# data[].attributes.body
Exhibition guide using a mind map for "Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resistance, Act 1" (2018-2019) at Nottingham Contemporary

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I want people to be proud of themselves for being resilient. I just don't want it to be the only option.

Credit... Monika Aichele

This article is part of a series on resilience in troubled times - what we can learn about it from history and personal experiences.
Friends, I'm afraid I'm not going to make it when the end times come. I've made a list of my skills, and "tough" and "capable" aren't words that spring to mind.

A sample:

No. 5: Will pet any and all dogs

No. 8: If pressed, can do dishes

No. 13: Good taste in books

No. 20: Has parking karma

No. 23: Most of the time, doesn't finish whole bottle of wine

No. 36 Whatever you feel guilty about, I've done something worse, trust me

It's been more than four months of lockdown and I have taught myself nothing new - no recipes, no outdoorsmanship capabilities, no repair techniques. I often reflect on the skills that our frontline and essential workers have, which not only include how to save lives, but also the ability to have pleasant and professional exchanges with other people over an extended period of time. When I compare myself to them, I think: just suck me into the hell fires already, I give up.

I am engaged in the status quo. I have not risen above the circumstances. I am not resilient. Although I am not even sure if I know what that word means anymore.

Once, I thought I knew. I am the child of two hard-working, industrious people who opened a small business during the Reagan era. In order to not just merely survive but to thrive, I learned, one must not only do one's basic job, but much, much more - no matter what is happening in the world. Work late, be creative and innovative, keep going, even if you're tired. I might have even believed that's when the magic really happens: when you're exhausted. We are, after all, a nation that declares professional athletes instant heroes when they win the game in overtime.

But my understanding of the word has certainly changed as I've aged. Here in New Orleans, for example, where I am a relative newcomer, my friends who are longtime residents and who survived Hurricane Katrina greet the word "resilience" with a fiery disdain. This is a city where people have been called resilient for years, and so many I talk to just seem exhausted by it.

"It puts the onus on the person to fix the things that should be a civic priority," said Anne Gisleson, a friend and a native New Orleanian. She was sitting on the front porch of her house while I rested on a chair at the edge of the sidewalk on her quiet neighborhood block. (No. 46: "Will show up briefly at your home to provide a nice, socially distanced change of pace.") It was midmorning and already 90 degrees out.

When the levees broke and the city flooded, she was one month pregnant, newly married and learning how to be a parent to a 6-year-old stepson. Suddenly she also had to figure out how to best participate in the rebuilding of the city alongside her neighbors, and reopen the school where she worked. So many people were working nonstop to fix things, she told me. Feeding each other, making street signs, clearing debris. "There's an expectation that we're supposed to bounce back and that's the American way," she said. "And it takes the power structures off the hook."

Or, as my friend Alison Fensterstock, who lives down the road, texted me: "'You're so resilient' is just code for 'You're on your own, sorry.'"

People are being asked to be exceptional to get something less than exceptional in return: a basic standard of living. What is resilience anyway but an unfair exchange of energy? But who has time to consider these matters when they're working to exhaustion?

Back up north in Washington, D.C., my friend Hannah Oliver Depp has been tireless in her efforts to keep her independent bookstore, Loyalty Bookstore, alive during the pandemic. "The average is 17-hour workdays," she texted. Emails, inventory management and the like, but more physical labor than usual, too, as there are more requests for shipping in this new economy.

"Being a Black woman is being tenacious and resilient from birth as you fight to prevent from being crushed," she wrote, "and now the end times are here and I am already exhausted? Being asked to dig deeper is a joke. None of this should be our jobs."

Is the idea of resilience a scam? A con to get you to do more so others have to do less? My friend Sara Novićjoked in a message that "resilience is made up by our capitalist overlords," and she added a "lol" but I didn't even laugh - and I don't think I was meant to.

Even as psychologists have spent the past few decades studying and promoting "resilience theory" - which posits that you can build protective factors, particularly in children, as a way of offsetting risk factors that can hinder personal development - are we missing the bigger point? What about a focus on the risk factors themselves, the outcomes of systemic racism, poverty, and inadequate educational and social supports. Are we fixing the right problems when we are teaching the importance of resilience?

