 town in Murray Hill just rang, so it's 12 noon and it means it is seagull time for our talks on Monday. And this is a very special talk for us, an important talk. It is the last one of our book talk series of 10 talk, but it's also the last of the year of the season. And in a way, we experienced so much in our lives, in our planet, in the world of theater and things we didn't experience, we thought we would. So we are having with us today a guest whose work, I think we all know so very, very much is Aiko or Aiko Otaka, Aiko, welcome with us. Thank you, thank you. And to be gonna talk about her book. And the book I think is a very, very important one. It's called A Body in Fukushima. Together with photographer William Johnston, she went over a decade, for 10 years, because it's now 10 years since Fukushima happened. She went back and we're gonna talk about her work, her project, actually her first solo project. Normally she does collaborate with her partner, Takashi Kuma Otake, and they are well known for working, collaborating together, actually world famous in their work. And it is a great honor and privilege to have them with us. So Aiko, before we go into the specifics, where are you and what time is it? I'm in Japan, I am near Tokyo and it's two AM. Two AM, that's after midnight, two hours after midnight. It is, and I can't quite blame Frank for this. He didn't aim with just my own reason that I'm here in Japan, so. Yeah, incredible. I'm very happy to be here with you. Yeah, and this is your family home, I understand? Yes, of course it was my parents' home and my father died 22 years ago, my mom died two years ago. I'm sorry to hear that. It's literally, it's now my house, it's a little house, but I still consider it as my mom's house. Did you grow up in the house? No, I didn't, that's another reason. Yeah, they moved after I left them when I was a young person. So I don't really feel that childhood memories here except I always have so many memories of visiting her here. And in some years, I have taken care of her as she grew old. So there's lots of memories of her on everything we have in here. And it's close to the Kamakura. And not far. They say not too far outside Tokyo, which is such a beautiful ancient and also very spiritual town with many artists over centuries. It's true. Very caressant, writers, theater artists who lived there. Aiko, tell me about the book, Fukushima. Well, the point was sent to me the first time. I didn't quite prepare myself for how heavy the book is. And in literal weight is like really heavy because it was during the pandemic, we worked on it. Meaning myself and my photographer, collaborator and designers were always talking over Zoom with the design, PDF exchange, making comments. So everything was prepared over the internet and by phone and by writing, sending my text and the ideas and the comments. But then when book arrived, not only it was bigger than I ever thought, even though I always knew the size and so much heavier. And it was, this is, we made a decision of using a printer in Belgium, which is specialized for a very environmental friendly. So it is a recycle, or it is the whole book is recycled paper and the biogradable ink. So the whole thing feels like a weight. You know, it's a literal weight as much as 10 years since Fukushima had nuclear disaster. So to me, oh, like looking not only my 10 years, but Fukushima's 10 years as an a big object which is very heavy. It's metaphorically heavy. So this is kind of surprise that I felt. That's true, yeah. That's true as I think people who drink whiskey like to have the heavy whiskey glass because it also represents the weight of the drink. Yeah. It's a kind of thing. It's felt very different from what I was so used to in a PDF form. And I'm glad we have the talk. It's been also tragic that it has not been possible to have book celebrations, book talks and bookstores. Normally, our authors can go around. That's why we created the Segal book talks we had. Bonnie Moranka here with us and Teresa Smalek, Alexis Green was Emily Mann, Kerry Perlov and Katanjo, and Bogar joined us and then Avra, Zidro Lupulu and Frank Rabbats. And now you were as a point at the end, you just talked last week about that new age we are entering. But it was Frank and Avra right about the Anthropocene, that is all of a sudden the history of the planet is interfering now in a very serious way with the history of mankind and our history, perhaps how it hasn't done before that coronavirus doesn't respect borders. It doesn't care as does radiation. Tell me, how did the idea for your project, a body in places, a body in Fukushima, how did that come to you? So my A-body in Fukushima has always been the part, a part of, but also the beginning of my A-body in places, which is the overall title of my solo activities. Okay, when I perform solo anywhere is A-body in places. So that'd be the Wall Street, that'd be the Fulton Center, that's been Florida, that's been Hong Kong. I always call it places because people can know, oh, she's here with me here on this street, on this plaza, but she has been, my audience are informed, she has been in different places. And the beginning was my body in Fukushima. So the first time I went without a performing, without any notion of my solo activity, but just going to Fukushima after the disaster happened was 2011, that August. So five months after. But that happened to be in the middle of A-commerce, retrospective, which was a three-year project, which actually consumed us for five years, from the time being prepared, and then we finished. Five years of preparing retrospective, that is supposed to be middle of our career. And so it was never supposed to be like end of our career, but five years is a long time to look back or 40 some years of work. So I was kind of maxing out the examining A-commerce work. So by the time retrospective was in a full swing, I was itching to do something beyond the A-commerce. And then when Fukushima happened, I was already teaching nuclear models. I had a very late MA on atomic bomb literature. So this is something to study about atomic bomb and what kind of artist did with an experience of that hard to describe beyond so-called imagination, but it actually happened experience. How the artist can work out of those experience was something I've been always thinking about and teaching about. And the atomic bomb is a nuclear matter and nuclear plants are also nuclear matters. And both are human creations and both has a massive environmental disasters as possible to happen. Atomic bombs might have been aimed to