A Beginning

The Lily Wei website came into existence in the second week of November, 2015. Its birth coincided with my participation in the Socially-Engaged Art in Japan Symposium at the University of Washington. The symposium organizer, Justin Jesty, advertised the event at the ASAP/7, or The Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present Conference in Greenville, South Carolina. Justin and I first met at Doris Sommer's Pre-Texts/Cultural Agents Workshop led. We both also presented on the "Criticism and Conviviality in Participatory Art" panel. Justin discussed Participatory Art in Japan, and I analyzed Protest Art and urban renewal in Taiwan. A third panelist, Zhou Yanhua, introduced the art collective, Yangdeng Cooperatives (羊磴) in rural southwest China.

My talk at ASAP/7 discussed Protest Art and urban renewal in Taiwan. Left: Cooking at the Frontline, as student-run makeshift kitchen with a hand-built kiln, used cuisine to rally for housing rights in Taiwan. Right: Graffiti art by a young artist, which satirized the Taipei City government's urban renewal policy. The left portion of the wall features a greedy-looking character with pointy teeth, who points to the slogan, "Taipei is easy to demolish." The bulldozer on the right, also with pointed choppers, executes the idea as the machine of destruction. Photos: Cooking at the Frontline.

I titled this post, "A Beginning" because it signals a new phase of my life. Back in March, 2015, three months after my dissertation defense, I received my Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Arts diploma. In May, I attended graduation and was hooded, "Dr. Lily Wei." In the meantime, the post-Ph.D. job search began in the beginning of 2015. By August, none of the academic or museum positions that I applied for came through. However, I did receive a part-time offer to help develop new flavors and a Sunday brunch menu at a local bakery. Seven days before the ASAP/7, Greenville Conference, I decided that it was time to move out West. Thus the Athens, Ohio - Greenville, South Carolina - Washington State itinerary from September 23 to September 27. I now operate with a fresh approach in a new geographical location.

The Socially Engaged Art in Japan Symposium holds significance in this time of transition. Although I had visited Seattle several times for business and pleasure, this was the first occasion after the move that I connected with art and academic colleagues in the Pacific Northwest. Overall, the Symposium was abuzz with enthusiasm, exchange, and (re)invigoration. Aside from the anthropologist, Marilyn Ivy's concluding remarks that synthesized theoretical associations with the presented artworks and ideas, the Symposium highlights included Michael Swaine's "Matter in Action," Mōri Yoshitaka's "Art and Censorship in Japan's 2010s," and Miwako Tezuka's "Don't Follow the Wind, Chim↑Pom."

Mōri Yoshitaka served on the editorial board for 5 Designing Media Ecology's special feature, The Politics of Creativity. The articles in this issue include Mōri's "Freedom of Expression and the Rise of Preventive Power."

Don't Follow the Wind is a site-specific project by the Japanese art collective, Chim↑Pom. Its members responded to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster by inviting twelve artists to create installations in the nuclear exclusion zone. It is an exhibition that no one, at least no regular visitors can see. I appreciated Miwako Tezuka's personal reflections on her privileged visit to the artworks at the exclusive nuclear disaster area. A recent governmental policy had allocated a limited number of resident re-entries, which allowed for the retrieval precious personal possessions. Tezuka linked her experience of Don't Follow the Wind to the plight and the varied psyches of those forced to relocate. For instance, the husband of a couple longed to return to his childhood community. However, his wife, who moved to the area after she married, held little attachment to Fukushima Daiichi, and thus had no desire to go back. At the same time, the art curator highlighted Chim↑Pom's intention to challenge the false sense of safety and normalcy in the Japanese government's public messages about the nuclear disaster. As a result, the Don't Follow the Wind Website omits any visual representation. Instead, the white Web page speaks to the audience through a voiced recording. This narrative intertwine English and Japanese sentences by the Don't Follow the Wind artists. The work's invisibility not only echo the inaccessibility and danger of the Fukushima nuclear site, but it also points to the gap between factual and official information on the disaster. The Creators Project provides a documentary video that details Don't Follow the Wind.