I am not suggesting that we stop encouraging others to succeed or to surpass goals. But are we seeing the concept of resilience in its current incarnation for what it really is? What a horrible trick it is when language is used against us. Is it an act of subterfuge for those most powerful? Let those who are suffering take care of themselves. Let them play into overtime and see what happens.

I want people to be proud of themselves for being resilient. It is an act of triumph to surpass challenges and traumas. I just don't want it to have to be the only way of life.

And I want everyone to make it.

In my pandemic journal I make another list: skills for the moment. Even if I am not resilient, I am capable of accomplishing some basic tasks: can walk, talk, write checks. Washes hands. Wears masks. Registered to vote. I'll worry about the end of the world when it gets here.

Jami Attenberg is the author of seven books of fiction, including, most recently, "All This Could Be Yours." She is at work on a memoir, "A Trip to the End of the World."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I want people to be proud of themselves for being resilient. I just don't want it to be the only option. This article is part of a series on resilience in troubled times - what we can learn about it from history and personal experiences.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Resilience is a set of skills—and psychologists know how you can learn them.

# data[].attributes.headline
Mutual-aid groups spread in covid-stricken America

# data[].attributes.subject
Mutual-aid groups spread in covid-stricken America

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
F OR MAURICE COOK, a community organiser in Washington, DC, the covid-19 pandemic has brought mostly the worst of times-but in some ways the best.

Listen to this story

Your browser does not support the <audio> element.

Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.

The poor black neighbourhoods where the burly Washingtonian has spent 20 years trying to improve educational opportunity are among the most ravaged in the country. Plagued by generations of poverty and ill-health, black residents of the capital city have succumbed to the virus at six times the rate of whites. And with government-support programmes running dry, even as many of Washington's restaurants and other businesses remain shut, years of steady poverty alleviation in the city are unravelling.

"The effects of covid-19 look like this," said Mr Cook, gesturing grimly, while handing out masks in an encampment of homeless people one wet and icy day this week. Huddled beneath an underpass, a short walk from Capitol Hill, its rows of dowdy tents had doubled since he began distributing basic supplies there early this year. Yet he has at least had unprecedented backup in that effort. "The incomers, the gentrifiers, they really stepped up," he said.

Having refocused his education efforts on disaster relief as soon as the pandemic hit, Mr Cook emerged as a local leader of a distinctive form of civic engagement, known as mutual aid. Harking back to hardscrabble times, before the passage of the New Deal, its advocates preach the virtues of neighbourly "solidarity" over "charity", which left-wingers such as Mr Cook consider paternalistic and obnoxious. The origins of the phrase "mutual aid" make that seem even more Utopian.

It was the title of a book published in 1902 by an aristocratic Russian anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, in which he promulgated a vision of communal harmony drawn from his observations of birds and beavers co-existing on the harsh Siberian tundra. The term was then dusted off by the Black Panthers to describe a multi-city programme of free breakfasts for children launched by the radical group in 1969. With at least nodding bipartisan support, nonetheless, the mutual-aid networks that have mushroomed in most American cities this year are a rare bright spot in the crisis.

Mr Cook was inundated by offers of help, mostly from local white professionals. A tweeted call-to-arms from one of his early supporters, Allison McGill, a social worker at a largely white evangelical church, elicited 3,600 offers. There were perhaps few true Kropotkinites among these volunteers (though that is another verboten word for mutual-aiders such as Mr Cook; they prefer "members"). "Mutual aid is not reducible to one political valance," says Benjamin Soskis, a historian of philanthropy at the Urban Institute-who, coincidentally, also does a food run every other week for Mr Cook's Ward 6 Mutual Aid. Yet at least some of the original leftist vision is still evident in their efforts.

The Facebook page of Ward 6 Mutual Aid presents a heart-warming exchange of offers and requests for English language tuition, flat-pack-furniture assembly and Christmas presents for children. The group's fundraising and distribution of basic goods-including face-masks, food and clothing for several hundred poor Washingtonians-is more recognisably Tocquevillian. Though there are no reliable national data on the phenomenon, a multitude of similarly engaged new mutual-aid groups have sprung up across the country.