kill enemy people, but it also destroys the environment. Nuclear plants, it might have been aimed to create electricity, but so much possibility as such a complicated machine happen to break down, make an accident, make a nuclear disaster. And that's not only inconvenience to the human being, but it is an environmental disaster. So in me, all the nuclear models are very connected. So when that had happened, without ever thinking doing my solo, I had to go to Fukushima because I felt as a person who teaches atomic bomb and radiations, I had to know. And at that time, it was very confusing because not much information is readily available. You know, when something so big happens, the books don't come in too quickly. You have internet knowledge, but it takes a long time for people to grapple and come up with certain ways of creating a knowledge that is not just information. So one of the way as a body-based person, I often feel I learn by being in a place. You know, your whole body experience it and it's not information that you just get it online. So I went to there with my friend, but then by 2014, when our retrospective project of Aikon-Takoma ended, I was ready to go back. And that time I wanted to do it as a part of my solo project. So my solo project started with not an happy melody way because going back to Fukushima with a camera, you know, with a collaborator photographer and the historian was a heavy decision. And I did not know at that time we would still go back another five times. So we did. So altogether I was there six times because I was there alone first. There was a photographer five times. And all of the result, selected result, I have shown it in different ways in different places where I go to perform my solos. So I was hoping audience will both know, will know all Aikon performing on the Wall Street, or Aikon was in Fukushima, or she's wearing the same costume, or she's not a young person, or she had gone back to Fukushima, or the church down the street has a exhibition. So I was trying to connect my performance activities in the U.S. or elsewhere to the things that I did, the same body I was in Fukushima. Yeah, it's an extraordinary project. You are a bearing witness, I think. You talk about you don't want to forget about it and you don't want others to forget what happened. For centuries from now, you quote your friend, Kiyoko Hayashi, who you also dedicated the book. She said, people who died in the atomic bombings, they were denied a personal death and their bodies also disappeared. If you look at Fukushima, also you don't see bodies, radiation, you can't smell it, you cannot see it, but you brought your body to Fukushima and as a dancer, you threw your body in life. As Pasolini said, what artists should actually do, they should take their body and throw it in life and participate. For all our listeners, let me tell you a little bit about the important work of Aiko. Aiko was born and raised in Japan and she's a movement-based interdisciplinary artist, a sports movement, photography, writing, film, video. And she is based in New York since 1976. She studied with legends in theater, the people who changed what we think about theater. She studied with Tetsumi Hichakata and Kazuo Ono in Japan, the founders really of the Buto movement from the north, from the Tohoku region, we have to show the burnt skin, the scars, and they rejected traditional Japanese history after World War II, but they also had a horror of the new American culture that came in and created something completely new because they felt there was nothing else, they really could do. She studied with them and then went to Germany and with Mancha Kimmel in Germany, she studied the Bauhaus dancing and then together with her partner, Takashi Kuma Otake, she came to New York and she created that now also so well-known dance movement duo, duo Aiko and Kuma. They created almost 50 interdisciplinary works all around the US, the Whitney Walker Arts Center, MoMA, very well-known internationally. They got significant prizes, the George Duke Award, the MacArthur Fellowship, the United States Artist Fellowship and many, many more, you can look up and we have her with us here. So you get an idea of it. So what she is sharing with us today as an artist but also as a human is extraordinary. You and the house of your mother, you said she died two years ago. Very movingly, I think also in the book, you talk about how you and your mother were taking old red fabric silk from Kimono's. You brought old Kimono's. You store them together. Tell us a little bit, why would you bring old Kimono's, why your mother's Kimono and your grandmother's Kimono? Right, so as I said, I was there alone before I went back with a photographer. So in 2011, I already saw what was immediately happening, okay? So in my mind, I needed not to talk as someone who experienced. I'm not from Fukushima. That is not my hometown, even though I spent four years in the Providence, not Providence, prefecture next to it. So the landscape was very familiar before the nuclear disaster. And of course, people had to fled. So, the scene that I was seeing is the aftermath. And I failed to bring in color because especially the place where tsunami had affected, you know, the things are very chaotic and dusty, right? Because tsunami brought all that, the water and dirty and the dirt was mixed up. So everything in the house is covered by the sort of a thing or thick layers of dirt. And it comes up as a very dry and the colors are very infused with that dust. So bringing my mom's, and in fact, I ended up, all the fabric are from my grandma's. My mom helped me to create, you know, by sewing the pieces together. But all the costume I wore in Fukushima until the last trip are from Kimono's, from my grandma. And by bringing all the people's Kimono that we no longer wear in our daily life is to me to identify myself or at least emerging the ancestors. You know, because there are people who had to flee, but they can talk their tales. Journalists are interviewing them. They are writing some of them, you know, writing poems, paintings. I met those people. So it's not my job to bring their voices because they do have their voices in their lawsuits. So there are very much moving stories witnessing from their own perspective. So what I probably instinctively felt is to think about mountains, to think about water, to think about people who died and their bones in their family graves. So somehow bringing all the material, the color, very vivid Kimono colors into this dusty place is my addition. It's like my palette to bring. So this is why it's not only my body, but my being a Japanese person who grew up in Japan before I moved to the US. It's not just me being there, but me myself bringing a palette of colors and the materials that belongs to my, beyond my own memory. And I think it was important for me to carry that. