3 channel video installation, 2006

Wake is a three-channel video installation that revolves around a contemporary, fictional, murder mystery that takes place in Vancouver's Hastings Park (now the Pacific National Exhibition Grounds) .  This area was once referred to as "The Pool," a holding pen for Japanese Canadians during WWII.  

The short video vignettes in Wake formally utilize the Japanese literary form of the palm-of-hand story: a character-driven, short narrative that has no plot and leaves one with a sense of longing or desire.

A Detective (Hiro Kanagawa), interrogates a Witness (Maiko Bae Yamamoto) who is called forth to make a testimony around the mysterious death of an elderly woman. The unsettling effects of historical trauma haunt both the detective and the witness.  They are caught in the paralysis of a subject that cannot be articulated through language .

Wake explores both the limits and possibilities of cultural memory, and the tenuous relationship between remembering and forgetting. 

With financial assistance from the NAJC. 

An audio version of Wake as a sound walk for Hastings Park is also available here.