The Waves
By Laura Li ‘18, Independent Fellow in Japan (2018-2020)
My fellowship started a little bit later than everyone else because of the visa. According to the date that I am writing this report, it has been the third month of my second year, leaving less than four months for me in Japan. In the past 15 months, things that happened in my life feel like ocean waves. Sometimes the moments with joy and gratitude override my anxiety. While, during the other times, the latter underlies the tone of life and sadness pours in from all the corners that almost drown me--just like the tide, always changing, ever-evolving.
The Waves in the Workplace
I have always felt grateful for having Taktopia as my landing spot after I graduated from college. The general flow of the waves in my work-space is relatively smooth, calm, and even soothing sometimes.
My coworkers are open-minded people who are supportive and patient enough to help me to get onto the track of the new life in Japan as a foreigner. The office as a whole has a generally cheerful and uplifting atmosphere. I remembered after six months working, I was talking with my friends about how much I like being in the office and how much I love my job. My Japanese friend was shocked and said it's rare for Japanese people to say things like this, especially for a "Shin-iri" (the term to describe the new members of the company). Typically, in a traditional Japanese company, the Shin-iri will have to face harsher criticism(sometimes bully) from their supervisor or "senpai" ( a term to describe employees who have more years in the company, as a contrast to Shin-iri). However, Taktopia's members, including the board members, do not support that aspect of the tradition, and they try to foster an equal working atmosphere in the company. I am welcomed as both a staff member but also as a contributor, whose perspectives will be listened to and even considered even though I am someone who freshly graduated from college.
However, it hit a low moment for my time in Taktopia last October when it had its biggest challenge since it started. One of the CEOs decided to leave with some important projects, and with that sudden change, Taktopia had to choose how to keep the organization while facing such a fatal loss of profit. I am glad that after four months of struggling, the remaining members made it work out. During this crisis time, I also had the chance to have deep conversations about life and the future with some coworkers. Before, I was always shy and kept a safe-distance with them, since I was told by older friends about all the workplace politics and dramas. However, because we all shared the lowest moment of our career and faced the uncertainty of the future, we became very close, and I felt that I had built strong bonds with some of them. Starting next year, I will be more free for my plans, and they invited me to collaborate with some art programs together. I am grateful to have spent time with them in the company and outside of work, and I can see we will have a long friendship even after my fellowship.
Taktopia family picture
The Waves in my Art Life / Personal Life (sorry, they are just so intertwined)
I questioned myself a lot when I first began my fellowship after college. I asked myself whether I was qualified to be a creative person, or in another way of saying, I am not sure if I have a chance to make a living with film or art. I have no connections in the film world whatsoever, and as an Asian female, I can't find a role model in the field of digital art near me with a similar identity that is inspiring enough for me to follow. I feel lonely because somehow, I think I am one of the kinds that are out of the normality. I guess that is the reason which pushed me to try more and always to work harder when it comes to art because I don’t know to what extend is good enough.
When I first came to Tokyo, I wanted to use the resources in this big city as much as possible. I tried painting, abstract art class, dancing, singing, and digital art (related to computer science), things that I wanted to try but always kept on finding excuses from doing. I wanted to know whether they can become a tool in my toolbox, which I can use to enhance my expression. Soon after about three quarters of a year, I realized what I liked the most among these new experiments. I started to invest more time into Tango dancing while stopping going to the others. Dancing let me reevaluate my body--the relationship of me with my body. I start to have a new connection with myself by re-thinking about how I move my legs, how I position my neck, and how I use muscle to connect action to action, which I had always done without consciously thinking about them. This new relationship with my body actually makes me artistically reflect more about the world--it helps me to contemplate on the topic that I am researching on, about Breathing, the rudimental things that we do without thinking. I want to rediscover my position in the world by unlearning the things that I thought I know for sure, I want to challenge these “certainty”, and re-inventing the meaning in my life by defining them myself.
At the Mori Museum to see an exhibition
As something that I am familiar with in my toolbox, filmmaking, I used it first to make a short video to re-think about my environment, my study environment, more specifically. I start to reflect it on a social level. I combined videos and audios from different countries' news reports but on the same incidence, to show the gap that the media is trying to build to divide us with hatred. I want to open discussions about how the things that we have been taught or told are deeply rooted into our ideology, and how the "facts" might be contradicted to each other when the environment changes. Thoughts, ideas, and perspective that I, or we, took for granted as "commonsense" might be opposite in another side of world in a different language. And, it’s important to realize, as an individual, there are ways for us to position ourselves, to unite with others, by understand the humanity that within us, that made us, the people we are.
