This residency has been realized as part of the London/Tokyo Y-AIR Exchange Program 2015, a trial based on a collaboration between Youkobo Art Space, the No.7 Lab (OJUN Lab) of Tokyo University of the Arts, and the Associate Studio Program of Central Saint Martins College, London.

Lydia Davies, born 1991, Dorset, UK. Lives and works in London, UK.
My work is concerned with the photographic image as a negotiable construct; in relation to the notion of a support, its form, materiality and the inference of the viewer. The term 'photography' slips and diverges, it encompasses a diverse history of image-making processes; these continue to be developed, perpetually expanding the perception of its meaning.

The binary construction of digital information homogenises media and image forms; the screen as a platform has loosened the boundary between the ‘here’ and the ‘there’; between material and image. Linked to this, my work plays with flatness and depth, visibility and permanence, and the distance or proximity of the viewer, attempting to stretch and layer processes and materials, morphing and navigating them into a dialogue that negotiates the structure of a photographic image with the viewer.

Residence Plan Summary:
For the residency at Youkobo I would like to explore recurring images, objects or motifs from Tokyo’s landscape, and experience and document the presence of image-making technologies and the camera.
I’d like to document these explorations by taking photographs; the action of which under the subject of recursion, motif and image-making apparatuses will produce a reflexive layer. I’d like to extend this idea towards the notion of mise-en-abyme, whereby an image may be embedded in its own image, or in a filmic sense of a structure within a structure. Also in using intertextuality as a device in audio or written text, which may expound these ideas in their own form or enter a relationship with other materials.
I hope to explore materials that I have not previously used, which are perhaps more specific to, prevalent and attainable in Japan.
Being in contact with Professor O JUN’s lab will allow me to frame my concerns and preoccupations through a different cultural context; giving me the opportunity to engage with and discuss approaches in making, looking at, and describing the image and sensitivities to material, through a Japanese context and through the school of thought employed at Tokyo Geidai.

Date	2015.05.01 - 2015.06.12
Place	AIR-B
Website	http://www.lydiadavies.co.uk/
Website	http://lydiadavies-youkobo.tumblr.com/