Journal#11 Make it Public
Class reflection:
This week’s class was a week that Biden was finally elected. And the class started with a peaceful and hopeful atmosphere. Fortunately or unfortunately, I was not in the United States when this time of the election as well as the last time. But I thought I would be feeling in the same way as what Ziye shared with us in the open Mic that we had at the beginning of the class: she took this election much more personally and saw the situations with a lot of anxieties, though it is not our country and we cannot vote. But I think that it would be indeed more unsettling and concerning to live in and get through the election that we do not have the right to participate. We did movement to Nina Simone’s songs: “Mississippi Goddam” and “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon.” Eiko said that she thinks that she has been separating music and movement, but this time we did movement to Nina Simone’s songs. Last week in a small group, after we did no-no dance, I was in the same group with Sam and Sam shared with us that when we did no-no dance Sam was thinking about Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman.” And inspired by that, I have been listening to “Sinnerman” for this week and learning about her life. But I have not thought of doing the movement to Nina Simone’s song. Doing the movement with Nina Simone’s songs was completely different from the way I dance to the music. I could not follow the rhythm of the songs and my body moves on my own terms and with my intention and body’s momentum. However, it does not mean that I was completely separated from the songs. I got to know Nina Simone’s frustration and irritation expressed in “Mississippi Goddam” that she felt against the US society and I was trying to approach those feelings and pains through this movement, listening to her singing voice and the lyrics. We also have the first final project presentation. We had Kai, Ella, Gabrielle, and Sarah’s performance. Kai’s presentation was energetic and filled with confidence and I felt her happiness and self-assurance that Kai is ready to share what she has learned from this course and connections to her life to think about lost imagination. I was also happy to be in her gallery! And come to think that it was random that we were assigned as a commentator to each other in Professor Johnston’s history class and read each other’s op-ed, I could not appreciate our luck that we came together in this class again and learned together more and more with Eiko. And, Ella’s work was a performance. Her performance was moving and also educational. It was the first time that Ella sings for her artistic expression and her performance was a learning opportunity for me to learn about the tragedy of native Americans. I appreciate that Ella did a performance about the tragedy of native Americans in the land she grew up in because it connects me more to the land and incident through Ella’s experience and connection. Gabrielle’s performance was fun and engaging! Though she was worried about what if her performance was not something serious or deep, but her movement exercise with a mirror and mirroring of herself and in-class movement were engaging and encouraged me to think about what it means to live and connect in the time of corona and social distancing era. In Sarah’s presentation, we heard the first part of her podcast. It was Norden's bombsight that her great grandfather invented and her self-curation from the bombsight to Fukushima. After class, I got to listen to her entire podcast and I was moved by her sincerity in her research and self-curation and I felt a lot of gratitude for Sarah to create this podcast and share it with us. Right after hearing Sarah’s podcast, I felt the distance between me and Sarah had disappeared and I appreciated her work and efforts in her project. We also watched Eiko’s river performance, where young Eiko is dancing in the river and floating. Eiko told us that performance is also a practice to die by being passive with time. We also did the movement to be in the river. We laid down our body on the ground and experienced floating. I was mostly floating but sometimes streams pushed me down to the riverbed and I rolled around. I gave in to the flows of the river and felt less and fewer borders with the riverbed. I was merging into the ground as the flow pushed me down and rolled. Lastly, we did a paper dance. I teamed up with Kai. I think our paper movement was slow and soft, after seeing the paper movements of other classmates in the video Eiko shared later. But when I did the paper movement, I was feeling its firmness and inflexibility since we always use our body for movements. Reflecting back on it, I think that was one of the reasons why my paper movement was slow and gentle and I did not tear up the paper or did not do dynamic moves.
Allexis Moh – land acknowledgment:
Moh’s speech connects to Ella’s performance. Though society treats the land as property of individuals, in fact, we do not own land. It’s nature that owns that land and we cannot acclaim the land ever. But we are conceit and think that the land belongs to individuals and think that we can do whatever we want in our “land.” I believe that this arrogance created the tragedy like Dakoda 38 or Daiichi nuclear disaster. I also like how Moh’s performance is personal and captures the pictures in our daily lives, but it also made me realize that there are a lot of land aggressions to sustain our life.
CAROLINE ROSE GIULIANI:
I think it took a lot of courage to open up publicly to say that she is against the Trump administration and vote him out as a daughter of Rudy Giuliani, Trump's attorney. But indeed, in this article, she openly expresses her belief and promotes what she believes is a way to improve our society. And I believe that Caroline Giuliani showed us a way how the public figure should look like.
Setsuko Thurlow Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:
Setsuko’s speech was strong. I felt from her speech that she has been elaborating on her thoughts and experience as a hibakusha at Hiroshima. I later knew that Setsuko started the anti-nuclear weapon campaigns publicly after hearing the news about the first American experiment of the hydrogen bomb. I think it is something that connects to her experience that she has been elaborating on throughout her life and stimulates her to collect her courage and publicly express her will and indignation against the nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons experience in this world.
Movement work:
I chose “Atom and Evil” for a song to do the movement with. Though the tune of this song carries somewhat jazzy and uplifting, the lyrics are clearly anti-atomic power. When I move with this song, I felt some kind of separation between body and soul. My body senses the joyful tune of “Atom and Evil” and makes me want to jump and hop. But my soul knows that it is not a song that I can feel happy about as I knew it is about the atomic bombs and nuclear power. I found that this complication is something useful for our expression in public. The tune captures the body. Movement captures other people’s bodies and attention. And movement connects the audience to the lyrics or the claims and expression we want to carry.
A Body in Fukushima I and II:
I watched the first two parts of Eiko’s work in Fukushima. As Eiko talks in the interview, it was the most painful moment for me to see those houses untouched and left as it is when the earthquake hit the region. The houses with broken furniture with lush bushes and the clock that stopped at 2:46 tell us so. And Eiko is a traveler to Fukushima and connects us to Fukushima. I felt her public speaking to protest what is happening in Fukushima and protest against people who should be responsible for all the tragedies she had witnessed in Fukushima. A Body in Fukushima is also not a one-time project but continues to next summer and beyond. And it creates more elaboration. Though it is the same town near the Daiichi, where the whole community was destroyed, she refreshed her memories and recollected the memories with the places in moments like when she entered the evacuation zone by a side path. I was also struck by how Eiko translated the names of the stations by Chinese characters. The Chinese characters signify the spirits of the towns and regions, and I am glad that she translated Chinese characters as well so that English speakers could understand that there was a community that people lived a long time with nature, but the Daiichi incidents and nuclear plants changed and destroyed those communities cruelly and inhumanely in one day. And I think that Eiko’s movements take up those points and tell us how dire and devastating the situations are and things are not “under control” as the Japanese government propagates.