Julia Ho, a leader of St Louis Mutual Aid, describes its 1,700 "members"-and also the network's origins in the racial justice protests that roiled nearby Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014-15. Kristen Gonzalez of Mutual Aid NYC points to that huge network's slick database, which she helped compile. It lists 131 groups across the city, ranging from " LI Face Masks for the People" on Long Island, to "The End is Queer", a citywide endeavour. The evidence of Lexington's own neighbourhood, which has launched quieter schemes to shop for elderly residents or feed the families of poor classmates, suggests the phenomenon may be more common still. It speaks to America's volunteering tradition. And to the paradoxical sense of reciprocity inherent in an infectious-disease crisis in which suddenly everyone has a stake in everyone else's health.

Set against the enormity of the crisis-and the more than $3trn that Congress threw at it in April and May-the social impact of this do-gooding will be marginal. Contrary to a recurring fantasy on the right, notably pushed by George W. Bush and Paul Ryan among others, charity is never a substitute for the government action required to alleviate poverty or a crisis of this magnitude. As the effects of the stimulus have worn off, the poverty rate has duly soared. Figures released this month suggest that it has grown by almost a quarter in the past five months, easily the fastest pace in half a century. There are meanwhile indications from Ward 6 and elsewhere that, as expectations of a successful vaccine roll-out climb and the temperature drops, the zeal for volunteering (or membering) is tailing off. Yet it could leave a lasting mark, in politics as well as philanthropy.

Leftier than thou

That could in theory be on the right. One of the Panthers' unwitting contributions, notes Joanna Wuest of Princeton, was to spur Ronald Reagan, as governor of California, to boost the state's food-assistance programme as a retaliatory measure. Yet, given the do-nothing mentality of today's Republican Party, it is much easier to imagine the mutual-aid groups augmenting the rise of left-wing activism. Decentralised and tech-savvy, they are part-modelled on leftist campaign groups such as Indivisible. They have in turn championed those groups' politics. A striking feature of this year's Black Lives Matter protests in Washington was the mutual-aid stalls handing out free face masks, food and water. Thus have protest, campaigning and volunteering become dynamically reinforcing on the American left. For good or ill, this may turn out to be one of the major legacies of the Trump era.■

Editor's note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Good neighbours"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Mutual-aid groups spread in covid-stricken America

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
F OR MAURICE COOK, a community organiser in Washington, DC, the covid-19 pandemic has brought mostly the worst of times-but in some ways the best. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. The poor black neighbourhoods where the burly Washingtonian has spent 20 years trying to improve educational opportunity are among the most ravaged in the country.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Care Index collects and features diverse gestures of care performed by people from all walks of life, sharing states of well-being with the audience.

In recent times, where touch and physical intimacy and movement is increasingly controlled or denied, our collective sense of grief, loss and stress have escalated along with global disruptions and inequality. Practicing care for oneself and others have become even more central to our lives.

Care can take form as self-care, the practice of personal routines, rituals and boundaries which bring us comfort and regulate our emotions and stress levels. This could be meditation, prayer, walking, breathing or even work, if work helps to center us or evoke a sense of belonging. It can also take form as community care, ranging from caring for one's family through food, caregiving for a loved one, sharing a traditional craft or skill with others, to volunteering and other communal activities. It can also manifest in work and professional industries which are run by care giving bodies. Care can also extend to the environment we live in, touching on natural environments, public spaces and even connecting over digital realms.

This project invites us to collectively consider:

I would like to collect videos and sounds from anyone who would like to contribute to this Care Index. I hope to create a video collage with the contributions for Singapore Art Week January 2021 . Each submission will also be archived on this simple website, with credits provided to each contributor.

3. Record your care gestures with video + audio.

You may respond to just one invitation or more, at any space of your choice.

Practices of care can take place in diverse settings, ranging from indoors in our homes, work spaces, to outdoor public spaces. There is no limit to the creative possibilities for your contribution.

Perform an everyday activity that brings you hope and lifts your spirits. Invent or seek one out.

Perform an activity that requires maintenance or endurance.

Choose a piece of music that brings you comfort/calm/pleasure/strength. Create 3 movements inspired by your music's lyrics/melodies. Connect them seamlessly together into a single flow of movements.

Draw or navigate a boundary with your body in the space you're physically in at this moment.

Perform an interaction with another (imagined or real) living creature(s).

These prompts are just suggestions and are open to interpretation. If you feel like improvising with other bodies in a socially responsible way, I would welcome such submissions as well!

