Video Shakkei originated as a series of 14 site-specific spatial performances enacted throughout the Kansai region of Japan during June and July of 2009. Moving through these locations with a constrained set of props and four high definition video cameras, Kreider + O’Leary are foreign bodies inhabiting an alien space. They encounter physically what they have previously known only photographically or textually. Through this act of absurd Grand Tourism they move from previously photo-realistic understandings and generic assumptions of place to an experiential understanding of the local and specific. All of which informs their own poetic rendering of Japan through video composition, installation and haiku. This book, as a document of Kreider + O’Leary’s multifarious practice, presents a composite of signs – a confusion of preconceptions, experiences and reflections – all of which image the place they call ‘Japan’.