KIMIKO TANABE
APRIL 13-15, 2023
Runtime: 50 minutes with no intermission
Please note this piece contains mature content and the use of haze.
Portrait of Myself as a Yūrei
Created and performed by Kimiko Tanabe
Lighting Design and Technical Direction
Anthony Fernandez
Video Design
Mac Ross
Music
Featuring music by Patrick Shiroishi
"Once There Was Only Dark" - Patrick Shiroishi
"a trickle led to a quiet pool, where still black water reflected the night sky" - Patrick Shiroishi
"Don't Fence Me In" - Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters
"Space Jam" - Quad City DJs
"here comes a candle to light you to bed" - Patrick Shiroishi
Find Patrick Shiroishi's Releases here.
Portrait of myself as a Yūrei' is a folktale that wanders into the afterlife of Japanese American Incarceration during World War II. It brings to life yūrei, Japanese female ghosts drunk on hatred, sorrow, revenge, and rage with wild long and limp hands broken at the wrists and calls upon their unapologetic chaos to surface emotions about the camps rarely expressed in Japanese American families.
The US has entered the stage of Japanese American Incarceration that writer and poet Brandon Shimoda calls “the ruins.” The camps are no longer open, the generations who lived through them are getting older or have passed, and many of the sites themselves are in ruins. Kimiko’s generation lives in the afterlife of the camps and like the yūrei can access powerful emotions in the afterlife, Kimiko questions what emotions she can access that the older generations weren’t afforded. This is a ghost story that is as much about the future as it is about the past.
KIMIKO TANABE
Kimiko Tanabe is a fourth-generation Japanese American artist. She explores the mediums of performance art, dance, writing, origami and paper, and is in a committed partnership with her .38 Muji pen. She is forever fascinated with Japanese folklore and as a lover of literature she finds herself making important life decisions under the eyes and influence of fiction. Her work combines her background in contemporary dance with her literary tendencies to create surreal performance art that is both joyful and haunting, and that gives platform and power to the Asian-American emotional experience. For Kimiko, art is intimate and inexact.
Kimiko graduated from Colorado College with a degree in Creative Writing and Dance in 2016. She is a 2022 BAX Space Grant Recipient, 2022 Gallim Moving Artist Resident, 2021 Artist in Resident at The Floor, and 2021 Fresh Ground Pepper Play Ground Play Group Residency Cohort Member. She currently performs with and glenn potter-takata and has performed with marion spencer, Kizuna Dance, Seymour::Dance Collective, Lisa Fagan and Hannah Mitchell, Morgaine DeLeonardis, HIJACK, Nial Ibragimov, Shawn Womack, Patrizia Herminjard, and Kristi Cole & Guests.
ANTHONY FERNANDEZ
Hello, my name is Anthony Fernandez. I live in New York City and through technical direction I collaborate with material and performance artists to manipulate design elements at our disposal. My hope is to help create an atmosphere that opens up the possibilities of a space that best suits our intentions. It has been an absolute pleasure working with Kimiko and Mac to bring this piece to life here at Triskelion. If you would like to talk about the best sandwich places in the city or about the fact that cement never dries, I can be reached at anthonyfernandez26@gmail.com.
MAC ROSS
Mac Ross is a visual artist based in New York
PATRICK SHIROISHI
Patrick Shiroishi is a Japanese-American multi-instrumentalist & composer based in Los Angeles.
DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION: ANNA WOTRING
Anna Wotring, a Pittsburgh native, is a community minded dance artist, designer and production stage manager committed to the practice of collaborative leadership. She currently works with Annie Heath, Lauren Horn, Jennifer Nugent and slowdanger as a technical design consultant, dancer, and production stage manager. Wotring obtained her BFA in Dance, at the Five College Dance Department in Western Massachusetts. She has had the privilege of working with a multitude of dance organizations, including Alvin Ailey Studios, Attack Theater, Ballet Des Ameriques, BalletNext, Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Company, the Dance Conservatory of Pittsburgh, Dance Place, H2O Contemporary Dance, Monica Bill Barnes and Company, New York Live Arts, the Pillow Project, Prayers of the People, RoseAnne Spradlin, Scapegoat Garden, Time Lapse Dance, and many others. Wotring is beyond excited to begin working and imagining with the Trisk team. @annaissupercool
Special thanks to Nora Alami, Makoto Hirano, Brandon Shimoda and Shawn Womack.
This project has been supported by the Gallim Moving Artists Residency, Brooklyn Arts Exchange Space Grant, Fresh Ground Pepper Play Ground Play Group, The Floor Artist in Residenc, and Colorado College.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The "Topaz War Relocation Center" was opened by the War Relocation Authority in the Sevier Desert in central Utah on the unceded territory of the Ute People. Today, Utah has eight federally-recognized tribes, the Northwestern Band of Shoshone Nation, Confederated Tribes of Goshute, Skull Valley Band of Goshute, Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe, Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and Navajo Nation. In naming these people, let us reflect on how our existence today is born upon the knowledge and spirit of the indigenous people of these lands.
We respectfully acknowledge that the work of Triskelion Arts is situated on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of Lenapehoking, the homeland of the Lenape peoples. We pay our respects to their land, water, and ancestors, past, present, and future. This acknowledgment demonstrates a commitment to the process of working to dismantle the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism and to learning to be better stewards of this land.
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