Reflecting on a Nuclear Legacy When your family is from Hiroshima, you have strong feelings about the nuclear age, war, and its legacy.Who better to talk about the fallout of our nuclear past than artists? And better, artists who come from cities that were affected and involved. Visual artist Yukiyo Kawano takes her grandmother's kimono and sews replicas of the bombs that were dropped on her city. She has made Little Boy and Fat Man sewn with her own hair. In a new creation, she has partnered with performance artist Meshi Chavez and poet Allison Cobb to create "A Moment in Time." How is art an act of activism? Host Amy Pearl, Hatch Innovation Guests

Yukiyo Kawano, Visual Artist

Yukiyo Kawano, a third generation hibakusha (nuclear bomb survivor) grew up decades after the bombing of Hiroshima. Her work is personal, reflecting lasting attitudes towards the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Kawano's main focus is her/our forgetfulness, her/our dialectics of memory, issues around cultural politics, and historical politics.

For the latest project, she used pieces of translucent kimono fabric and sewed together with strands of her hair (the artist's DNA as a third generation hibaku-sha), for the possibility of looking inward, suggesting another/personal view to our official receptacle of memory.

During the school show in Vermont, Kawano performed in front of the object in desperation about the urgency of expressing fears about the devastation of our human bodies. The historical conjuncture, with the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the legacy of the nuclear era opened up a space for the performativity of her/our questioning of history, memory, witnessing, and disaster in the present moment.

Kawano is currently living in Portland, Oregon.

email address: [email protected]

Allison Cobb, Poet

Allison Cobb is the author of Born2 (Chax Press); Green-Wood (Factory School); Plastic: an autobiography (Essay Press); and After we all died forthcoming in September 2016 from Ahsahta Press, which was a finalist for the National Poetry Series.

Cobb's work combines historical and scientific research, essay, and poetry to address issues of landscape, politics, and ecology. She was a 2015 finalist for the National Poetry Series; a 2015 Djerassi Resident Artist; a 2014 Playa Resident Artist; received a 2011 Individual Artist Fellowship award from the Oregon Arts Commission; and was a 2009 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow. She works for the Environmental Defense Fund. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she co-curates The Switch reading, art, and performance series.

Meshi Chavez, Performance Artist

Meshi Chavez lives and creates work in Portland Oregon. Meshi's most recent productions include Being Moved,"...or be dragged." and We Two Boys. His work has premiered in both New Mexico and Oregon.

In this episode you'll hear

• How artists and art represent the impacts of science, war, and powerlessness
• What is Bhuto dance, and how it is a perfect medium for expression and collaboration
• How a speech by President Obama inspired a poem of sound and words to be shared
• How art activates a space for contemplation, catharsis, and healing, which is more important (sometimes) than acting
• Why art is key to helping make invisible things felt and experienced, and why this is so important

Links to Resources Mentioned

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