Born in Ghostland

Julie Sadowski is an artist currently based in Warsaw. Her parents immigrated to the United States to escape the Soviet Bloc in the early 1980’s; shortly after Julie was born in Boston, USSR collapsed and the Sadowskis moved back to Poland. The episode covers the longing to be in two places – two homes – at once. Does feeling foreign ever end? Listen in for notes on immigrating cars, haunting architecture, and evocative bricks and find out why some Polish-Americans sent toothpaste to their Polish relatives in 2008.

Owain Jones, Emeritus Professor of Environmental Humanities at Bath Spa University (UK), shares the story of his family farm in South Wales, compulsorily purchased and redeveloped by the city of Cardiff in 1970. Recalling the animals, trees, and people of the landscape he grew up with, Owain reflects on our emotional and physical attachment to the environment, the ways that memories recreate lost places, and what happens when humans and animals are forced to leave their natural habitat.

In vol. 5 of Born in Ghostland, Yelena speaks with Jae Hwan Lim —an artist-activist focusing on human rights and the struggles for democracy in the Korean Peninsula. Jae shares a memory of a childhood trip to North Korea, provides insight into the history of the region and talks about his work with defectors from DPRK.

Jae Hwan Lim

In vol. 4 of Born in Ghostland, Ana Iwataki —a curator, writer, translator, and organizer from Los Angeles—shares personal stories about her Japanese and Filipino heritage, speaks about her activist work in Little Tokyo, discusses the anti-racism solidarity lessons to be learned from Japanese-American incarceration and reparations, and weighs in on the dangers of falling into nostalgic narratives.

Ana Iwataki is a curator, writer, translator, and organizer from and based in Los Angeles. She is the co-editor of X Topics, an imprint of X Artists’ Books. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Comparative Media and Culture at the University of Southern California. Her research takes water as a material and metaphor that leads to questions of porosity and fluidity in collaborative relationships, the relationship to land and place in diaspora, or that of infrastructure to the body. As a consultant, she developed an Artist-in-Residence program for the ACLU of Southern California. She is co-founder of the community art and activist organization J-TOWN Action と Solidarity, a member of Sustainable Little Tokyo’s Arts Action Committee, and Vigilant Love’s Steering Committee. Iwataki holds a BA in Art History from Pitzer College and MA in Curatorial Studies from the Sorbonne.

Are you haunted by a ghostland? Please tell Yelena (the host) all about it:

Temra Pavlovic, a media artist based in Amsterdam, talks to Yelena Zhelezov about family history, inherited memories of the former Yugoslavia, and the precarity of place-language connection. Does being in a place vs not being in a place affects what we can say? Can we be dislocated by language? How does the voice change when we are physically detached from the place we are speaking of? Listen in for notes on The Non-Aligned Movement, the ultimate definition of “Ghostland,” and a refresher on the 1980’s version of marketing through “social justice.”

TEMRA PAVLOVIC

Media artist currently living in Amsterdam.

YELENA ZHELEZOV

Artist working with sculpture, video, and text, based in Los Angeles and Belarus.

Yelena Zhelezov calls Sepand Shahab, an Iran-born experimental composer based in Los Angeles, to discuss what it was like to grow up in Southern California, decode the symbolic meaning of “a house with a lawn,” recall a forbidden dance party on a bus heading out of Tehran, and wonder why the idea of home is so elusive. When does a place turn into time? Listen in to find out.

SEPAND SHAHAB

YELENA ZHELEZOV

Yelena speaks to Anna Zoria, an artist who was born in Russia just before the dissolution of the USSR. Anna grew up in Canada, and lived in France. Anna and Yelena discuss the interstitial feelings of inhabiting several countries at once, music and poetry as time-space-travel devices, grandparents and ideology, Soviet furniture and fashion fetishization, comfort food, and the state of being lost in translation.

ANNA ZORIA

Artist living and working in Canada and France. She makes work about doing nothing, anticipation, boredom, and repetition.

It feels like we are navigating a historic moment of global re-mapping, yet this has happened — and happens — places that seem “stable and forever” are suddenly no more.

While re-visiting the apartment of her childhood, spent in Soviet Belarus, Los Angeles-based artist Yelena Zhelezov feels haunted by the past and talks to people who also experienced a border change, either in name or territory. What is it like to live in the shadow of a disappeared country, a demolished farm, a new border, a missing definition? What happens to the sense of place and belonging? Are there déjà vus? What remains?