985. p. 85
  9. ^ Kathe Burkhart, "Can Art Breed Action?" High Performance, Issue 32, 1985. p. 71
  10. ^ David E. James, “New and Clear, Nuclear,” ARTWEEK, September 21, 1985. p. 14
  11. ^ Gregg Wager, “Pulner, Ohara in ‘Astrobody’,” the Los Angeles Times, September 26, 1987
  12. ^ Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Rika Ohara/Tokyo Rose
  13. ^ Lynn Swanson, "Going It Alone – Solo Performance in Los Angeles," Visions Art Quarterly, Summer 1992. p. 11
  14. ^ Rosita Boisseau, “Le Movement Réinventé grâce aux nouvelles technologies,” Le Monde special supplement, December 2000
  15. ^ “Surprises et Mélange des genres au Monaco Danses Dances Forum,” Le Monde, January 2, 2001
  16. ^ New Territories, an International Festival of Live Arts, 2002. p. 4
  17. ^ Millenniumi Tudományos Filmszemle/Millennium Scientific Film Festival, festival catalog, 2001, p. 46
  18. ^ Nemzetközi Képzömüvészeti Filmszemle/International Film Festival of Fine Arts, festival catalog, 2004, p. 80
  19. ^ Filmlichter 06: International Short Film Festival Detmold, festival catalog, 2006, p. 52
  20. ^ Ankara Uluslararasi Film Festivali/Ankara International Film Festival 2007, festival catalog, p. 140
  21. ^ Mostra Internacional de Videodança de CCSP
  22. ^ Freewaves Archives
  23. ^ Eleventh Annual LAShortsFest September 5–17, 2007, festival catalog, p. 52
  24. ^ IMDb: The Potato Woman release dates
  25. ^ a b Tsatsos, pp. 30-31
  26. ^ 31e Festival International Films de Femmes, 2009. p. 95
  27. ^ Academia.edu: "Carmilla Statement and Research Summary"
  28. ^ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27536193/reference/ The Giaour
  29. ^ “Snowball's Chance in Hell,” ARTWEEK, February 27, 1992. p.14
  30. ^ “Butoh as Another Outbreak of Japanese Paganism,” High Performance, Summer 1990. pp. 44-45.
  31. ^ “The Language of Long Nguyen,” Frontiers, November 22, 1991
  32. ^ “Pacific Rim Shot — Chasing the money into the temple,” LA Weekly, June 5–11, 1992
  33. ^ “Mighty Tezuka: The God of Manga,” LA Weekly, January 4 – 10, 2002
  34. ^ Department of Cultural Affairs announces prestigious City Of Los Angeles (C.O.L.A.) Individual Artists Fellowships
  35. ^ Academia.edu: "The Heart of No Place as a Digital-Age Reinterpretation of Works by Yoko Ono"


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