Alumni Yukiyo Kawano Interviewed
A visual artist and a choreographer come together for an Aug. 9 performance work that bears witness to the annihilation of two entire cities and the complex Japanese and American narratives therein.
A scene from a prior performance of “Suspended Moment”.
Courtesy of Yukiyo Kawano
Seventy-two years ago, American pilots dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To this day, historians debate whether, as the U.S. maintained, the bombings were necessary to end World War II in the Pacific Theater, or whether, as some critics hold, they constituted war crimes.
Visual artist Yukiyo Kawano and choreographer Meshi Chavez are the creators of “Suspended Moment,” a multidisciplinary performance work they developed with composer Lisa DeGrace and poet Allison Cobb.
Kawano is from Hiroshima; Chavez grew up in Albuquerque — close enough to the Manhattan Project to have a feel for the American side of this history. They’ve performed this work in places with strong ties to atomic history, like Los Alamos, New Mexico, the Hanford Site, and are now bringing it to Portland for a fifth incarnation.
Chavez’s practice is based in the Japanese performance style butoh. You may have seen it performed by dancers in white makeup, moving with infinitesimal slowness. But Chavez’s style is something more kinetic and stately. In some sequences, he puts himself through organic contortions, twisting and spinning almost out of control. Others are direct references to everyday activities on either side of the Pacific.
Here are some highlights of the conversation.
Artist-in-Residence Eshrat Erfanian will focus on the topics of digital technology, speed, and war as it relates to art and image making, discussing the works of several artists, including Trevor Paglen, Omer Fast, Harun Farocki and Hito Steyerl as well as some of the works by Erfanian and her take on use of the technology in slowing down the consumption of the image as a strategy to create critical work which questions and comments on the images of war and the change of our vision through the machine.
Paul Johnston will reflect an analysis of deaf artists and designers since the development of American Sign Language (ASL) from the 1970s to today. The widespread practice of ASL led the way for deaf people to define their own identity instead of the one foisted upon them by a hearing-based society. The art created at that time can be referred to “artivism” (a fusion of art and activism). Today’s challenges and opportunities for deaf artists lie in how to maximize their visually rich environment with a sound-friendly world. Deaf artists and designers can work in teams with hearing professionals to create the following: solution-based designs, entertainment devices and products, instructional and applied design, and new content and form in the visual arts.
