Japan 40″

After the Second World War, in Japan it became popular to practice ‘inemuri’ in the belief that dedication to work would make them a great power again. This Japanese practice means “sleeping while present” and is practiced both at work and in public spaces. In a country where sleeping is considered a waste of time, it is not surprising that the average is 6 hours, and that they focus their day on productivity. If you are able to fall asleep under some circumstances it is because you have worked hard. The obsession with work, coupled with the traditional Japanese personality, has become a public health problem for the country.

In Europe it is estimated that 1 in 3 people suffer from disorders related to anxiety and stress due to the feeling of lack of time. Despite living surrounded by conveniences and digital devices designed to make our lives easier, we have less and less time. Today we look for quick, immediate pleasures. The throwaway culture in which there is no time for more. Reading e-mails while riding the subway, making compulsive purchases while walking down the street or listening to audio recordings at higher speeds have become common practices in our day-to-day lives.

The way we consume images through the screen of our smartphone is proportional to the frustration we feel at not being able to reach everything. Overly ambitious expectations distort our human nature by relegating critical thinking, reflection, observation, contemplation or meditation to the background.

Are social networks shaping our way of perceiving the world by doing it, for the most part, through a screen?

Japan 40” seeks to highlight the superficiality of sensory experiences through a screen and reflects not only on the continuous distraction that prevents deep reflection, but also on the problem of visibly representing our diminishing attention span. Ultimately, Japan 40” exposes the links between the culture of haste, the obsession with productivity and the consequent frustration with the lack of time in our contemporary society.

The project, presented as a 25 minutes video, is a compilation of video fragments of 40 seconds each, recorded during my one-month stay in Japan in 2018.