From an American perspective, Michael Swaine shared his Reap What You Sew project. For this socially-engaged work, Swaine pushed a self-built ice cream cart-looking vehicle around the streets of San Francisco. He mended people's clothes for free with a sewing machine installed on this mobile station. Having known about this piece prior, it was exhilarating to meet the artist and to listen him talk in person. For Swaine, story-telling and the exciting interactions with random residents were important aspects of Reap What You Sew. He recounted that a lady, a regular, would bring more clothes than he could keep up. Swaine only realized later that this lady continued to visit with more clothes because she did not want their conversations to end. Swain had developed a relationship with his participatory audience. This performance art/craft street action not only mended people's clothing, but it also spoke to their relational needs.

It is notable that Swaine dedicated fourteen years to this monthly public service. The Tinkering Studio Website offers a poignant and eloquent snapshot of Swaine in Reap What You Sew. This year, he is planning the Free Mending Library in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. According to the artist, the Library would serve to fix the holes in people's lives. "It is a place to borrow thread and sewing machines and talk about life" (Exploratorium). Reap What You Sew and the Free Mending Library exemplify the sustained, long-term engagement model by an artist with a community. This contrasts with the helicopter approach, in which artists drop into places to create temporary collaborative works within a short time span, but without a deeper understanding of local cultures. Swaine cautioned against it, and I concur.

At the symposium, I also met Etsuko Ichikawa, the Tokyo-born, Seattle-based artist. Her dynamic, dancing pyrographs grace the Bellevue Arts Museum. In 2012, Ichikawa began a series of works that respond to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. They include a short film, sound work, and multi-media installations. A sense of the poetic and the meditative permeates through Ichikawa's explorations. For example, Echo at Satsop, a theatrical performance/short film, evokes the haunting and the sublime. In this piece, the artist's movements and gestures come across as intentional, fluid, and firm. Dressed in white, Ichikawa claps her hands as she walks through the bottom of one of the twin cooling towers. Ichikawa's internal interaction with her environment is visible on the performer's face. Her facial expressions, along with the reverberations of the sounds effects emit a spontaneous, ritual-like tone. The artist's website contains more works and statements.

Tsubasa Kato, Break It Before It's Broken, 2015. Laborers of Filipino decent in Malaysia worked together to pull down a structure. This gesture symbolized the breaking of an oppressive system that calls for their deportation. Photo: Tsubasa Kato. ©Tsubasa Kato.

In the vein of socially-engaged art, the young Japanese artist, Tsubasa Kato's Break it Before it's Broken artist talk was another highlight of the Symposium. Break it Before it's Broken commented on the issue of foreign laborer rights. In this project, Tsubasa worked with unidentified Filipino laborers facing forced deportation by the Malaysian government. The artist stated that with no nationality, or an Identity Card, what one could do or where one may go can become restricted. He commented that when parents without nationality have children, who thus are also without citizenship, this problem would perpetuate through generations. Tsubasa initiated Break it Before it's Broken when he got to know the people in this dilemma, and after he visited their village. He observed that the village was "surrounded by large factories, an industrial waste facility, and others under construction." The artist pointed out that some of the houses in the village had a sign on their doors, with a date sprayed onto them. This was deadline for their compulsory eviction. In the end, both the village residents and the waste facility workers took part in the “Pull and Raise” for Break it Before it's Broken. This action, a collective effort to raise and then pull down a structure, is a motif in Kato's works around the world. In this context, the destruction of the tower symbolize an attempt, a determination, and a hope to defeat an oppressive system before it takes away the workers' livelihood. It was encouraging to learn about this younger artist, who shared the same social concerns and collaborative approach.

