2020 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
The Archipelago Speaks Back: Pacific Islander Art and Resistance between Oceania, Japan, and Postcolonial Metropoles
| Project/Area Number |
19K01210
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| Research Institution | Waseda University |
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Principal Investigator |
DVORAK G・E 早稲田大学, 国際学術院, 教授 (20613079)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2019-04-01 – 2022-03-31
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| Keywords | decolonization / climate change / indigenous studies / Pacific Islands / postcolonial art / resistance / representation |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
During FY2020, despite the COVID19 pandemic, I managed to achieve most of my goals for the original 2nd year proposed project. This was achieved mainly by having rigorous weekly regular online meetings with my research collaborators in Australia and the Marshall Islands, as well as collaborators in Europe. I therefore maximized my research by having ongoing conversations between experts in many countries while also continuing the main work of my art research in the Pacific Islands remotely. Separately, I used my research travel funds (using less than expected) to conduct studio visits, exhibit planning projects, and other onsite projects that directly related to my collaborators in Oceania, having hybrid online/offline meetings while facilitating broader curatorial and ethnographic research and conversation between collaborators in Japan and abroad. This was done specifically in Okinawa, Hokkaido, Kyoto, Setouchi, and Aomori. I also authored three key essays, two of which were published in FY2020. I gave a series of special lectures related to this research, too, at the University of the Ryukyus, University of Guam, and two art museums in Australia and New Zealand. I also advised the curation of a major retrospective of indigenous Okinawan artist Ishikawa Mao and directed a project called "AIR CANOE" to be exhibited in Brisbane, Australia in December 2021.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
3: Progress in research has been slightly delayed.
Reason
For the second year, I had planned to do work locally in the Pacific in many sites, but the pandemic made travel impossible. This delayed my work slightly, but, with my local collaborators, I managed to complete most of my goals, including advising a major exhibition of art in Australia scheduled for next December, and supporting a project for Okinawan artist Ishikawa Mao while also conducting international workshops (with in-person participation locally combined with small in-person gatherings here in Japan, in Okinawa/Hokkaido/Setouchi and other places). I took research trips to Okinawa, Kyoto, Aomori, Hokkaido, and Shikoku, with the intention of working with local indigenous and marginalized artists in those spaces, linking them up with their counterparts in the Pacific, with whom we met online. This led to productive publication of a key essay for the distinguished art journal e-flux (for general readership), a chapter for a book from Cambridge University Press, and a successful exhibit in Okinawa. I am thus on track to complete my kakenhi project as planned, but am hopeful that I can travel abroad frequently in 2021-2022 to make this first stage of the project complete, and prepare for a second phase application for another KAKENHI project continuation of this initiative.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
This project was conceived around the idea of indigenous, colonized, marginalized communities pushing back against militarism, environmental colonialism, and a wide range of social problems in the 21st century by using contemporary art. I have been excited to see that this project has yielded so much conversation and knowledge so far. We have gained many more research collaborators, and I am now teaming up with the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in Australia, the Thyssen Bornemitzsa Art 21 Academy in Basel and Venice, the HYPHENATED ART project and CIRCUIT New Zealand art project which connects researchers in universities with contemporary artists. I am therefore preparing next to conduct international travel once the pandemic situation changes, to complete the publication projects and exhibition project I have been planning, and I believe this KAKENHI Project will fulfill all of its goals-- for this phase of the project-- by March 2022. However, I will also be proposing a second phase of the project in the next round for the post-pandemic era, which takes into account how the world has changed in the aftermath of the pandemic. At that point, I will be undertaking a research expedition in August 2022 to the Republic of the Marshall Islands with 20 collaborators to apply our research to real world contexts.
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| Causes of Carryover |
As noted in my overview of research progress and accomplishments, since international travel was banned not only by New Zealand and Pacific Islands, sites I was planning to visit, but also by Waseda University, I was unable to complete International travel as planned. I therefore substituted a combination of planned and revised domestic travel engagements, whereby I conducted hybrid online/offline research collaboration with curators, researchers, and artists in other countries. This reduced my expected expenditure somewhat and caused some of the funds to be unspent so that I could carry them over to the next fiscal year. In FY2021 I therefore intend to use these funds carried over in order to conduct the international research trips as originally planned for both 2020 and 2021.
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