Back to Virtual Studio
Back to Dialogues

 Elegies Interview

In November 2019, Eiko worked with collaborators John Killacky and Brian Stevenson on a video entitled Elegies, in which Eiko and John are speaking to their dead mothers. Elegies was featured in an exhibition at Helen Day Art Center entitled “Love Letters”. On May 6, 2020, Rachel Moore, the director of Helen Day Art Center and the curator of “Love Letters”, interviewed the three about creating Elegies.

View Elegies in Media Work.

View a 360° Tour of Love Letters at Helen Day Art Center (courtesy of Middlebury).

Rachel Moore 
Thank you for joining us today at Helen Day Art Center and I'm very excited to have your work "Elegies" in the exhibition "Love Letters" that's currently on view. And I'd like to welcome all of you here today—Brian Stevenson, John Killacky, Eiko Otake—and I'd like if you could all just briefly introduce yourselves for us. Brian, let's start with you.

Brian Stevenson 
Sure. My name is Brian Stevenson, and I'm a native Vermonter, born and raised in South Burlington, Vermont. I was the technical support for this project, mostly, cinematographer/editor by trade, currently working as production manager at Vermont PBS. And I was kind of introduced to the team, or my relationship, came across John Killacky early in my time at Vermont PBS, and we kind of made a connection collaborating on our first project and then trying to collaborate as often as we can ever since.

John Killacky 
And that first project, Brian, featured Rachel.

Brian Stevenson 
That's right. That's right, absolutely right, it did.

John Killacky 
On PBS, it's a great commercial and Rachel, you fit right in with us so here we are again. I'm John Killacky, and currently I'm a legislator in the Vermont House of Representatives. I've been a career presenter as well as an artist, I've made 16 films, and we'll talk about some of that later on.

Eiko Otake 
I am Eiko Otake. I'm originally from Japan but have lived in New York since 1976, that's a long time. But I'm right now joining this from Japan, so I've been here about a month. And I'm an independent interdisciplinary movement-based artist. I'm basically in a dance field, but many people swear what I do is not dance, and I don't argue back. And I have a history of 42 years that I worked as Eiko and Koma. And since 2014, I'm doing independent work, and I have started The Duet Project, which I do work with many amazing people one-to-one. So my work with John was part of that.

Rachel Moore 
Thank you, and I'm Rachel Moore, I'm the director of Helen Day Art Center and Director of Exhibitions there, and I curated "Love Letters", in which "Elegies" is part of. So would you each talk a little bit about "Elegies" and how this collaboration came to be?

Eiko Otake 
Let me start and then John can pick up from there. So I've known John a very long time. And the people who know John now as working as a politician might not be so very aware, of course people there know him in the Flynn Center, but John was a very, very important performance arts presenter and curator, and he himself is an artist, so I've known him both as a presenter and a video artist, and he's an incredible friend. But we haven't really seen each other for some time, and then it was at our mutual friend's memorial that he and I just happened to be together for a long time, and since it is our very strong mutual friend, it just occurred to me, "John, we should work together!" And that's it, from then on.

John Killacky 
Well, at that memorial service at Jacob's Pillow, Eiko's mother had just passed away as well. And so when she said, "Maybe we can find something to do," I struggled because I thought that was Eiko, what's a possible thing, what we could do together. But then I said, "Well I've actually had a piece that I wrote that I've never...that my mother died, so why don't I sent it you, and maybe this could be the beginning of the conversation. So I sent her a piece, she sent me back something she wrote about her mother's passing. And as I was thinking about our talk today, Rachel, we've known each other a very long time. The first time I saw her performance, I think 1980, outdoors at Battery Park when the World Trade Center was right there, and since then I've presented her many times at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, Flynn Center in Burlington, all have been an honor. But for my film-side, there was a piece made in 1986 called "Lament" with the filmmaker James Byrne that is very stark, it's in black and white, and it's the bodies of Eiko and Koma. And that piece was so influential to me, and when I started making my own works, shortly after that, I realized how the aesthetic so influenced me. And as I was thinking about it, I realized that that film is what I was describing to Brian and I said, "Let's make this with Eiko, and I want a dark and..." but that film was from a stage work of yours, Eiko, called "Elegy", so kind of a profound circle that we came with the embodiment of grief. And so at that point, we had turned it over to Brian.

