Saturday, August 06, 2011

Krzyszof Wodiczko: Survival Projection 2011

Last night I attended the world premiere of Krzyszof Wodiczko's Survival Projection 2011 in Yokohama. The project combines his earlier War Veteran Vehicles with testimony from survivors of the Tohoku tsunami on March 11. 

The words and voices of American, US, and Polish veterans and their loved ones are projected from a military jeep onto the side of a building on the Shinko Pier. When paired with the voices of the tsunami survivors, the projections ask the viewers to question what it means to survive, and what it means to take responsibility.

The voices and stories loop from English to Polish to English again, and finally to Japanese.  (translations were provided) The last Japanese voice we hear questions the role of artists (I've transcribed the English translation directly):




..."What will you do?", I want ask to all the so-called artists in Japan. I think that we cannot rely upon them with much hope. What have they been doing? Them who have been called "artists"...artists who have been said "cuttin-edge" for these 10 years or 20 years? I think the gap between this reality and their activities is now extremely deep. Then I strongly want to ask them "what will you do?" now...

Indeed, what we will as artists do now?

Here are excerpts from the other projections (sorry for the poor video quality)

American vets

Polish
War goes on. You don't have to go to war, war goes on every day and every day I lose it.

UK vets












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