University of Iowa Iowa Research Online Theses and Dissertations Summer 2016 Transition Naoki Izumo University of Iowa Copyright 2016 Naoki Izumo This thesis is available at Iowa Research Online: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/2094 Recommended Citation Izumo, Naoki. "Transition." MA (Master of Arts) thesis, University of Iowa, 2016. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/2094. Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd Part of the Art Practice Commons
TRANSITION by Naoki Izumo A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree in Art in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa August 2016 Thesis Supervisor: Assistant Professor Jeff Rich
Graduate College The University of Iowa Iowa City, Iowa CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL This is to certify that the Master s thesis of MASTER S THESIS Naoki Izumo has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement for the Master of Arts degree in Art at the August 2016 graduation. Thesis Committee: Jeff Rich, Thesis Supervisor Sarah Kanouse Peter Chanthanakone Kembrew McLeod
ABSTRACT TRANSITION is an installation of films that engages the histories of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the meltdown of Fukushima Daiichi in 2011 it is an attempt to bridge the gap of nuclear issues that are still present today. I redirect found images from their institutional contexts to reposition them as a dialogue between the archival and my own footage. All histories are told through media, and all mediations are remediation of the event. Histories are never fixed, but are constantly reproduced by different groups who are involved. The past and the present must always be interconnected, contesting the importance to understand the fluidity and intersectionality of histories. ii
PUBLIC ABSTRACT TRANSITION work to make the invisibility of nuclear radiation visible via the archival images. If our society continues to be dependent on nuclear energy, another, possibly even more devastating, mass tragedy could happen. Although the images are restricted and contained to mostly in Japan, it is important to realize that nuclear issue still exists beyond the Japanese context; it must be engaged with across its changing sites and histories. The most recent Fukushima disaster had left a violent trace onto the land not only is there a natural disaster, but the nuclear mark is what has made this event a global issue causing countries to rethink about the ethics of the use of nuclear energy. iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES... V PREFACE... VI TRANSITION... 1 REPRODUCTION... 3 TRAUMA... 5 iv
LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. To Hiroshima (screenshot), 2015... 2 Figure 2 To Nagasaki (screenshot), 2015... 3 Figure 3. To Fukushima (screenshot), 2015... 5 v
PREFACE I went to Japan the summer of 2015. The last time I was in Japan was in 2010. Many things have changed since then: more convenient transportation, English in public spaces, and construction everywhere 2020 Olympics will take place in Tokyo. 2010 was also the year before the Fukushima disaster in 2011. The disaster garnered global attention, not only of the devastating effect of the earthquake and tsunami, but the addition of the nuclear power plant explosion had tapped into the long history of Japanese nuclear problem; the 2011 disaster reinvigorated the anti-nuclear, and anti-war, movement in the country. With that knowledge in mind, when going to Japan, I was determined to revisit Hiroshima and go to Nagasaki and Fukushima for the first time. I am particularly interested in how violence and trauma is embedded onto the land and what the city is doing to conceal or memorialize the space as a way of healing or forgetting the past. vi
TRANSITION TRANSITION is an installation of films that engages the histories of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the meltdown of Fukushima Daiichi in 2011 it is an attempt to bridge the gap of nuclear issues that are still present today. I redirect found images from their institutional contexts to reposition them as a dialogue between the archival and my own footage. Susan Sontag opens her article, Regarding the Torture of Others, The Western memory museum is now a visual one. All histories are told through media, and all mediations are remediation of the event. Histories are never fixed, but are constantly reproduced by different groups who are involved. The past and the present must always be interconnected, contesting the importance to understand the fluidity and intersectionality of histories. TRANSITION work to make the invisibility of nuclear radiation visible via the archival images. If our society continues to be dependent on nuclear energy, another, possibly even more devastating, mass tragedy could happen. Although the images are restricted and contained to mostly in Japan, it is important to realize that nuclear issue still exists beyond the Japanese context; it must be engaged with across its changing sites and histories. The most recent Fukushima disaster had left a violent trace onto the land not only is there a natural disaster, but the nuclear mark is what has made this event a global issue causing countries to rethink about the ethics of the use of nuclear energy. Alongside Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Fukushima has become a sacred place worldwide because of the violence. 1
