- Friday, July 14, 2023 7:00 pm (Doors open at 6:30 pm)
- Venue: Lecture Hall, International House of Japan
- Speaker: Robert Hutchison (Architect; U.S.-Japan Creative Artists Program Fellow)
- Language: English (with consecutive interpretation)
- Co-sponsored by the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission
- Admission: Free (reservations required)
In this Artists’ Forum, Robert Hutchison, a fellow of the U.S.-Japan Creative Artists Fellowship Program, will talk about his project ‘Memory Landscapes,’ which he undertook while researching the areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake.
‘Memory Landscapes’ is a conceptual project that explores the power of collective memory in designing for certain futures resulting from natural disaster. Focusing on two distant yet interconnected regions—eastern coastal Japan, devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and rural coastal communities in the U.S.’s Pacific Northwest, which are reckoning with inevitable similar events—the project considers how lessons learned in the act of remembrance in one community can inform the process of future construction in another, with the goal of a more inclusive community infrastructure that protects lives while reconnecting communities with the Sea. Through a close photographic study of existing sociological, geological, and constructed conditions, ‘Memory Landscapes’ will propose a series of parafictional architectural proposals for inclusive emergency infrastructure in coastal communities facing inevitable disaster.