Paper short abstract:

This paper will discuss responsibility in relation to my ‘art-anthropology’ project(s) 'Feminist Hospitalities'; describing works which employ film as a critical methodology to address feminism(s) and ecology in contemporary art, and the emergence of socially engaged art in ‘post-disaster’ Japan.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will discuss responsibility in relation to my ‘art-anthropology’ project(s) 'Feminist Hospitalities'. Becoming a mother, and a lecturer, motivated me to pay more explicit attention to embodied experience in relation to the troubling nature of feminism(s) in artistic and curatorial practices, as well as everyday responsibilities, in Japan as well as at home. This working paper will describe two strands of this project, which employ film/video as a critical, artistic, methodology 1) The experimental film Speculative Fiction: Practicing Collectively (2020) and its online, trans-national, and 'para-digital' making, rooted in a feminist ethics of co-creation 2) Voices of Care:彼女たちの声を聴いて (Listen to their voices), a socially engaged art project, funded by Kawamura Foundation, that focuses on women’s (especially mothers’) responsibilities and experiences of care in the North East of Japan, as made manifest in everyday practices, objects, stories, and specific ecologies. The research context is the role of feminism(s) in contemporary art, with the emergence of socially engaged art in ‘post-disaster’ Japan, especially projects which pay attention to environment and ecology. While male-dominated arts organisations generate important debates about social engagement, they are, arguably, stuck in a “culture of disaster”, within possibly problematic discourses around risk and resilience (which are seen as 'masculine', and exclusionary). Theoretically, will question the nature of my work as 'para-sitical', i.e. its excessive condition; the potential of the para-site as a figure, both 'threatening' and generative, troubling boundaries: questioning the responibilities of artists and anthropologists, as hosts, guests, parasites.