Born in Dover, Delaware, USA in 1970.
Lives and works in Kanazawa, Japan.
Can Tamura is an artist, filmmaker, and audiovisual anthropologist. His art, film production, and research applies sensory ethnographic methods as a means to explore and transmit cultural experience, based on sensory or phenomenological understandings in the context of both traditional and contemporary cultural practices. He works with digital and analog video, digital and analog photography, 16mm film, oil and acrylic painting, and drawing on found materials. Research interests include social/cultural memory, vernacular photography, sensory ethnography, and the relationships between contemporary art and anthropology. He researches and produces films and art primarily in Japan, Mongolia, and Turkey.
Currently in Japan he is producing parts 3 and 5 of his series “Shoveler” that incorporates the use of a shovel mounted with GoPro cameras and a hand-made contact microphone. He is also currently conducting anthropological fieldwork and producing an experimental video documentary/installation about the kiriko matsuri in Okinami, Anamizu-cho, Noto Peninsula.
In November he will return to Ulaanbaatar Mongolia for a residency to produce part 4 of “Shoveler” and a group exhibition at the Mongolian Theatre Museum in the Palace of Culture.
Working as a filmmaker at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, he has produced video works with artists including Superflex, MURAKAMI Satoshi, SONG Dong, and MOON Kyungwon & JEON Joonho. His collaborative research/filmmaking projects with MURAKAMI Satoshi have been exhibited at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, IUAES 2019 in Poznan, Poland (forthcoming), and Mongolian Theatre Museum in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (forthcoming).
Education
1988-1993 B.A. in Communications at Antioch College. Yellow Springs, Ohio, USA.
2016-2019 M.A. in Visual Anthropology, Media and Documentary Practices at the University of Münster, Germany. Thesis title: “Kiriko Matsuri of Noto, Japan: The Outsider’s Body As a Resource for Maintaining Local Rituals” supervised by Christopher Wright. Currently a candidate for the MA (expected completion date December 31, 2019).
Artist Residencies
2019:
(Forthcoming) Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, November 6 to 27, Mongolian Theatre Museum.
2002:
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, March 1 to 31, with the cooperation of the Contemporary Art Center (Кон Арт Тѳв) and the Mongolian Theatre Museum in the Palace of Culture.
Film screenings and presentations
2019:
(Forthcoming) with MURAKAMI Satoshi, Living Migration Busan – Kanazawa, film screening at IUAES (International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences) 2019 Inter-Congress “World Solidarities, Poznan, Poland, August 27 to 31, 2019.
2018:
Shoveling Ishikawa, film screening and lecture in connection with im/pulse: Vincent Moon, contact Gonzo, and the Anthro-film Laboratory, Kyoto City University of Art Gallery @KCUA, Kyoto, June 20, 2018.
Natural Disaster Relief in Joso, Japan: Observational Film Documentation of Volunteers in Post-Flood Clean-Up, film presentation at Displacements: The 2018 Biennial Meeting of the Society for Cultural Anthropology, April 19, 2018.
Selected Solo Art Exhibitions
2017:
The Supper Gaze, Gallery Muku, Kanazawa, October 13 to 18, 2017.
2016:
Electric Yen Zone, Gallery Muku, Kanazawa, June 3 to 8, 2016.
2015:
In Flight Art/Landing, Cafe Foodelica, Kyoto, October 9 to 25, 2015.
Ninjin Jyanai, Gallery Muku, Kanazawa, February 6 to 11, 2015.
2014:
Ninjin Jyanai, Cafe Foodelica, Kyoto, February 14 to March 16, 2014.
2013:
Zen Art Machine, Jam Sake Bar, Kyoto, July 6 to August 31, 2013.
2012:
Ninjin Jyanai, Jam Sake Bar, Kyoto, August 19 to November 10, 2012.
2002:
Nostalgia For Nationalist Squid and Other Tales, Mongolian Theater Museum, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, March, 2002.
Selected Group Art Exhibitions
2013:
Fotografika 6: Emotion, SoHo Art Gallery, Osaka, September 10 to 15, 2013.
White Heat, Kanagawa Kenmin Hall Gallery Yokohama, April 1999 (with Wanted Artists Group).