Otake (2022)
Two-channel projection; mono; 14:00 on loop
Otake is a two-channel projection installed in a 90-degree corner and looped over 14 minutes. This video work aggregates 16mm color footage from the United States Strategic Bombing Survey–showing thousands of Imperial Japanese soldiers and Japanese civilians undergoing repatriation in November 1945–alongside excerpts from French and Japanese postwar cinema and 35mm color slides from the Allied postwar occupation of the Pacific. A voice speaks throughout the video, inviting the viewer to consider several ways of encountering historical images through theorists Eduardo Cadava, Ariella Azoulay, and Jacque Lacan. This work considers the role of the "real" and the "fictive" in the formation of historical memory, the civil responsibility of a spectator across time, and the transoceanic space of desire between the United States and Japan in the mid-20th century.