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it is so remarkable. If we look at the book and I'm just gonna show it, I would say most of them are actually photos and some essays, poems of you also from William, some reflections. Maybe you have, I think you have a small video clip where you compiled some of it. So our audiences can see it. Again, Fukushima is the second largest nuclear disaster, I think, in the history of planet Earth. People say a scientist for the next 800 to 1,000 years, this landscape will be untouchable. You cannot go back in. It will be contaminated. It's a failure of mankind and the idea of the technos, the idea of the Apollonian thinking as we talked with fine Swarad, where we think we could master Earth and it has shown us that it is not as easy as we all thought and we have to completely rethink our engagement with nature and the idea from Bruno Latour, which we also talked about last week, where we have to understand that humans are no longer the solo actor, the dancer on planet Earth, that everything is connected to everything and we are just one part of it and we have to respect it. So if you're ready, let's have a look. It's got a two, three minute clip and maybe tell us a little bit about it. Yes. So these are just a very short video, but I actually created from the very first time I went with a bear, who is my photographer and history and collaborator. I've always created videos because after all, I'm a choreographer and the performer. Yeah. I'm a time-based artist. And the photography is an interesting way to show the time because video's time, if I video myself moving in Fukushima, video's time is real. But in the photography, you can imagine what happened before or what could happen next. I can also change the orders of the video, of the photos to create a sense of choreography. But I'm not showing my movies that I have made. In fact, I think my film will be shown in the film festivals. But so it's usually it's two hours and I made it as long as seven and a half hours. But this one I'm showing is only three minutes and I'll start and I'll explain to you as we go along. So this is a very fast survey just to give audience. So this is January 2014. So this is the first time I went back with a photographer. This is one of the Tomioka station of Joban Line. And you can see how even this is three years, nearly three years after the disaster, things are quite closed up. And I can kind of see myself as almost like an only body in the landscape where humans used to be. And we went back the same summer and just to see the grasses grow and still the same chaos remains, dusty. At the same time, the colors are more vivid just because of the greens compared to the winter, which was very, very, very low and not colorful. But then we also see the piles of radiated materials next to the amazing greens because they are thriving, they are radiated but they're still thriving because of no human beings around. And in fact, some of the wild animals were also really made lots more. That doesn't mean they're healthy, they're still radiated. And by the time we went back in 2016, the government really started to do this a big job of cleaning up, so-called cleaning up. And of course they can really never clean clean but they are doing it in a way of- It's a temple right here, which is- Yes, yes. And sometimes we have to go to the temple to find a quiet place because so much of the machinery were brought in both cleaning up and decontaminating. But when we actually see the stations preparing for the, running the trains again, we start to see and we start to realize, oh, we not only came by the 2016, not to just report and witness the disaster but how the disaster made government and the local office people to change the area. You know, how to recover the area. So now there are so many places that we couldn't go in. Now they allowed to not only go in but government says, oh, it's now safe to live in. But people haven't really came back by too many numbers. And it's understandable because if you have a small children, you know, they are not coming back. So some of the older people comes back but the proportion of the people who came back is very small. But you can see how the amount of the concrete, everywhere in the seashore. But those amount of the concrete does not necessarily, does not necessarily save the area, nor the people if that same, same high tsunami ever come. I mean, tsunami was 69 feet high. So even though the humongous, you know, seawalls, I understand the reason of wanting such, you know? But at the same time we have to realize it really changed the environment and was good. And the nuclear cleaning up is extremely hard because you may be able to clean up the field but you can't clean up the mountains. So the next storm comes or next tsunami comes, it is very difficult. Plus entirely cleaning up the water, you know, dirty water, dirty meaning allotted water is nearly impossible. So they clean up what they can, they're processing it. But then I think in the next few years, they're going to release into the back to the ocean. And those are contaminated waters. So I'm very, very concerned. So this was a very quick way for me to show you. Yeah, no, thank you. From the 2001 to the 2019. Really, thank you for sharing. I encourage you all to go to your local bookstore, the drama bookstore and get that book and not only to support artists like who do actually do create books and write. We all should write more, but also especially artists. And it is extraordinary, also an expensive book. So many color photos, such a large and big one is a beautiful work that really, I think, is a testimony in its heaviness and weight to it. Do you also write or you and William are inspired by Jean-Luc Nancy, who actually was also on Segal Talks. He gave one of his last interviews. If not the last one, he said that his book after Fukushima, The Equivalence of Catastrophes. Why was that important to you? Yeah, just because Fukushima is not about the story of Fukushima. It happened in Fukushima, but it already reminds us what happened in Fukushima can happen anywhere. And it did happen. So what we are saying, just like atomic bomb is not about Japanese story. It is American story, but it is also international story because it's not just