Brian Stevenson 
It was interesting to join John and Eiko. At one point during our full day of production, they joked that they've been friends longer than I've been alive, which is true. And they both come with such incredible careers and paths and bodies of work, but coming into this in no way did I feel like a third wheel or like I was there just to push record, which was really refreshing. And so John came to me with the idea and talked about the visuals that he had in mind. And although he didn't at the time say, "Hey you have to go see 'Lament' and just do this, this is what I want." I had a piece that I've done in the past that came to mind, and I showed John and said, "John, what do you think? This is something I've done and something I feel like I could do realistically on my own for our project." He said, "It's good, I like it, but like darker, more stark, austere"—that was the word—he's like, "It's got to be more austere," and I said, "Okay. I can do that." It won't look nice, it's not very welcoming, but hey we can do it so, like I said, it was basically a whirlwind one full day production that we did at the studios, the old studio at Vermont PBS off Ethan Allen Avenue in Colchester. And it was just the three of us, and we took care of everything on our own. Obviously, the writing portion of it was a long back and forth process, but the lighting, filming, editing, all done in probably eight hours per se. It was a long day but we just had so much fun. Coming out of it, we really created this strong bond, and I definitely felt like part of the team and an equal collaborator, it was very nice.

Rachel Moore 
I think part of what I really love about the piece is its austerity and the rawness of the format because it just makes it so authentic and somehow so visceral. I just think it's remarkable, it's a great collaboration between the three of you, I think it's so profound and powerful. And I know you talked a little bit, John, you talked a little bit about Eiko's work, her practice and the relationship between that and the influence on this piece, "Elegies". Is there anything else that either of you, either Brian or John or Eiko want to add about your respective practices in relation to this piece?

Eiko Otake 
Well, John has made or he said 16, and I don't think I saw all 16, but I saw quite a number of his pieces before. And I'm not sure how frequently or widely he as a presenter/curator has shared his work as an artist to the rest of my field. But I was extremely motivated by his work, and this is back many, many years ago, must have been the 90s I think when you showed me. And also, John presents himself as a survivor from the AIDS epidemic, and he was working in hospice helping people and he himself went through a major, like a tsunami to his body. So all of that, knowing him, not only his aesthetic values but his...I just trust him. It sounds like such an easy way, we just had one day. And this part of the project, this work, was probably the easiest for me among all the different duets that I'm working with. Because basically, it's John's idea. I come in, and we did a lot of back and forth with our text, but because we have this before, he presented my work and I also knew his work—I even presented his piece in New York City. So that, and we are same age. We've been to many different places in different mode, but it's always same John, same Eiko. So this was only like another episode of us getting to know each other. And so having Brian, this youngest, beautiful man, helping us, and me not worrying about studio cost or editors cost, it was kind of great. It was fantastic. I stayed in his house, we ate meals together. And this is how I conceived this, in each duet, I'm working with my trusted artist is the deeper income, so that we come out differently. But it's not a chance operation, in the sense that we've known each other, already invested.

John Killacky 
It's amazing, I mean, we had decades-long friendship, but we also share mentors, we share ties with Kazuo Ohno and Anna Halprin, and suddenly come very differently but we share so much in that way. Eiko, you actually presented two of my films in New York at the Anthology Film Archives, Kazuo Ohno's films, it was like one of the highlights of my life to have that. But here's what's interesting to me is that Eiko and Koma were one thing, like Sonny and Cher, they were very renowned. And now, Eiko is doing what she's calling this duets program, and she's working with artists in different disciplines. So, it's amazing to watch the courage that Eiko Otake has now in her 60s to begin again, to begin differently, to try something new, to fail, to stumble, not to be stuck with the same kinds of artistic practices, and so she kind of has exploded the whole thing open, and it's been thrilling to watch her work with painters, with with young filmmakers. And even when we were editing this, Brian was at the controls, Eiko was on the floor, I was in a chair, and we were in this little tight room for like four hours, and Eiko's quiet, but she's very persistent. And then she'd say, "No, not quite Brian, let's move that over here" and what was wonderful about that is Brian, there's no drama, but he's very good, and he would say, "Okay Eiko, I understand where you're getting but how about if we do it this way?" And it always made it better, so it became a completely seamless collaboration from the beginning, it was easy. We didn't disagree. You know what was interesting, Eiko and I worked on it, the scripts, long distance, and then when she came, I got this shirt, and she said, "Oh by the way, I got this shirt, do you think this would be right?" It was a better shirt, we hadn't even discussed shirts, and then, I was stuck with this piece of  Satie music that is seven and a half hours long of four chords repeated, and I kept sending it to Brian and Eiko saying, "I think this is the music" but it just, I couldn't find the right music, and everyone was kind of silent about it like, "Okay John, we'll see how it works." And then I realized I had a meditation bowl. And one day, I was just playing, I thought, "That's the sound." And so when Eiko came, she said, "Oh, I almost brought a gong." I just realized there had to be this sound. And then of course, Brian had to fix it, but we couldn't figure out how to use it like, "Okay Brian, now got this and we have to put this in." So for the thing to take in 40 years of a relationship and then to have the three of us just work together in a seamless way, and it is a true collaboration that none of the three of us could do. It also is a major differentiation for Eiko because she's talking. Often as a dancer, she's silent and so her words are used in a different way and this is very courageous that she was doing that. And it was fun because the day before, we knew we only had Brian for one day. So Eiko and I practiced one full day, and we just sat and listened to each other's monologues and we cut them mercilessly. I think we cut like in half because we thought he wants us to be as sparse and minimal as possible, as well as the words. It's really we're speaking to our dead mothers. And it's just that one thing we're trying to do. And so, it was amazing because we then didn't own our own monologues. We were willing to let each other edit away, and it all worked for the better, I think.

