01:11

Voiceover:
As green becomes aridity
And contemplates stupidity

Reaching for the clarity
Of what is simply parody

The spirit’s own fragility
A lesson in futility.

Intimate Strangers examines the subconscious act of looking in the context of human desire and urban environments. The act of looking is located within psychological fields of trauma, pain and desire in Hattori’s video works. The works immerse viewers in participational observation, making them complicit in their desire to look. They become the site of voyeuristic desire.

Hattori takes a performative approach in her art. By playing the role of the woman and using her voice and a sexually coded image, the artist criticises the objectification of women and the voyeuristic male gaze in historical and contemporary media. With video assuming a central role in her work, she addresses authentic experience in mediated actions and post-performance documentation manipulation.