These five ‘time-portals’ were inspired by specific Skype conversations and emails between myself and my friends and family, after transporting to the Youkobo Art Space in Tokyo, Japan from my home and studio in Istanbul, Turkey.
The installation consists of 5 different 'time portals’.
contemporary time-traveling, an interactive installation
Youkobo Art Space, Tokyo, Japan
2012
Swallow Hour
There is a certain moment in Istanbul, each evening in late summer and early fall, not full sun but not quite dusk, when the swallows appear to have their dinner. They swoop down from the sky en mass with their melodic twitters. This is 17 ‘Swallow Hours’, recorded, transported, and layered on top of one another.
Southern Indiana Persimmon Pudding
One of my great aunt’s all time favourite food is persimmons. Her great aunt and uncle had a persimmon tree in their back yard and she fondly remembers spending Thanksgiving with them, sitting under the tree with her sister, eating a giant persimmon. While in Japan, this was one of her favourite recipes. As it requires very soft persimmons, and the Japanese generally eat them while they are hard, she found a good use for the case of soft fruits that her grocer was throwing out. We cooked it together over Skype.
- The Recipe
The Date Line
Upon arrival in Tokyo, I spent hours discussing with my fellow residents just exactly how it was that we both jumped forward in time, even though I was traveling East and my friend was traveling West. Though we eventually came to understand it in our own way, I can sympathise with The Lost Galleon in the 1867 poem of Bret Harte, who is forever lost hovering over the date line, trying in vane to recapture the 9th of May.
- Link to the Full Poem
Kusudama Balls
In the ‘Japan Pavilion’ of Epcot Center in Walt Disney World, an eleven-year-old me bought a book - ‘Kusudama Ball Origami’ Book by Makoto Yamaguchi. The book fascinated me. I spent hours making the models in the book, even adapting a few of them. For several years afterwards, I sold my creations at a youth art market.
The Wedding of James and Susan Lenz
My great aunt and uncle met while teaching at the elementary school at the Johnson Air Base in 1966. They attended Tokyo Union Church in Shibuya and were married there in 1968. I visited the church, and although the building had changed since the 1960s. I followed their Sunday route from the church to the Oriental Bazaar, through Yoyogi park, and out to lunch, though I ate with different friends.
NOTE: My great uncle lived in Tokyo from 1960 – 1981, first as a teacher, then as a principal at the elementary school on the American air base, (First Johnson Air Base, then Yokota Air Base). It was here that he met my great aunt, who was a teacher and librarian at the same school from 1965 – 1981.