28:28 minutes audio, video, archival photography installation, 2014

(originally created for a 28 minute boat tour with headsets)

In Paper, we are introduced to the voice of K, a woman who runs a small restaurant on a mysterious island off the shore of Yonago. On a quiet, regular day just as she is about to close the front door, a tired man arrives at the door and asks if he can come in and have a meal. What ensues is a strange series of events allows K to peer into another dimension through the paper hole of her handmade menus.  

Paper s the first chapter of a trilogy of short stories that are associated by way of natural resources such as coal, lumber, and iron.  This chapter considers the forest island as a site of memory that is trans-pacific enabling the characters to teleport over time and geography. The narrative takes place in postwar Japan in the 1960’s fictional café on a forest island off the shores of Yonago and time travels into the 1900’s forests on Pender Island, B.C. Canada.  These short stories will continue to connect shores off Japan to islands in B.C. Canada including Tumbo Island on the Gulf Islands for ‘Rock’(coal mines) and Texada Island for ‘Scissor’(iron mines). 

Sound Design: Antoine Bédard

Camera & Video Editing: Catrina Megumi Longmuir

Chapter 1 (Paper) was made as part of a residency program called AIR 475 in Yonago, Tottori-ken, Japan in 2014. Guest curated by Makiko Hara. 

To listen to the audio, please click here.