Throughout 2018, we were expanding our research on fear/anxiety and im/mobility in contemporary Asian countries such as in Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka. The research trip also allowed us to meet with fellow contemporary artists from each country to discuss some possibilities in interpreting Peer Gynt within the context of Asia.
May-June 2018: Japan’s research 1: Tokyo and Hokkaido
The first research conducted by Ugoran Prasad and Yudi Ahmad Tajudin consisted of two parts; the first was a six days library visit at the National Diet Library and Waseda University and the second was a journey to Hokkaido to have a short trip around Ainu sites and cultures. The research was both for gathering archival materials and, most importantly, to have a sense of the overall materiality of the project. Alongside of the archive center, Ugoran also travels to several museums, such as Tokyo National Museum and Japanese war museum (Yūshūkan). While the content of the archive is crucial, Ugoran underlines the architecture of the archive, paying attention also to the structure of the archive, considering what is being included and excluded, much like we are paying a close attention to the structure of the Peer Gynt.
The second part is a journey to Hokkaido sites along with Yudi Ahmad Tajudin. Based on the working culture of Teater Garasi, the research is projected as an open-ended in-situ (on-site) exploration. The forgotten, absence material of Ainu culture, in our view, is as important as much as its existing material. The overall cultural initiatives of the young generation of Hokkaido artists, which are parallel and comparable to Indonesian artist initiatives in several cities on the outskirts of Java and other Islands in Indonesia such as Flores island, is an important site observation to understand how to fill the historical gap, to create out of “nothing”. A more corporeal on location consists of a few travels to Ainu sites across the area, studying its concrete place along with its surrounding mythologies.
Our travel to Hokkaido informs us the incidental geographical frame of our research; we began our “local” journey from Flores, the southern parts of the third world Indonesia and our “international” journey in Hokkaido, the northest part of the first world Japan. The two seemingly different places allow us to find the foreignness of “local” as much as the familiarity of the “international”.