Meiro Koizumi

Defect in Vision (2011) is projected on a double-sided screen, showing the same situation and conversation through different angles and perspectives. One can follow a conversation over a dinner table in a traditional Japanese interior. Two blind actors talk about World War II in the privacy of their warm home, wondering when the war will be over whilst eating, drinking and reading the newspaper. The scene is repeated several times, while more and more objects are being removed from the table, exposing the blindness of the actors. Traditionally blindness has been romantically used by arts and literature as a metaphor of the power to see things invisible, and it is used as an effect to create a dramatic story. Blind characters are usually played by actors who can see. As in many of his works, in Defect in Vision Koizumi turns the tradition around, in this case asking a truly blind person to act as someone who can actually see. Defect in Vision illustrates Koizumi’s interpretation of blindness in a moving but also acutely distinctive way.