A week after the Sympoisum, Tsubasa invited me to join him and his wife/art partner, Yukari, for Nabe (Japanese hot pot). Over a warm bowl of napa cabbages, daikon radishes, noodles, shiitake mushrooms, tofu, chicken, and fish, Tsubasa screened the film, Mitakuye Oyasin. Meaning "All Are Related" in the Lakota language, Mitakuye Oyasin documents Tsubasa's collaborations at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Tsubasa and Yukari visited Standing Rock on two occasions to complete the project. The first trip took place in the beginning of 2013. For a week, the team researched the site. They became acquainted with the community through interviews, conversations, and discussions about the art. In Summer 2013, the couple returned to realize Tepee Rocket and Boarding School. Both works included a collaborative "push and pull" of a structure that Tsubasa built. In Tepee Rocket, the pulling down of a tepee challenged mainstream US society's generalized, limited understanding of Native American culture. Boarding School, which was completed after Tepee Rocket, examined the sorrowful wound of native children's forced assimilation and abuse in the government-endorsed, mission-run boarding schools. For this work, Tsubasa built a wooden model of a boarding school, which was one quarter in scale of the original boarding school erected on the reservation. For the "Raise and Pull" event, many community members participated. They included children, a descendant of the a tribal chief, a rapper-painter and music-record organizer, a historian of all of the Native American tribes, and a white policeman. The Boarding School brought the local Sioux people a degree of reconciliation and healing from this dark history. Like Swain, Kato invested time and learned the story of those he collaborated with.

Tepee Rocket, 2013. Tsubasa Kato and participants. ©Tsubasa Kato.

On the last day of the Symposium, I asked the participants how artists could avoid the "helicopter approach" and cultural consumption in collaborative art. How, instead of a quick drop in and fragmentary interactions, could artists partake in more sustained, deeper community engagement? Also, what are the various ways to see, to experience, and to interpret this art genre? There is the matter of "process" versus "end result," and "the art event/object" versus "documentation." It is worth to consider the unique functions and dynamics of each. On the role of the museum, would it be necessary to bring socially-engaged art activities indoors? How can museums facilitate and support site-specific, participatory works?

As purposed by the Symposium participants, the conversation on socially-oriented art would continue.

References, Further Readings, and Viewings:

上田假奈代 (Kanayo Ueda). Coco Room. http://www.cocoroom.org/english/index.html

Cultural Agents. http://culturalagents.org/

Don't Follow the Wind. http://dontfollowthewind.info/

Justin Jesty. https://asian.washington.edu/people/justin-jesty

Darby Minow Smith on Michael Swaine. "San Francisco Artist Mends Clothes and Builds Community - Just by Giving a Darn." Grist.org. October 16, 2012. http://grist.org/people/san-francisco-artist-mends-clothes-and-builds-community-just-by-giving-a-darn/

Etsuko Ichikawa. http://www.etsukoichikawa.com/

"Michael Swaine." Exploratorium, Tinkering Studio. Accessed December 1, 2015. http://tinkering.exploratorium.edu/michael-swaine

"Radio Active Art in Fukushima: Don't Follow the Wind." The Creators Project. Accessed December 1, 2015. http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/show/video-the-radioactive-art-exhibit-you-cant-see--dont-follow-the-wind

Socially Engaged Art in Japan Symposium. https://sites.google.com/a/uw.edu/seajapan/home/participants

Standing Rock, Sioux Tribe. http://standingrock.org/

Tsubasa Kato. http://www.katoutsubasa.com/

Yangdeng Coopertaives. https://www.facebook.com/Yangdeng-Cooperatives-450833715121425/info?tab=page_info

On the meaning and significance of "Mitakuye oasin":

François, Damien. The Self-destruction of the West: critical cultural anthropology. Publibook, 2007. p. 28.

Maroukis, Thomas Constantine. Peyote and the Yankton Sioux: The Life and Times of Sam Necklace. University of Oklahoma Press, 2005. p. 160.

"US: Indigenous Lakota women face harsh winter wrath under climate change". November 2, 2010.