Monday, December 20, 12:00pm ET
Eiko Otake
Book Talk: A Body in Fukushima
Join us for a conversation with Eiko Otake: A Body in Fukushima.
Part of the Segal Center’s Fall 2021 Book Talk Series.
Moderated by Frank Hentschker, Director, MESTC, The Graduate Center CUNY.
Download the free sample chapter as well as other experts from upcoming Segal Talk Books HERE.
Born and raised in Japan Eiko Otake is a movement-based interdisciplinary artist based in New York City since 1976. After studying with Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata in Japan and Manja Chmiel in Germany, Otake created with her partner Takashi Koma Otake the dance duo Eiko & Koma. Since 1972 they have created 46 interdisciplinary performance works, two career exhibitions and numerous media works. Their durational performance living installations were commissioned by the Whitney Museum, the Walker Art Center, and MoMA. Their Retrospective Project (2009 to 2012) culminated in a comprehensive monograph, Time is Not Even, Space is Not Empty, published by the Walker Art Center. Eiko & Koma were honored with the first United States Artists Fellowship (2006) and Doris Duke Artist Awards (2012). They were the first collaborative pair to share a MacArthur Fellowship (1996) and the first Asian choreographers to receive the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award (2004) and the Dance Magazine Award (2006).
Eiko’s solo project A Body in Places began with a 12-hour performance at the Philadelphia 30th Street Station. Since then, Eiko has performed variations of A Body in Places at over 70 sites. In addition, Eiko has performed alone in many locations of post-nuclear meltdown Fukushima for her multi-year work A Body in Fukushima, her collaboration with historian and photographer William Johnston.
About A Body in Fukushima:
March 2021 marked the 10th Anniversary of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan. A Body In Fukushima, a collection of insightful essays and 260 probing color photographs, presents the experience of two visitors to a land devastated by the release of radiation following the meltdown of reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Between 2014 and 2019, dance artist Eiko Otake and historian/photographer William Johnston travelled to irradiated Fukushima five times to witness the destruction caused by this human failure. The images in the book manifest Eiko’s performances in this haunting and desolate environment