Solitarium

Sumito Sakakibara was born in 1980 in Tokachi, Hokkaido. In 1996, he went to England alone. After working as an overseas student at the Agency for Cultural Affairs, he completed his doctoral program in animation at the RCA (Royal College of Art) in 2004. After returning to Japan, I made my production base in Nagano Prefecture.

It is known for its animated video works such as “Floating Tower,” which won the Japan Media Arts Festival Grand Prize, “É IN MOTION No. 2,” which received rave reviews at the DOMANI exhibition (2015), and “Solitarium,” which was presented at the 30th anniversary exhibition “Spectrum,” and the film was screened at museums, art festivals, etc., and invited to screen at many overseas film festivals, etc. Also, “Iizuna Fair-,” which was created in 2021, was announced as the first exhibition after the Nagano Prefectural Museum of Art renovation in 2021, and is still being screened as a permanent exhibition. He is an animation artist who has received numerous awards and invitations for this film at animation festivals around the world, and his talent is attracting worldwide attention.

This film is an animated film “Solitarium” created in 2015 so that it can be screened at planetariums around the world. It is a painting where the whole picture of the animation work is collected on this single sheet. Designed to look up at the screen from below, this Solitarium was screened at planetariums in 8 countries around the world, including Canada, France, Greece, and Poland.

What is depicted there is a pure, bare, and sometimes cruel appearance of a human being repeated over time, and a straight gaze. It's an absurd, yet extremely human scene that certainly exists in reality. People just live casually, playing their respective roles. There, a form of nature that always exists unchanged.

It is also said that people are the first to be caught by their own interests. Countless characters continue to move at the same time in Sakakibara's animation. In the midst of that, who would you turn your eyes to?