American people or American army prepared it, right? So there has to be the scientist, there has to be engineering, there has to be all the human so-called progress has brought to that, right? So in the same way, nuclear plant is everywhere. So it is a part of the human being's never ending so-called productivity, never ending our need that we need energy, never ending the greed of the corporations, right? So all those things are, we have it in common. So it's not only happened to Fukushima. What happened to Fukushima can happen anywhere. It doesn't take earthquake to have a nuclear disaster. It doesn't happen, there doesn't always have to be a tsunami that is necessary to make a nuclear disaster. In that way, we are really a part of the ways how humans had created such a scale that disaster can not only hurt us, but all other species and the environment. And we notice every single day just opening up the news. There are many Fukushima's, you say there are many Fukushima's? Yes, there are many Fukushima's. There are many Fukushima's within Fukushima, but then there are possible Fukushima's everywhere. So in that sense, I think Nancy was a great guide who asked to realize that, but it doesn't take Nancy to say that. I mean, to be honest, I will use all my respect. Yeah, I remember that line in your concluding thoughts where you say, I go to the streets of New York and they were empty in Corona time, they were empty like in Fukushima. As you say, there are many places, your book also is brilliant, it's not just one place, you show the entire, you know, many rivers, they are no longer rivers, the seaside, the towns they are. So there are many Fukushima's, but you also draw the line between, you know, Fukushima, COVID and other disasters. Yes, very much so. It's all connected. So did you had the same feeling when you walked the streets of New York and it was empty as you had in the train station of? Of course, the city. Kido Village, yeah, it's for example, yeah. Yes, yes. I mean, in a way, yes, because on all those occasions, we use the words, oh, we were not prepared or it was we never imagined or this was beyond our imagination, right? So when I teach in my class, I kind of ask my student not to use the words I can't even imagine. Because if we can't imagine, obviously we are not prepared. So our ability to imagine is important because our ability to imagine makes us be able to hesitate to the certain development and also makes us to be prepared in a way that is not at all like pure shock or like as if like sky has fallen down. Sky did not fall down. Sky might fall down if we continue this way. So it is crucial for humans to realize that everything human make do break. Nobody buys a piece of desk or toaster or heater thinking this will last forever. Everybody knows certain things do break. But why we had to be filled nuclear plants are supposed to be safe. They were never safe and nobody can ever say they are completely safe. There are not such a thing as that last things were made and the human body is mortal. And by being in Fukushima, one of the things really struck me is, ah, sea wall breaks. Ah, house does break. Ah, nuclear plants break because body, our body break down. Our body die. Our body gets sick. Our body has an accident, injuries. So I think what we create, imitate our body because it is our body that dominate our thinking. And I don't think it's conscious, but I think it makes sense to me. And I think it's important for humans to know we are mortal and what we create are mortal. And when it is being mortal, if somebody dies quietly, it's one thing. But if somebody makes a humongous noise, humongous violence, not only that person dies, but other people get hurt. And I think more complicated, especially things like nuclear plants which is bound to affect by radiation. It is crucial for me to at least share with people the fear, the tension, the regret that I have felt in Fukushima. And that continues as I gain more knowledge. I don't know the way. Yeah, I think as sharing has been such a big part of your and your and Koma's work in a way for a long time. You wrote, dancing in Fukushima is a naked experience. What do you mean? Well, naked in a way. You know, Komandai had many pieces that we perform naked. Okay, many pieces from the 83 to about 2000 we had many naked pieces. But to a tradition also, yeah. No, because that's different because people do hide certain sexual organs. Now we don't, we are completely naked, okay? And but when I say naked is I'm contrasting it to nude. Nude is a kind of a sexualized, you know, words that you are expecting the viewer. But naked is that very existential, right? So when human beings are hard to be naked, we don't have any covers. You know, we don't have a hair, not long hair to protect ourselves or get cold. So it's a very miserable, you know, health-less thing, right? And being in Fukushima, you do feel, you can, well, you cannot see radiation, you cannot smell radiation, but you know it's there. You know, I measured it, right? And we know that from the information. And in that, even though I was closed, I felt very unprotected, unprotected, right? So in a way, it's naked. But in a naked, in a way, no adjective can come in. You are lost with your words. So you exist, you know, we cry, but it's not a sentimental cry. It is a deeper, it's not a cry of expression. It is a cry of our core. And I felt naked, meaning health-less. That's something I cannot rely on. We have come to this point of our human development to feel so health-less. And people making the things they don't know how to fix. And people making things that could be so harmful to other species, as much as also to the environment. So that was a very much like, you know, so that the words fail, even though I did write quite a bit of essays over time in this book. But I think our first sense of experience is we are lost. We lost our words. We lost our senses. We lost our normalcy. We lost our things we can rely on. And that is what I mean by being naked. Yeah, yeah. As you say, miserable. You also say, you had that line in one of the poems or I want to stay miserable. And I think Samela said, well, put vulnerability. I'm vulnerable. And you said, no. So it takes a strong, I think, mom, some very strong person to want to stay miserable and to remind instead of saying, oh, let's just go back to normal and let's forget about it. And let's go on and so to stay miserable is that guiding your work for the Fukushima book or do you think it is a much deeper philosophical concept? Well, I don't know what's deeper, but I do know this