Fathoming Uncertainty: Performing with(in) Vulnerable Landscapes
Wednesday, March 3, 2021 at 2pm EST via Zoom, free with registration. RSVP here
How do artists use their own bodies to articulate pressing issues of environmental injustice and collective vulnerability across places, timescales, and cultures?
Artists Eiko Otake (Japan/USA) and Sarah Cameron Sunde (USA) bridge site-responsive performance, film, photography, and installation to examine experiences of embodied vulnerability in the face of environmental crises, including nuclear disaster and sea-level rise. Throughout their globe-spanning and multi-year projects, each artist has challenged viewers to reconsider their preconceptions of time, understand the intricate interconnectedness of human bodies and natural landscapes, and witness the impacts of social and environmental injustices in varied places and communities. In this virtual conversation, they will reflect on their durational performance projects, including Eiko Otake’s A Body in Places and A Body in Fukushima and Sarah Cameron Sunde’s 36.5/A Durational Performance with the Sea. The artists discuss how they use their individual bodies to communicate global concerns, the impacts of industry-induced climate crises on the land and its inhabitants, and how they bridge visual and performing arts practices.
Read Eiko & Sarah’s written responses to questions that we didn’t get to during the event: Duet #1 Audience Questions & Responses
Lingering: reflections, questions, and scores for continued engagement
in collaboration with Ayaka Fujii
How do we inhabit time in crisis?
The Earth’s tidal bulge as breath, as breathing (an image from Sarah Cameron Sunde)
“I shouldn’t be here.” (Eiko, on her proximity to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant)
Where is your physical being prohibited? Where is your movement restricted? What kind of movement is possible, even in such a space?
Body as measuring stick
Body as conduit
Body as deep time
Body as cycles
Body as body of water
Body as a historied place
Body as thread
Body as microcosm
Body as archive
Close your eyes and “go” somewhere. Where are you now? Where do you spend the longest length of time? Where are your feet touching? How do you “tune in” to a place? What does it ask of you? How does it affect your breath? How does it nourish you? What is included in its “DNA”? How does it feel to linger in the immensity of a place and its history? What is the scale of your body in relation to this place? How does its memory hold you? How do you contribute to its memory? How does this place linger with you?
Additional Resources
Personal Manifesto of an Artist as a Cultural Activist — EIKO OTAKE
See how Eiko has taken her performances to sites around the world, connecting them with Fukushima through her body’s presence in each place: Solo Project — EIKO OTAKE
Gia Kourlas on Eiko’s Fukushima memorials at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, NYC: Eiko: A Dancer’s Urgent Body in a Sacred Space (Published 2017)
Fukushima: Contaminated water lingering quandary decade after nuclear disaster
Preorder Eiko’s upcoming publication on her work in Fukushima (Published June 1, 2021)
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Two Indigenous Poets on Sea Level Rise: Rise: From One Island To Another on Vimeo
Hear about Sarah’s ongoing work in Aotearoa 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea
Book recommendations from Sarah:
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Timefulness by Marcia Bjornerud
About the Artists
Eiko Otake (Japan/New York City, USA)
Born and raised in Japan and a resident of New York since 1976, Eiko Otake is a movement-based, interdisciplinary artist. She worked for more than 40 years as Eiko & Koma but since 2014 has been performing her own solo project “A Body in Places.”
This project evolved from Eiko’s expansive “A Body in Fukushima” collaboration with photographer/historian William Johnston, which they created together over the course of five visits to Fukushima following the “Triple Disaster” and nuclear meltdown of 2011. In 2017, she launched a multi-year Duet Project, an open-ended series of cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural and cross-generational experiments with a diverse range of artists both living and dead. In spring 2016, she was the subject of the 10th annual Danspace Project Platform, titled A Body in Places. This month-long curated program brought her a Bessie Special Citation (2016), an Art Matters fellowship (2015), the Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2016), and the Sam Miller Award for Performing Arts (2020).
In 2020, Eiko was invited by Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts (CFA) to its first Virtual Creative Residency. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Eiko created Virtual Studio, a virtual space to share newly created and newly edited video works, written reflections, the voices of her collaborators, dialogues with artists and writers, and responses from viewers.
Eiko teaches regularly at Wesleyan University, New York University, and Colorado College. During the 2017-2018 academic year, Eiko was a Think Tank Fellow in Wesleyan University’s College of the Environment.
Sarah Cameron Sunde (New York, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist and director working at the intersection of performance, video and public art.
She is creator of 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea (2013 – present, spanning six continents) and instigator/co-curator of Works on Water (a new triennial and artist-driven experimental organization dedicated to art that is made on, in and with the water). Sunde served as Deputy Artistic Director of New Georges for 16 years (2001-2017), co-founded and led the live art collective Lydian Junction (2011-2015), co-founded the theater company Oslo Elsewhere (2004-2012), and is known internationally as Jon Fosse’s American director and translator (five U.S. premieres in New York and Pittsburgh). As a visual artist, Sunde’s solo shows include Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery (Aotearoa-New Zealand), Gallatin Galleries (New York City), Georgia Museum of Art (Athens, GA). Her work has also been seen and experienced at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, 3LD Art & Technology Center, the Knockdown Center, EFA Project Space, Rattlestick, Kennedy Center, Guthrie Theater and presented internationally in Norway, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, Brazil, Mexico, China, Uganda, Kenya, and Iraqi Kurdistan. Residencies include LMCC Workspace, Watermill Center, Baryshnikov Art Center, and the Hermitage Foundation. Honors/Awards/Funding includes MAP Fund Grant, Princess Grace Award, Creative Climate Award First Prize, Invoking the Pause, LMCC Creative Engagement, LMCC / Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, Norwegian Consulate, Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst. She holds a B.A. in Theater from UCLA and an M.F.A. in Digital and Interdisciplinary Art Practice from The City College of New York, CUNY. www.SarahCameronSunde.com + www.36pt5.org + Performing with The Sea at the Gallatin Galleries
Stay Up-to-Date with the Artists’ Upcoming Works and Events
Sarah Cameron Sunde | Time-based Artist and Director
36.5 | A Durational Performance with the Sea
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