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Accepted Paper:
"The afterimages of a hibakusha: war memories, nuclear politics, visual activism, and narrativity in Japan
Maria Ibari Ortega
(Australian National University)
Two years after 13,000 pacifist protesters gathered in 2015 outside The National Diet in Tokyo, bursting in anger against the Peace and Security Bill pushed as part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's security policy, in 2017 the decision of the Japanese government to abstain from the multilateral negotiations leading to the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations, celebrated in July 7, made the community of hibakusha (victims of the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945), angry and disappointed. For them, after actively participating in the negotiations at the U.N., this historical moment opens the possibility for a future nuclear-free world. My presentation will introduce the visual activist affective assemble of Isobe-san, the daughter of a man exposed to the nuclear explosion of Little Boy in Nagasaki back in 1945. After his dead in 2010, she became an active member of Shizuoka Prefecture Second Generation Group, exhibiting his father's afterimages painted by himself, about his experiences and memories of the bomb. I will focus on two main aspects. On one hand, on Bourriaud's definition of art as a an encounter: “All works of art produce a model of sociability, which transposes reality" (2002: 18). On the other, I will attempt to identify the enfolding of a political temporality and potential realisation of ”peace" as an emerging event in narrative performance; 'events' here understood in relational terms following Whitehead.