Ideally in Landscape mode. Wide angles and close-ups are all welcome.

The flow of movements of your care gestures should be captured clearly. Record your gesture for a minimum of 1 minute.

If you wish to send me a separate sound recording or song that is connected to your performance, you are very welcome to do so.

Any basic video recording device which is available to you, such as your camera, mobile phone or laptop with a video camera, is perfect. You may record your performance on selfie mode, handheld or on a tripod, or invite a friend to help you out.

Kindly include in your email submission the following details:

Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis. For Singapore Art Week January 2021, submissions need to be sent by 10 Jan 2021 (Extended Deadline).

Options for sending us your videos

https://www.hightail.com/ (up to 250MB)
https://www.wetransfer.com/ (up to 2GB)
https://www.sendspace.com/ (up to 300MB)
https://transfer.pcloud.com/ (up to 5GB)
https://www.dropsend.com/ (up to 8GB)
https://www.sendtransfer.com/ (up to 10GB)
www.wesendit.com (up to 5GB)

Thank you for your contribution to the Care Index! ​​​​​​​

↑ Back to Top

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Care Index collects and features diverse gestures of care performed by people from all walks of life, sharing states of well-being with the audience. In recent times, where touch and physical intimacy and movement is increasingly controlled or denied, our collective sense of grief, loss and stress have escalated along with global disruptions and inequality.

# data[].attributes.headline
kuratieren-booklet #6 Curating, Care, and Corona by Sascia Bailer

# data[].attributes.subject
kuratieren-booklet #6 Curating, Care, and Corona by Sascia Bailer

# data[].attributes.body
link to downloadable bilingual version

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The kuratieren-booklet #6 Curating, Care, and Corona by Sascia Bailer is many things: a critical questioning, a doubting, a reflecting, sometimes also a plea. But above all it should also enable insight into the 2019/20 curatorial programme on Care at M.1, and invite readers to continue with their own related lines of thought. The text unites five fragments that engage with artistic works and curatorial formats from Sascia Bailer ́s programme, each in the context of societal discourses surrounding care, curating, digitality, alternative economies and the necessity of new social infrastructures.

The bilingual publication can be downloaded here. A printed version can be ordered at info@arthurboskamp-stiftung.de for 5 euros. The publication is part of the kuratieren-series of the Arthur Boskamp-Stiftung. More about it here.

Text by Sascia Bailer
Published by Verlag der Arthur Boskamp-Stiftung
Edited by Ulrike Boskamp
Design by Michael Pfisterer
Translated by William Wheeler
Print Run 500 Order at info@arthurboskamp-stiftung.de, +49 (0)4826/850110
Price per Issue 5€
ISSN: 2510-2273

kuratieren#6 Cover Gestaltung: Michael Pfisterer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
kuratieren #6 "Curating, Care, and Corona"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The kuratieren-booklet #6 Curating, Care, and Corona by Sascia Bailer is many things: a critical questioning, a doubting, a reflecting, sometimes also a plea. But above all it should also enable insight into the 2019/20 curatorial programme on Care at M.1, and invite readers to continue with their own related lines of thought.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
RADICALIZING CARE

Elke Krasny // Vienna

Living with a broken and infected planet

We are living with the new pandemic regime. It is a crisis regime. Listening closely and carefully to the vocabulary that regimes use is illuminating. This vocabulary is useful to study in order to understand the orientations on which regimes base their politics. Words articulate the regime. Words are not only information or report, they become instructions and orders as they perform, putting the regime's governance into action and law.

Words prominently used and heard on the news every day include the following: outbreak, infection, lung complications, latest numbers of Covid-cases, coronavirus statistics, herd immunity, testing, mask order, washing of hands, public health, reduction of exposure to risk, shutdown, reopening, ventilators, critical care beds, intensive care units, immunity, mortality rate, death toll, recommendation, prevention, treatment, restriction, social distancing, remote learning, lockdown. Some of these words translate into instructions; some of these words become orders; some of these words translate into emergency measures and emergency law. They change our everyday lives. They have to be followed.