is coming also from my post-war upbringing. I was born in 1952, which is the year American occupation ended. So this was, you know, of course, the R.I., but the only America had a general headquarters and the military people there, right? So it's seven years of occupation, it's a long time. And in Japan, most of the city had been raided. So it's not my experience. I don't know the war. I wasn't alive. I only know it from what we read, what we see, what we heard. But I think because I grew up in post-war Japan, the damage of the war, which Japan started, and the historical things are more complicated. So I don't think I should simplify, but in many ways, completely, it was Japan was the invader. Japan was the perpetrator. And in that war, Japan was destroyed. And that was my immediate before my life. You know, so we hear this, we read about it. You grew up always hearing artists or philosophers or writers work that are like one, two, three generations before you. And that's how you grow up, breathing in the people who had experienced the quite extreme situation, right? So to me, they are regret I have breathed in. I saw the wounded veterans and they weren't well cared for. I saw the many people with difficulties and the social system haven't learned how to care of them yet. So as a child, I saw people who are not the way our normalcy could imagine. The people were having a really hard time. Not everyone, of course they are well-to-do people too. So to me, when I perform, I don't have a desire to, oh, I want to look good. Because that's more like a show business. So I come from not wanting to do the show business. I wanted to do a performance as an art form. And to me, where my beginning memories are not the Japan with Sony, not the Japan with a beauty, but the sense of failed place of its own history. Damaged place and occupied. And you know, American military continued to stay on even after the occupation was over, right? So we was a base for the Americans. Still there, yeah. Very much. So I think these are important things that I don't really, especially having arrived to America and performing for American audience. I never felt like, oh, oh, how good she is. That's not what I'm looking. Oh, what's going on here? It's something different from the norm of America. So something what I can bring in from my own core of my senses, which is not at all happy, melody, joke, fruit, upbeat, fast thing. I take a long time to do certain things in the performance so that it actually could make people somewhat uncomfortable. I hope not torture, but certain people have a hard time because as if nothing happens for a long time. But you know, I want to show things don't always happen like that. As we know, as Nancy says, you know, the things are already happening and it had been happening. But when it really started to have the force, it makes us feel very small and very helpless even though it is a human-made disaster. Yeah, these are very, very significant questions and observations and stands you take. You also write kind of poetic lines or poetry in it. If I can read some of the lines, you say, where am I supposed to come from? Where am I supposed to go? What have we done? What have we not done? What can I bring that's not there? How can I make performance necessary? My body will carry a piece of Fukushima. So this is very, as you say, it is existential. It is a serious engagement. And you say as a contemporary artist, you say you have to engage with the contemporary world. How do you make the performance necessary? When do you know it's necessary? That's a great question. I have been asking myself, right? A very long time. So in a sense, if I over a long time create works or threat of the performances where the sense of entertainment doesn't exist and the audience sort of know about it. You know, whether they have seen me before or whether they read something or the description of the event. In many ways, I think my audience know even though they may be surprised, they know this is not a quick first entertaining show. So what is it? And when the people come asking the same question, what is it? And then being together becomes necessary. Much the same way if great comedian would perform and people come because they need to laugh. I also need to laugh sometimes. So that is necessary. You know, if we ate very poorly for one week, we crave for very good food. Doesn't have to be expensive food. So that is necessary. Whereas if we eat really well every single day, eating another great meal is not necessary. So part of what I'm saying is the need of the body, need of our mind during the pandemic. It became very clear to us, right? We couldn't gather. We crave for gathering. I performed in 2020, yes, September, in a graveyard in Greenwood, Greenwood graveyard in Brooklyn. And for so many people, it was the first time they come to see performance. It was outdoor, really distanced. And I'm not sure if we can call it necessary, but it was very close to the feeling. I was providing almost an excuse, you know, almost just a reason together, right? But yet the real reason was really together. The real reason is also together in the graveyard to really to see the death had always been happening so that we can kind of start to see this much of the death is also a part of a longer period where we accumulate death because we are all mortal, right? So somehow when we connect certain elements of our desire and of recognition and by having that experience of I as an artist, I try to think in a way, am I working in my mind, working in my body? Something I am doing it, not a great idea, but if can I continue to think and practice until I feel it necessary? It's part of that is preparation because one day performing in a graveyard may be an idea. Going to the Fukushima is an idea. But as I said, by the time I went one time, going to the second time became necessary. Going to the third time became necessary. By the time I decided to make a book with a photographer historian, it was necessary for us to go back in 2019 December which is right before pandemic, right? So if we didn't go there, the book would have ended in 2017. But we were very clear. We don't want to publish a book three years after the last visit. So going back was necessary. And I'm kind of hoping, this might be asking a lot, but this book is not a book that you just read and hoping it's somewhere in the bookshelf. And people kind of look, or maybe not even looking, they know, oh, Eiko, Fukushima is there. And so it becomes a part of their home. The Fukushima comes in part of their home. And then they click New York Times online or New York Times paper and the Fukushima will continue to be part of our news. Right? As the time goes. So I think I want to combine those things as somewhat little more necessary than just an idea. Or just like creating an art. Yeah, I am creating an art, I hope. But somehow I want to have that sense of, I really need to do this. I think as an art receiver, I crave for that kind of art. That when I feel, oh, this artist need to do this. And this artist need my eye, my mind to receive it. So in both cases, it becomes necessary from the artist and I feel I'm responding to the artist's need to have the mind and eyes to see it. So when I really feel my work is necessary for me to create and to compose and to share, I hope audience knows I actually need them. They're not just a flare. They are the essential. And I think it's true for every performance but I want to emphasize that. I need them to see what I have brought to them. