Screening of Passing Poston (cheap/free stuff about Japan)

I was asked by the film-makers to spread some news about this new doc, about the internment of Japanese Americans during the war (roughly from 1942-1945). Besides these dates, it’s also playing for free at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) on June 28, with a panel afterwards with three of the film’s interviewees.

The trailer doesn’t actually refer to what makes this film different from other films about internees’ experience, or even a visit to JANM itself, which is a bit of a shame. But the LA Times did a nice piece following up the film, and cut to the chase of what is different about these internees (19,000 of the roughly 110,000 total people interned)–the transfer of farmers to an Indian reservation, in Poston Arizona, because of their special skills. The “Berkeley researcher” referred to here is an artist, Ruth Okimoto, one of the people who will be at the JANM screening.

What the Berkeley researcher would discover was that the U.S. government had deliberately selected Japanese Americans with farming experience from California Central Valley towns like Sacramento, Bakersfield and elsewhere, to help develop the reservation’s agricultural potential, Okimoto said. Researching documents in the National Archives, along with Colorado River Indian tribal archives and other sources, Okimoto discovered the then-named Office of Indian Affairs partnered with the War Relocation Authority to develop an internee labor plan.

I have spent a lot of time reading and talking about the internment and its processes in both the US and Canada, but I am still getting my head around this, as the precursor to the prison industrial complex, in its very intricate bureaucratic plans and use of confined labor, and the deliberate forced mobility of farmers from the Central Valley and other agro areas. My thoughts are hovering back and forth between “man, this is really screwed up,” and wow, I am really glad to be in LA to have a chance to see this, and hear what people have to say.

I’ve been wanting to get to the ImaginAsian theatre downtown for a while–partly to see films, and partly to see the building, and what kinds of spaces might be used for programming.

japanese experimental film screening @ The Box (free stuff from Japan)

*Follow-up on the screening and lecture itself: very well-attended, with about 40 people, and occaasional passers-by, including small kids with basketballs, peering in from the street, Chung King Road. No one can resist a boarded-up room showing movies, it seems. What I didn’t do justice to in the original post was Nao’s installations. One was taken down for the screening, but two remained up. There was one in the basement, the one with footage from Saipan, that was very absorbing, and the basement was a good place for the kind of immersive voiceover, atop images that navigated through water. The textures were quite lush, the voice soothing, and very descriptive, so it took me a while to realize that it was describing various munitions that lurked underwater off the coast of Saipan. Buried war treasures. I ended up going to dinner with the very generous gallery owner and other attendees, which was a blast. Lots of good stories about artist forms of transit, specialised forms of tea-pouring (e.g. the British rail pour, and the lush life of Altadena).

The gallery is currently holding an exposition by film-maker/sculptor Naotaka Hiro. Screening of short Japanese experimental films, in The Box, in Chinatown, tomorrow, from 7-9. Images are from: Matsumoto Toshio, Shiki soku ze ku (1975); Itoh Takashi, Spacy (1981); and Iimura Takahiko, In the River (1969-70).

Actually–there’s some Saipan content, too, with the collaborative piece with Sid Dueñas. The wonderful and entertaining Jonathan Hall (of UCI) will give a talk interspersed with the screenings. Yes, it’s free!

May 10 – June 7, 2008

The Box gallery is pleased to present an exhibition which will include two new video pieces by Naotaka Hiro and a new collaboration with Sid M. Duenas. The first new video is the third in a series of pieces that involve a human skull. In this particular piece the video is a documentation of a performance Hiro did in which the skull hung from the ceiling with a wire and Hiro built onto the skull using sticky rice, attempting to make a sphere. The video shows the quick movements of a disjointed male nude, with the frame of the video disconnecting the body from the feet and his own head.

The second video piece also dissects the body; placing plastic toy body parts into a non-descript landscape. In this case the body parts in the video are objects, not attached to a human figure. The body parts that remain are disturbing and the viewers contemplates their own bodies’ relationship to landscape. This piece will include two video projections running side by side.

The third piece, To and From, that is collaboration with Sid M. Duenas, is a video in which these two artists explore the relationship of their personal and political cultures. With Hiro being of Japanese decent and Duenas being of Saipanese decent, decided to travel to Saipan and explore the very location of conflicts between these two countries.