During the mid of October, after hearing the news of my dearest grandfather being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, I re-traced by hand with 1000 frames of my home DV's footages of my grandfather and me. Then, I used the rotoscoped animation and projected mapped onto a 2.2meters long plastic goldfish, which was used as a metaphor since goldfish is said to be an species with only 7-seconds' memory in Asian fairy tales. I wanted to re-think and re-explore the boundary of human memory on an interpersonal level. I wish to figure out what it meant to remember, and how the memory of others, and people around us, shape our identity and influence us to become who we are now.
The fish I used for my projection
Soon after I had a group-exhibition with that animation project, the winter came with the protest in HK and the spreading of coronavirus. It's hard for me to sit down, organize my thoughts, and write something out since February has been one of the darkest months of my time in Japan.
With the spreading Coronavirus in both China and Japan, every day's life, every day's work, the things I hear from the news, and the things people around me are talking about, are all embedded in the tone of fear and anxiety. As a Chinese living in Japan, it is a period of time in which I feel that I am sharing a group-trauma/hysteria for both Japanese people and for Chinese people. The aspect of me in-between of both has transformed it into a very specially-made individual experience which is restless, stressful, and lonely.
And the negativity does not swing into my life solely in a personal way, it also affects my job (all of the spring art camps that me and my coworkers prepared for months have gotten canceled five days before the trip), my art practices (my group exhibition that was scheduled for March has been cancelled), and I am always worried about the health of my family members living in China while scared of riding the full-loaded subway to work every day in Japan, as a person who can't find masks in pharmacies since they are out of stock for three weeks, but especially as a Chinese (the hate speech on Japanese social media against Chinese is everywhere, and they are not just toward tourists, but also local residents with Chinese roots).
I realized that I could no longer sit in my room and just pretend the world is going to function normally after awhile. I am a weak individual who might look like an ant in front of any big power. However, I can also make an impact, maybe just a little. I know, I can. I think I have always chosen the easier and less-quarrel route since my weak body sometimes can't take much of a drama. However, I decided to organize some events, panel discussion for Chinese people in Japan, or anyone, who is against hate speech, who deeply cares about the situation as a global citizen, and who, is willing to make an impact for their community. I organized one public memorial event in Ueno Park to give tribute to the ones who passed away from Coronavirus, and to give our deepest lament to those families who lost their loved ones, and the doctors, nurses, who got infected during their work. I am currently in effort of trying to establish an intellectual salon that provides screenings, talk sessions, or book-reading sessions at least once a month that can be a safe space for people to freely talk, exchange opinions, and share their emotions with a group of people, who might have different background, but also care about the community, and believe in a better world. We had successfully organized the first discussion, and it felt less isolated when I walked outside of the café after the event. Tokyo feels less like a cold-concrete forest, since now I know that there are people inside the crowd that care, who share similar experiences, feelings, and emotions, just like I do.
The small memorial we did in Ueno Park
Future Voyage & Light House
Recently, I have been busy applying for artist-in-residence programs that relate with video art and installation. I want to travel to more places, to see how my topics will interact with a different environment. I want to bring my research in "Breathing". I just heard back from one of the programs in Berlin and another in Buenos Aires inviting me to participate, one during the September of 2020 and the other during the summer of 2021.
Singing as part of a live performance
I am still a little bit unsure about what I will do during next year with that blank of time, but I know there are a lot of things that I can do as an artist, since I believe that through continuous testing, experimenting and creating, there will be born the meaningful dialogue among the viewers and generate deeper understanding of humanity. My experience of living in Japan has been teaching me that love and collaboration form the base for any sustainable human development, and meaningful communications help to resolve the vibrating conflicts. I want to thank all the people that I have met in Japan, starting with my host family that I met during my summer language training in Hokkaido, the nail artist who I became friend with and sent me messages recently to check in my condition and my family’s, the Oberlin Shansi fellows and the staff who always are there to talk and to help, my co-workers who support me on a every day base, my instructors and classmates in my tango and singing classes, my Oberlin professors who are in Tokyo now, the peers that I met during the discussion group, and more and more people who have offered me their love to me and care during my time in Japan. Because of their support, I can continue this meaningful journey with the highs and lows of the waves of uncertainty and keep believing in the power of love and art creation.
Leah came to my house and took a picture of me in my little house
My mom came to visit me and we went to a DIY salon for aroma hand cream
Two Obies from the Cinema Studies department came to visit me
Reunited with old friends in Japan