Figure 1 To Hiroshima (screenshot), 2015 I shoot each video inside the train, going to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Fukushima. They are each overlayed with different found material. Nagasaki is overlayed with sterile archival images. Surprisingly, Nagasaki was the most difficult to find archival images; it s also the history that is less talked about. Hiroshima is combined with Japanese films, and one French film, and Fukushima is combined with scientific data and news broadcasts. Archival images and texts have played a key role in shaping my understanding of the bombings and nuclear radiation. From learning about the war in school and watching movies growing up in the states, I had a conflicted understanding and felt like I was missing an important narrative. So there was a gravitational pull for me to visit the sites of the bombings to understand the land. I presumed an authentic experience that could only be accessible via proximity of the place but is that true? If I go to the Peace Memorial museum in Hiroshima or the atomic bomb museum in Nagasaki, am I somehow closer to the horrific stories? 2
REPRODUCTION Figure 2 To Nagasaki (screenshot), 2015 I quickly found out that the changing urbanism engaged in a kind of new production of the space itself. Ground zero to both Hiroshima and Nagasaki are now rebuilt with industrialized roads and buildings that cover up the damage and history that was embedded in the land. The city is now livable and attractive, but much of the city looks like any other Japanese city. The surrounding areas from ground zero are scattered with food chain restaurants and convenience stores, which shifts the experience to a standardized tourists attraction. Even though I am at the original spot where the bomb was dropped, the surrounding tourist and commercialism creates the same effect as buying a book off the shelf or watching the movie the space itself has become a reproduction of the event. When riding the train, the window became a new mediation to understand the landscape. Not only did it become a screen, but my memory of archive images had 3
produced a new remediation that changed my perspective when looking outside. My mind drifts from what s projected in the window and I could not help but to think of the tragedy of the land. By overlaying the archival images on the land, I visually attach the histories that are often times disconnected to the context to the sterile landscape from the window. The image of the mushroom cloud has perhaps lost its shock value and become a habitual image symbolizing the end of WWII. By overlaying the once shocking images I try to engage the reality of events and the representational copies to give a new narrative by connecting the seemingly distant histories to the current status of our ecological landscape. The search process of archival footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was surprisingly difficult. When I went to the memorial museums in Japan, there were numerous digital oral histories that could be listened to, but I had a hard time finding material from the public domain on the Internet. In many museums, there are copious amounts of extremely important histories that are kept in the basement, buried in the deep ends of the museums where they would rarely see the light of day. Not only are they kept in far away places, but also they can only accessed by heavily coded standardized number. High institutions constrain important documents that could be in the commons; limiting those stories stifle the fluidity of history. 4
Figure 3 To Fukushima (screenshot), 2015 TRAUMA When Fukushima Daiichi disaster happened, it fell into the long history of radiation disasters around the world. But beyond that, it had also stepped into the history of governmental inconsideration to a disaster that could have been preventable. To name a few: moving the plant to higher ground, placing them in watertight bunkers, enhancing the protection of seawater pumps, etc. 2015 marked the 70th year anniversary of the bombings in Japan and the 4th anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Because this year was the 70th anniversary of the bombing, there was more media presence broadcasted across the nation. A news special on TV about the event sparked my grandmother to reflect about the firebombings in Osaka. It was the first time I had heard the story in person and she told it with reluctance there s a sense of wanting to forget about the traumatic experience. Before my dementia-ridden grandfather in 5
Ishikawa prefecture on my father s side passed away, he would wake up in the middle of the night and run outside screaming, We are going to get bombed. Memory and amnesia is conflicted with my grandparents recollection of the war. I had always been too scared to ask my grandparents about the war that could traumatize the horrors of war and I was always afraid that they would relive the tragedy. I will hopefully never experience the same level of trauma that my grandparents endured, but it is important for outsiders, like myself, to remember and apply histories to present-day social issues. As a Japanese-American, there exists a tension between wanting to forget traumatic experience, but needing to remember them for progress.70 years of insight into the dangers of nuclear power, and yet there does not seem to be much understanding of nuclear energy because of the lack of transparency from the government. The intended use for the bomb was to essentially murder thousands of people, whereas the nuclear plant is meant for providing electricity for the country. Although their disasters are completely different, they both stem from governmental opaqueness with its citizen. Which manifests the question: How does this careless, or quite possibly strategic, placing of these dangerous plants affect the landscape? As climate change affect the world causing harsher weather extremities like drought and heat waves, there needs to be more understanding and consideration for shaping our land. TRANSITION stems out of traumatic memory of these disasters and it is a way to connect different histories in a space that can allow for that to happen. 6