Video and audio installation, 2014
Digital print, sheet music, paper-cut, miniature toys, mirror, light

“Memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.”

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places (6)

My mother’s childhood house in Shin-Sugita, Yokohama still remains on the property next to the home to which my mother’s youngest sister currently resides. The old house originally built in 1946 for American occupation is now locked because of heavy rainfall, earthquake and other natural causes that have sealed the door shut. Inside the house remains a few valuable items from the past including an old piano that will essentially disappear after time. My initial research was to explore the interior of this home and its contents; but arriving to a locked house forced me see its contents from the outside.  

Heard within these corners, stairwells, and rooms are audio recordings that document present time between the two sisters as they meet again by playing the piano together.  A recovered, super 8mm film from 1975, documents my mother’s first visit back to Yokohama since her migration to Canada.  The film becomes a map to locate the current tourist site of the Japanese ocean liner, Hikawa Maru, which historically a regular liner route from Japan to Yokohama, Vancouver and Seattle.  These intimate works attempt to restore memory but proves only to be a fiction; a story I’ve created temporarily to find our way back to a time that is hidden and now can only be dreamed. 

Sound Engineering for audio works: Kohsuke Nakamura (Kangaroo Paw)
Video Editing and Sound Design Video: Naoki Yoshimoto
Piano: Shizuko Mori. 

This project was produced during a residency at Koganecho Art Bazaar Fictive Asia Communities 2014, Koganecho, Yokohama, Japan.

Detail of Multi-media:

Video, port of dream, 3:30 minutes (loop)

Audio 1 (outdoor), Aunt playing Mozart, 3:20 minutes (loop)

Audio 2 (indoor), Aunt and Mom Play Piano, 3:12 minutes (loop)