FUTURE ECHOES
2019 FUTURE ECHOES is a site-specific sound installation reflecting on the ways past, present and future inhabitants of the First Street North block in Little Tokyo have confronted displacement, and resisted erasure. The project culls together sounds excavated through research, speculative fiction written by local authors and recordings produced by Cog•nate Collective in collaboration with traci kato kiriyama, the LTSC Youth Group and other community partners throughout their time as +Lab Artists-in-Residence – with Visual Communications as host organization. Throughout the month of August 2019, the public experienced this work on the First Street North block by tuning their radios to 87.9FM. Cog•nate also hosted Listening + Recording Sessions, providing interactive opportunities for the public to engage with the audio and participate in the recording process. A central component of the project consisted of exploring the resonances between historical accounts of displacement/detention suffered by Japanese-Americans during WWII, and contemporary experiences of Central-American asylum-seekers.
During one Recording Session for the project – organized in collaboration with traci kato kiriyama – the public was invited to engage with and read-aloud letters written by Japanese Americans detained in concentration camps during WWII, and letters written by migrants currently in detention centers at the US/Mexico border (samples below). Readings were recorded and broadcast as part of the project (selection below). Additionally, visitors were invited to write their own letters to migrants detained at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, CA, in partnership with the organization Detainee Allies. |
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Other audio broadcast as part of the project included a conversation with Tina Calderon and Jessa Calderon speaking to the experiences of the Tongva, the ancestral people of the land we now call Little Tokyo; a poetic account by Naomi Hirahara of the various spiritual communities who have resided in/around Little Tokyo; musical selections from the record collection of "Radio Li'l Tokyo" which broadcast rare Japanese classical records and popular music for over 35 years from the back of a small shop in the neighborhood; and pieces of speculative fiction imagining the future of Little Tokyo written by authors Sesshu Foster, T.K. Lê, Kenji Liu and Vickie Vertiz.
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This project was commissioned by the Little Tokyo Service Center, as part of the 2019 +Lab Artist Residency Program.
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