On March 6 and 8, the Museum of Modern Art’s Doc Fortnight 2022 presented the world premiere of the film A Body in Fukushima, directed and performed by Eiko with still photography by William Johnston and sound design by Eiko, including sound/music by David Harrington of Kronos Quartet and Ralph Samuelson.

Collaborating with Johnston, a photographer and scholar of Japanese history, Eiko has made five trips to Fukushima in the wake of the 2011 nuclear disaster. Their multidisciplinary project transforms the irradiated landscape into a site of performance. The artist’s movements—in empty train stations, overgrown roads, tsunami-damaged buildings, along broken seawalls, and amidst makeshift memorials—dwell in the residue of life before the meltdown while also charting the passage of time in these inhabitable lands. A Body in Fukushima is culled from tens of thousands of photographs, whose mournful but resolute pursuit creates a “letter to the future.”

“My body will carry a piece of Fukushima,” Eiko says, “I hope the [viewer’s] sense of their own distance to Fukushima might also change.”

Before each screening, Eiko introduced the film by presenting the red cloth that she brought with her to Fukushima and stating the following:

Please see this red. This was once a clean patch of red cloth. Now after I danced with it in so many places, it is tattered.

It looks like how our world is. Broken and tattered.

I acknowledge the many people have been and are being killed in Ukraine and other places. 

So many people are in fear of dying and perhaps in fear of killing others.

So many are also in fear of being arrested for speaking up against the war, as so many already have been. 

And we have been in fear of nuclear terrorism.

Technicians in nuclear plants in Ukraine are working under the pointed gun.

Remember—

Three Mile Island had a meltdown in 1979

in Chernobyl in 1986 

in Fukushima in 2011

In addition, at least 25 nuclear accidents resulted multiple fatalities and/or more than $100 million in damage. 

It is beyond upsetting that what we knew could happen had indeed happened and is happening. 

I ask you to join me in having a moment of silence.

Please let each of us think better and harder toward peace and our survival. 

I sincerely wish that this red cloth does not represent blood.