Eiko Otake 
So John had his only mom, and I had my only mom, and he knows his mother really well. I know my mom. Because it is based on our lifelong knowing of that person where we come from, or both come from. So there's a kind of realistic thing that grounds us, so it wasn't just an idea...It always comes back to John's visit...my being with my mom, having been...for so long, so that reality, which is very hard to do in a dance, for dance people, because the dance is like you do this, you do that, and you don't know where it's coming from. But this is really coming from real life, real person. But at the same time, we want to make sure by putting together, that it's not about my mom only. It is become mothers, and it is ever everybody has mothers. And the response we have gotten from people is they're not responding to our mothers, they're responding because they had an experience of feeling to their own mothers, and that is beautiful, we didn't make it for that reason, but it so happened. I get a lot out of these responses. It's almost like performing, and the people are looking. Now it's not the same thing, but we talked about our mothers, and other people now then remembered and share some of their feelings to us.

Rachel Moore 
It's very personal and very universal at the same time, something that people can really connect with. Eiko if there are two or three things that are important to you as an artist and a human being that you would want to share with the world, what would they be? What are they?

Eiko Otake 
Yeah, I actually thought about this. I thought like, no I don't really know because I do the work that words cannot say. At the same time, I'm a very chatty person, and I like to also connect people with the words, so one of the things is articulation, and words are important to me. And so when I hear such rhetoric as, "Oh, we're now waging the war against the virus, coronavirus," it just is not articulate, this is not the war. Of course, it's okay for us to say what's the similarity of us surviving and trying to survive with this condition to the war situation, which there are many similarities, but this is not a war. So those are very dangerous thing to me, so as an artist, I'm always annoyed by how people have this very strong attachment to the certain words that can make you feel a certain way. So kind of negative, positive, like to group things. And I just keep asking this question about articulation. And so who is talking about this? Why? And how? And where is that aiming? So right now, even just accepting the idea of this is a war is just giving authority too much power. And even though that might be necessary for a short time or certain reasons, I get really cautious and annoyed and violated in a way that makes me more fearful than the virus itself. Not to say virus is not. Also for me, the most important thing is self-curation. So I am an independent artist. For that reason, I make my own decisions. And so I self-curate, but I also do think self-curation often means co-curation because I can't make all the decisions out of nothing. So working with John was my decision, so that means co-curation making this, but three of us are making the decisions, but it is the extension of my self-curation working with John that brings me that richness of co-curation. So I think that is a process of both the engagement and art-making that I kind of wanted to reveal how I always have a strong desire, not knowing the product, but to self-curate and examine and experiment.

Rachel Moore 
Thank you. Brian, I'm going to turn to you now and ask another sort of larger question. What do you think we need now in this time as a humanity?

Brian Stevenson 
I think everyone, now more than ever, needs a purpose. And everyone wants to feel validation in that purpose, that what they do is important. So today and in the post-COVID world, I see as I I kind of bring it back to "Elegies" and why we're here, what what we're talking about, people will continue to look to film and television more than any other art form to supplement that human connection, that face-to-face, that we're missing so gravely right now.