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's true. There are many Fukushima's and it's also as you say, within Fukushima then also it's Fukushima in our home and we relate to what is that, they talked about last week, they kind of planetary thinking what we need. The big disasters, catastrophes, we are facing the tragedies of 21st century. They are global. It's a climate problem. Corona, racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance. And I think you, in a way, make these visible. I like the cover image where you are sitting on those concrete pillars of the sea wall. Actually, I think, yeah, in Chernobyl, as you say, they put concrete around the nuclear reactor so nothing can come out but you can do it to a landscape. And if you do, there's a lot of concrete and for the next, you know, to kind of child for hoping that the next tsunami will not go over these concrete walls but you sit there and you see your costume and there's also a tiny piece of fabric that comes out of nowhere. I don't know what it is. First of all, what is it? But it stands for that, that's what's not visible, kind of a memory, different generations of people who lived there. Also, you know, because I think it's necessary for me to do this work. More global warming becomes so clear. More clear to more people, right? The need to do how better create energy, electricity, not using fossil energy, it's become very important, okay? So then the nuclear plant has been promoted as a necessary way, right? But it's not a clean way to do it because even though it might emit much less CO2, of course, I agree. But when it breaks, and as I said it always breaks, it's impossible to not, it's impossible to make a claim this will never break, okay? So therefore, the idea of the disaster is so prominent. I don't want people to feel, oh, it's not good, we know what happened in Fukushima, but you know, we can't really continue to do this global warming, more and more warmer Earth. So let's change or add to the nuclear plants. This is where we really have to stand on our feet, thinking, is it really so? You know, can we really invest more into the renewable energy, rather than the nuclear energy? And I think it is important to connect nuclear energy into the nuclear arms. Why so many people have been pushing nuclear energy? Because it also creates the basis for nuclear arms. So in both ways, I think it is important. And again, you know, I'm not really making my work because I want to make that statement. I can say that statement. So part of the reason that I'm making the work there is to literally to feel the body, how the body feels being there and how other people feel to see my body being there. So it's not a political message as much as my concern brings me there, but what I want them to see is the helpless body being in that environment. It's radiation. Yeah, and that in that kind of mundane superficial life or existence we do have, where we try to ignore that realities, you know, the dangers we live in, the catastrophe actually we live in. In a hundred, two hundred years from now, people will look at our age and they will be barbaric. You know, how could they have done that? And so as you said before, what can I bring that's not there? You do show it, that little piece of fabric in a way. Mysteriously appears behind the rock, but it's not you. And there's no other dancer. You know, it's like ghosts like things. So you also, to talking about this, you talk about theater or something that isn't there. In one of your poems, you say, she remembers, I guess that's the dancer. She remembers a tree that had been there before a theater was built. Her arm moves to invite the return of the forest. Yeah, it's so, you know, I actually wrote it. That whole poem was written like seven, eight years ago when I was invited to recite or to create something for the 24-hour event at Guggeheim in the theme of time. So I wrote like three full page poem and my performance was how to pronounce it. So that the silence between the lines becomes performative. So you can say the things, but you can say things, right? So we can kind of create this performativity with the words that is a little hesitant, but that is rather insisting, right? So as we make this book, I decided to revisit my time for him to really see what do I mean by a performer, by being a performer, because then the performance usually starts and ends and such things happen, right? And that's performance. But we don't want to do the performance just to end. We want to do the performance in a way how the sense of time is a little more bent so that I kind of cling to instead of drinking water. So to allow a certain time so that time becomes a different character than our everyday time, right? So it's not a thirsty therefore I drink water time, but to really feel what is our relationship to the water. Right? How does it do to the body? And how the body actually lingers certain ways? And to me that's important. So when I go to Fukushima, come back, show the work, that's productivity. I want to do the way... Oh, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do with this. But I want to continue doing this so that I can think about it. So I'm clinging the time a little differently rather than... We are in a place where sometimes we can't quite understand. So I really feel the more we are honest about wanting to cling to something that we are losing such as humanity, such as knowledge, such as understanding, maybe we might hesitate more and hesitation becomes our thinking. Maybe it will become a part of the bigger conversation or bigger recognition of our humanity. Or