Film UbuWebHiraki Sawa (b. 1977)
Elsewhere & Spotter (2003)
Hiraki Sawa was born in Ishikawa, Japan in 1977 and currently lives in London. He uses lo-tech video animation to create poetic dreamscapes - ruminations on ideas of time and motion, innocence and alienation, dislocation and displacement. His seminal film, 'Dwelling', 2002 was accomplished while still a graduate student at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, and brought him to the attention of the international art world through exhibitions including New Contemporaries and East International. Certain leitmotifs recur throughout the films - a child's rocking horse, migrating animals, model jet planes - objects which play out notions of travel and nomadism, of being at home and thinking of elsewhere.