In Each and Every (2003), Koki Tanaka turns his camera toward the seemingly ordinary routines of a professional chef. Filmed with quiet restraint, the work follows the cook through the continuous rhythms of preparation, cooking, cleaning, and organising. The camera remains observational and detached, recording actions without narration or intervention, allowing the choreography of labour to unfold in real time. What appears as a straightforward documentation of culinary work in fact reveals a more intricate temporal structure. Despite progressing through a linear sequence from preparation to completion, the chef constantly shifts between overlapping tasks: preparing ingredients for future meals, finishing dishes begun earlier, cleaning workstations, and continually coordinating his environment. Multiple timelines coexist within a single routine, exposing labour as a complex negotiation of past, present, and future.

For Tanaka, Each and Every marked a pivotal moment in his understanding of video. The work, made in an era where video artists were increasingly adopting high production values and cinematic narrative structures, demonstrated that the complexity of lived experience did not need to be manufactured through editing but already existed within everyday actions. By preserving the chef's uninterrupted movements, the film makes visible what Tanaka describes as the messy temporality of daily life. The video observes a diffuse continuum without clear beginnings or endings that is only momentarily organised into linear narratives by the subject themself. Rejecting cinematic spectacle in favour of careful observation, Each and Every transforms routine labour into a meditation on time, attention, and perception. The work reveals how video can make visible the intricate structures embedded within ordinary experience, inviting viewers to recognise the extraordinary complexity concealed within the rhythms of everyday life.