regret becomes something that is very not seen negative and weak, but regret could become a force that we could give our body to. So that's one of the things I've been thinking as I write those sentences. But I've always... I've always even... I've always felt... I don't really come here just to be another software in a theater. I might want to really think about not only the audience who are here in front of me, but before theater was built. How can I carry that kind of a time? And in that time, today, I happen to be here. So my job is not only to be the entertainment of this month, of this day, but even to invite audience to feel like, oh, there was used to be a breeze. Oh, there used to be a storm here. There used to be some violence. There used to be some love affairs here. That is already a drama before theater had been built. And how can I carry that as a part of the work I do? Yeah, yeah. That's very, very beautiful and necessary and urgent and in a way part of that naked experience of being alive. And I think your concern for the tree that is no longer there, that goes back to the realization that perhaps humans are mankind. And what we are realizing now, we are not the main actors, the French sun king in a way at the center of the planet Earth. Now we are in concert with the plants, with the animals. Everything lives through plants. And Lene said that we have to respect the plants. We live, we only live because of them. There's a critical zone like 10 meters, like 30 feet above and 30 feet below where we stand. This is what gives life and we are part of it. And if this is no longer there, we don't have it. And it is endangered and we live in times with potential catastrophic consequences. I think your work is a real contribution. And as you say, it's not part of the entertainment. Make you feel good, have that Broadway smile or whatever one is looking for before after a fancy dinner that might also not be necessary. It is quite a stunning what you have done in your career also with your partner. With Coma, but also in this solo project. And as you also wrote, you're actually not dancing alone. Even if you do a solo, you're with the landscape, you're with present time, with generations of people before you in that place. And with the history of that place. And you try to connect us and say, in a way to us, think about your life. How do you connect with your place, your people around you? Together and gathering, the words are so close. To gather together and to connect to our history and to be respectful and think of the invisible and also, you know, of what's around us, the tree that is no longer there, but used to be. So it is a stunning work. So really thank you for sharing. And we're coming slowly, you know, to an end it's three o'clock in the night. Really, I am so sorry, I didn't fully realize it, but noon is our Seagull talk time. We're coming to an end of our Seagull book talk series. Which be created because there's no place at the moment also, you know, for writers who worked in the time of Corona were influenced by the moment, by the atmosphere, the experiences to really think hard or why are we doing this? What is it good for? What is really necessary? All that, what I could talk to about. So we're very thankful to have done that. We have almost 200 talks in those two years. For us, it's a very emotional goodbye also, because hopefully next year we will engage with work in the parks and hopefully the festival a bit more outside. And so it might be the end of the Seagull Center's focus on the talks only, at least that's our hope. We get many, many great responses. 100, 200,000 people listen that we don't really know. We also got attacked. We were called, I was called narcissistic at looking myself on the screen. It's not academic enough. Are you doing now television? You know, basically colleagues said on the other hand, or is it boring book talks on Zoom? I think it's not. And I want to say a few words, you know, why I also feel it is important. There is the great Russian writer, Svetlana Alexievich, who does these, what she calls, polyphonic interviews to listen to many voices and monument as she says to suffering and courage in our time. And she spoke to people from Afghanistan, Jewish, Russian population that suffered so much. And people returning from war, which she interviewed and modifying it a little bit. We could say our seagull talks were like a theater evidence, theater people talking about themselves and an epic chorus, a symphonic narrative, a panorama of souls of people who are in this theater. And it's think it is showing us a history of theater in 21st century, our common history. I think it is an archive of it. And at a time, as we said, where our theater collides with the history of the planet and we are all the sudden influenced, Marvin Carlson pointed out when he said, you know, it's the first time that globally no theater was happening. Even in Shakespeare's time, you could go outside of London, the plague, and they could perform. People didn't. It was a shutdown mosque that had not been shut down in 1500 years or shut down. So it is something very, very serious that happened. And I think it is a very, very important thing to remember in the world. And I think it is a very important thing to remember in the world, which I like in her work, in her work of the interview work, where she says she is capturing a part of the reality. I have been searching for a method that would allow the closest possible approximation to real life. It has always been attracted to me like a magnet, a torch, hypnotized me and I want to capture it. And I think this is also why we did our seagull talk. And this is how I see the world, a chorus of individual voices and the collage of everyday details. And this is how my idea functions, she says, and I admire her work very much. She also got the Nobel Prize. Another inspiration I would like to mention is Jenny Bass. She is the great British French pop singer or punk singer. I would say not pop, she would be upset. But also, yeah, she is a post-punk leader and she created Start Making Sense, the talks on Apple Music, which we also dedicated this theme, our seagull prelude festival, because it is time to make sense again. To take a stand, as you also said, I could say we have to stand up. We have to show our color now. It's a dangerous time. Also with the elections coming up. And Jenny says, I wanted to create something, a platform for artists to share experiences, a podcast for music lovers, or we could say theater lovers here with an open mind. For an hour I'm here