Eiko SOGA
– Autumn Salmon –
Curated by S_Z (Stephen Sarrazin & Yangyu Zhang).
Autumn Salmon, 2015-2019, video, 18’54
Since the summer of 2015, I have been engaging with the Ainu culture and trying to understand how mainstream political and historical narratives diminish the Ainu’s relationship between human and non-human worlds.
In this video, I focused on the idea of process and making as sensory research. In Ainu culture, salmon used to serve key economic, religious, and spiritual roles. In this video, we see a text that I wrote about Ainu social phenomena centered on salmon.
Tuning Bamboo, 2019, video, 24’04
This artwork is based on my experience of Shiraoi, Hokkaido in 2018 where I researched the historical, cultural and ecological background of nemagaridake – a type of bamboo that grows in Shiraoi.
In Tuning Bamboo, I explored the process of my own days that felt like I was embodying an old radio machine tuning in to the right channel. I also documented the process of learning through making the mukkur (Ainu mouth harp) out of bamboo and working with the community in Shiraoi.