When I returned to Japan in August 2021, Japan was organizing the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics. They divided the International terminal of the Haneda airport, Tokyo, into two areas for the immigration process: one for people arriving for the Olympics; and the other for all the people not coming for the Olympics. As I came to Japan not for the Olympic, there were many conditions for entry into the country given the COVID-19 pandemic.  One of the conditions that the government imposed on me was that I was obliged to install several applications onto my smartphone, which let them track my location using GPS during the 14 days of mandatory quarantine. Without notice, they video-called me every day at a different time. When I accepted the video call, there was nobody there. It would automatically start recording my face with the background to verify that I was where I said that I was. There was no option of declining the calls, as we were threatened that non-compliance would result in our names going on a public black list. I disagree with this ridiculous monitoring system that Japan created to control people during the pandemic. To protest it, I created a video work using their monitoring video calls that were made every day during my mandatory quarantine.

 

2021年8月に日本に帰国した時、日本は東京オリンピック・パラリンピックの開催の真っ只中であった。東京の羽田国際空港はオリンピックのために入国する人々とそうでない人々のために二分割されていた。自分はオリンピックのために入国した訳ではないので、コロナウィルスによるパンデミックの状況下、入国手続きは猥雑を極めた。政府が14日間の隔離期間居場所をGPSで確認するため、スマートフォンにいくつかのアプリケーションをインストールすることが入国者の義務となっていた。毎日違う時間に抜き打ちのビデオ電話がかかってきた。そのビデオ電話に応答しても、無人のビデオ電話で、自動的に自分の顔が居室の背景とともに録画されるものだった。ビデオ電話に応答しないと、名前が公開されるという脅迫的な注意書きも記載されていた。そんな馬鹿げた監視システムに抵抗するため、毎日かかってくる政府の監視ビデオ電話を利用して、隔離期間にビデオ作品を作った。