Bleaching and drifting

Abstract

This article describes the possibilities of art workshops which have been conducted in Fukushima Prefecture that were affected by the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant accident on March 11, 2011. In coastal areas, many people experienced unexpected domestic migrations/relocations and unwelcome changes in their lives due to the disaster, moving multiple times and living in a state akin to drifting. In these workshops, participants recalled their history and context, created artwork as their navigational chart of life while rebraiding individual narratives with images, memories, and recollections that associated with objects as a part of hyperobjects of tsunami and nuclear disasters. For their complicated situation after the disaster, the workshops provided the opportunities to negotiate with objects as non-human things which have a longer lifespan than humans. It became the activities supporting peoples who lost the continuity of their lives with their hometown. These recovery and support programs through art workshops will be an ecosophic approach based on non-discursive, aesthetic, and ethic means to change the human-centric dominant paradigm.