Rachel Moore 
Time like this can really bring out those questions and those thoughts. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think that...

John Killacky 
Rachel, I might ask you, as an artist and the director of the Helen Day Art Center, what role you see post-COVID for art in society from your perspective?

Rachel Moore 
Well, it's interesting. From the directors with my director hat, the Art Center pivoted quickly to try to continue to be a resource but online and also providing free art kits and things like that to families in need, and someone wrote to me and said they would love to support what we do because what they feel like what the world needs now is art, more than ever, because it keeps us all sane. It provides us with connection and creativity and it's part of what I think makes us human, distinguishes us from other animals, it's that creativity, that community. So that's part of the role that we serve right now is to connect us, to respond, to record, to get us through this and then have those pieces that document this period. Artists have for centuries been the ones who document and with intellect and emotion. I think that's really important right now. And I don't know, John, if you feel like that. How do you feel about that or what do you think the artists' role is?

John Killacky 
Well, I don't think artists have ever been passive observers. We feel like artists have always been participants, even the most abstract artists are still responding to the environments in which they create and I think, for me in a way, Eiko's movement work has been very abstract but very emotional. And there was a piece that she did with the Kronos Quartet, the composer's name was Somei Satoh. There was a body of water on the stage and the Kronos Quartet were playing, and it was really during the AIDS pandemic, two of the Quartet members have lost children, one Quartet member had lost a partner, and the grief on this stage was so profound in this abstract music because it didn't exist by itself, it existed in the moment we were all living in. And so to me, my own work has been very personal narratives, very myopic. But what I found was the more myopic it becomes, the more resonant it can be. And as Eiko said, this particular piece that Brian and Eiko and I made, "Elegies", that's in your galleries, we have found many people have talked about how it's helped them reconcile emotions with their mothers. And so it's a piece that was intimately personal, it seems now to have more resonance than if we tried to be general because artists can't be generalist, all we have is our own experience.

Rachel Moore 
And Eiko, how do you feel? How do you hope that the work, "Elegies" influences others? 

Eiko Otake 
Oh, well as I said, I was very grateful hearing back. But I also caution, I don't want to...because now I'm also getting lots of inquiries about all the artists can speak or artists can be participating, 25 artists into this one thing, or 100 people talking about this, and there's a little danger about what we do is too directly connect, might be connected to the usefulness. I'm only human, so if I happen to be useful, it is my pleasure, but I don't think that's why I make what I do. In another way, it is based coming from my own experience and my own need. So I'm kind of putting myself in the audience seat, outsider, and it's my outsider eye is determining what I want to create, but not necessarily always knowing what outcome is, we don't really make a product. I'm very process-oriented. So even in a performance, but in a performance, I can betray my own preparation, or the preparation can be betrayed, because I am the performer. And that's being together with people, and right now I'm deprived of that opportunity, so I'm a performer without performances. So, I don't want to be turned into useful artist because of the pandemic, I just want to continue to work, and just like wait, and then send out a little by little, so that I can just continue because I'm 68. So John is great because you can't really create a new career. And if he says I becoming a soloist and that doing The Duet Project is courageous, I mean I adore John for doing the politics, and for that, I would also view the world, going back to the last question. Democracy, being considered as majority vote, is failing. So, we have to establish a sense of a democracy by hearing. We do the vote, and then we have to hear back from the minority because otherwise it doesn't work because there is no education of knowing what other people's voices coming from. If the vote is about what do we do, then we are stuck with what little we all know. So to me, that self-exploration and hearing from another artist or viewers or from you, from friends, that the capacity to hear, but we don't want to just hear cooking and what good restaurants, we want to hear something that matters. So part of my privilege as I can create something I want to create, but the people can respond, I'm really learning the humanity of that person, and of all. So I'm constantly learning, and relearning my own desire is finding and hearing other people's thoughts to it. So that's not necessarily useful as much as I feel it is living, that is worthwhile living for me, and I appreciate having that opportunity. Both creating and responding and getting responses.

Rachel Moore 
I just want to thank all of you, Brian, Eiko, John for being here with us today and sharing so much about your practice and about "Elegies", and it's just been such a pleasure and an honor to have your work in the exhibition "Love Letters" so thank you so much, I appreciate it.