My research focuses on the question of progress and what modernity has excluded as a system of knowledge and seeks to bridge it with ancestral knowledge in order to imagine alternative modes of being. By approaching the notion of the self not as an individual entity but as a multitude of consciousnesses connected through ancestral and interspecies relations, my research understands nature as a memory portal through which these sensibilities can be recalled. 

Culturally, these expressions also manifest in the face of loss—of nature, human mortality, life, death, mourning, and grief. Therefore, the project also investigates representations of the invisible and of absence within philosophical, spiritual, and religious traditions, as well as within nuclear histories in Japan, Europe, and the United States. The research project often results in audiovisual performances and installations that draw inspiration from science and technology, folklore, Indigenous philosophies, ritual practices, and cosmology.

Linear perceptions of time owe much to Western history and social order; however, many Indigenous cultures around the world as well as quantum physics imagine more complex interactions between past, present, and future. I often use speculative narratives in which time operates in a much more fluid state.

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Hanae Utamura (@hanae_utamura) • Instagram-Fotos und -Videos