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Paper short abstract

This presentation explores artistic practices that “become the dead” to carry forward memories of the Great East Japan Earthquake, including an audio drama of animals abandoned after the nuclear accident, a documentary tracing the dead’s gaze, and a workshop turning tsunami-lost mementos into art.

Paper long abstract

The Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 was a compound disaster involving an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident. While video cameras and mobile phones enabled extensive documentation, some experiences remain beyond visual recording—such as those of individuals swept away by the tsunami and animals that starved or were culled in nuclear evacuation zones. This presentation examines artistic practices of “becoming the dead” as a way to carry forward the memory of 3.11 across time and space.

Three cases are analyzed. The first is an audio drama produced in 2014 by high school students in Fukushima, who voiced animals left behind in the exclusion zone. Wearing radiation-measuring devices made them feel like experimental animals, and they created this work by seeing their own situation reflected in the predicament of cattle that died in barns without understanding why, in towns abandoned after the nuclear accident.

The second case is the 2019 documentary film If These Letters Reach Your Eyes, directed by Sonomi Sato, who lost her younger sister in the tsunami at Ishinomaki Municipal Okawa Elementary School. This work interweaves letters addressed to the dead with imagined footage from the perspective of the deceased. Viewers perceive the presence of “living dead” alongside the living, while sensing the difficulty posed by the growing separation of their respective life-times.

The third case is an experimental workshop by artist Fumie Chiba, who invites others to transform her grandmother’s belongings lost in the tsunami into artworks by passing them on. Chiba calls this practice “creative care,” through which time-frozen disaster objects undergo “regeneration.”

Reenactment—performing historical events or reconstructing ethnographic scenes—has gained attention in history and anthropology. Originating in contemporary art, this method is exemplified in Japan by Hikaru Fujii’s works, which include workshops reenacting imperialist education during World War II and reconstructing discriminatory structures surrounding the Fukushima nuclear accident. Expanding Fujii’s discussion of reenactment, this presentation explores how such practices share [partage] the memory of “invisible beings” as lived actuality and open possibilities for transmitting disaster experiences to future generations.