to entertain you with good music or good theater. It's a good conversation. It's not going to be boring, but it's a necessary conversation. And she felt she had a passion for a deep conversation, but she needed a sense of community and she wanted to be part of that community, but also make artists feel welcome and that's what we did. We had artists from over 50, 60 countries in the world. And she said, this music has this amazing ability to change us. I think theater two, a talk like today, your book project, your solo dances, it does change us. And she said, this is why I have fallen in love with music since a very young age and enables her to believe that she could do something to change the world in a better way. And I think it's a great experience and we talk about ideas and imagination. And I think all the theater artists are incredibly caring and actually doing work of politicians thinking about the bigger picture and stopping writing their plays and directing. And I think in many ways taking care of it. Also, Priya Parker who wrote a 2014 book, the art of gathering. It's important what is the meaning but also to change it, to find new ways to make every human gathering. And this is also what theater people do to make it more significant. Florian Maltzaker who then created the art of assembly. I think this is close to our serial talks. And we have been so inspired by many of our artists. I quote you, but also Abhishek Majumba in India, Hope Arseda in Rwanda, Guillermo Calderon in Chile and Aston Nussiel, Bruno Latour with Thomas Oberendl. They did the Down to Earth project. They performed outside in Berlin without electricity because they said, how can we engage with climate change? But use all that without even reflecting and many, many others. So it's been an incredible privilege for us to listen to these polyphonic epic chorus of voices from around the world in a way a global view a planetary view. And I think this is what is of importance now. And you have that in your work and this is why we also put you here at the end as a show, how can an artist engage in your book in 100 years, 203 and 400 years will be there of mankind is there and people will say this is the artist and that's what she did and she engaged with it was important and necessary as a really fantastic and I would like to say thank you to HowlRound for hosting us all these talks. I would like to thank my team, Andy, who puts out the talks and the announcements and engage with the speakers and never forget anything to engage with that and our collaborator Tanvi in India, Gaurav and everybody. So it's been a very big effort even though we are very tiny small team but as I said I feel also it was necessary to do this as will be most probably never happen again and we thought we would go back next spring to our place, to our little Seagull Theater Center but with the COVID at the moment I think it will still be closed there will be no public gatherings so it's a tough time we are in but we will be part I think I hope of the change we want to see so I could thank you for letting me ramble on and for being here with us. Frank, so as you thank the crew and the staff, can I just add one thing? I feel like throughout this one hour I have not really credited William Johnstone, my collaborator because as you said, theater is a place to gather but because it is so sometimes it's hard to bring the people who can't afford to be there because we tend to gather with the people who are informed with that event which is already limited was the kind of range of the people so I think it's also important for people like myself not only to be happy and grateful to be performing for the audience but to bring our body to somewhere else to bring other part of the world and I think this William Johnstone a camera, photographer historian, if without his being with me I could just be dancing Fukushima and not be able to bring and connect that so as like any collaboration makes us be able to continue to think and do the work so I just wanted to end my time with this audience fully acknowledging how important it is for a certain artist to have a deep collaboration and to bring our ability to reach out or take our bodies elsewhere that is beyond our own comfort zone so thank you very much. You're right and he also documents that's what theater artists do but we often theater are not as good as in visual arts visual artists are very very careful about documenting their work and we have to learn from them you did document and you could see the relation between both of you and the beauty of his photos, the landscape what he captured with your body and your soul sometimes also waves, naked actually sometimes in the clothes and the silk from your grandmother and your mother and you said I like to wear clothes of people I would like to remember so this perhaps is what theater does we put on clothes of people we would like to remember on a stage over centuries honoring people it's a way to look at it but again really thank you for everything and we talked a bit more about you and your dance work then about photography it's close to also be a book about photography if this book would be the international center of photography they wouldn't talk so much about you they would more talk about the photos and the art of photo it is what inspired him as a documentarian in a way but this is a theater and performance talk so of course we focus it a bit on you so again to everybody on our team and how around thank you, thank you Eiko thanks to all the artists over 300, 200 who participated and to our audience that did listen to us it means so much to us and when I hear back and it's encouragement but it's also important for the artists often forwarded and to take time out also to listen because what Eiko had to say today is very significant and it's important and if we would take those lessons for our own lives but also in our society the world would be better and that's what artists have done over centuries to remind us of our civic duty but also our duty to the environment to humanity itself and it's a great example of it to do something that is meaningful and also will stay and over time so thank you all and I hope to see you back next here and we will send out some mails about the plans for the Segal Center and I think for you it's now time to go to bed and I apologize it's now 3.15 in the night in Japan so but it was an important talk a necessary one I think and I think also we understood a bit more and learned a bit more and have better questions now bye bye thank you very much thank you bye bye