Speaking with friends and colleagues in different parts of the world, we experience the changes as swift and dramatic. Comparing notes on the measures that governments are taking in each of the nation states we find ourselves in-ranging from the European context, where I live, to other parts of the globe-we see that the measures, although comparable in their intent to fight back against the pandemic in the most efficient way, also differ largely. These discrepancies demonstrate that many of the measures taken to provide solutions to the pandemic, despite being global in their impact and effect, are bound to the territoriality, the governance, and the law making of the nation-state. While we live with the emergence of a new pandemic regime globally, the pandemic regime in and of itself is not global. The measures are taken by the governing bodies that govern our bodies. The Covid-19 crisis has thrown into sharp relief our dependence upon the governing bodies that govern our bodies, our bodily vulnerability, and, our global-and globalized-bodily interconnectedness and interdependence. The Covid-19 crisis has highlighted our vulnerabilities: all human bodies are vulnerable as they are exposable to the dangers of the viral infection; meanwhile, all bodies are potentially dangerous to each other through person-to-person spread. These vulnerabilities, and particularly the high risk for people who are in close context with others, throws into sharp relief the fact that access to reliable and good public health care as well as the obligations to perform caring labor are highly unequal. Care inequality, care injustice, and care discrimination are classed, gendered, racialized, and sexualized. This general crisis of care affecting the vast majority of the planet's population of course predates by far the current crisis, as it dates back to colonial capitalism, which has long infected the planet with viral forms of exploitation, exhaustion, extraction, and depletion. The current pandemic amplifies the crisis of care.

Regardless of the political and economic system people are living under, people are always in need of care. Care has to be understood as essential, as vital to humans and their lives, to their wellbeing and their survival. "Care" broadly refers to paid and unpaid caring labor including housework, community work, health care, and education. Missing data on unpaid household services is, as feminist activist and scholar Caroline Criado Perez has observed, "perhaps the greatest gender data gap of all." [1] With preschools and kindergartens closed because of the pandemic and children at home in distant learning mode, the volume of such caring labor, which disproportionately falls on women, is propelled to new heights. Furthermore, women are overrepresented in the precarious economy, in particular the overexploited and extremely precarious, often informal domestic care sector, with many workers undocumented and without access to public health care. Many care workers find themselves out of work, the global care chains that employ them broken due to travel restrictions. [2] From a global perspective, women are not only the care workers of the world, they also represent the majority of those who live in poverty. The pandemic situation renders the provision of everyday care, and the precarious income generated through this labor, even more precarious and unstable than before.

Therefore, care is at the center of attention. The question is whether or not this centrality of care will be understood in such a way that political and economic changes will be followed through in the aftermath of the crisis. The unseen levels of inequality existing before the outbreak of the pandemic are currently being exasperated, as the same vulnerable communities that are disproportionately put at risk with the climate crisis are now the ones most profoundly affected by the pandemic. The question is: what will be learned in economic and political terms from the experience of the centrality of care that is currently understood on a global level? Will the reviving, repairing, and resuscitating of the economy in post-pandemic times return to the same violent system of extraction, depletion, and exhaustion? Or will there be a turn to care that actually puts life-supporting labor at the center of what is considered life-producing and not just value-generating?

The necessarily fast responses to the pandemic crisis show that governments do have power and agency beyond the short-term and long-term interests of the economy. Compared to the measures that are being taken now, which are adapting their timing to the speed and deadliness of the virus, those adopted and proposed to fight the climate catastrophe have failed to adapt to the speed and deadliness of a crisis that has been causing disaster and death for decades. Will the profound understanding of bodily interdependence and interconnectedness that is experienced with the pandemic give rise to a deeper understanding of caring for a broken and infected planet? Our bodies are inseparably connected with the environment we inhale and ingest. Radicalizing care would mean upholding the centrality of care in all political and economic processes that govern our bodies and our environment in order to take the best care of our broken and infected planet. The vocabulary of this radical care regime-from which instructions, orders, and rules would follow-must be developed from the perspective of global solidarity through care. It must come from that which is at the heart of our collective survival, living, and wellbeing.

Notes:

1. Caroline Criado Perez, Invisible Women: Data bias in a world designed for men, (New York: Abrams Press, 2019), 241.

2. The term "global care chains" was coined by writer and sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild in 2000 in: Arlie Hochschild, "Global Care Chains and Emotional Surplus Value," in On the Edge: Living with Global Capitalism, ed. A. Giddens and W. Hutton (London: Jonathan Cape, 2000), 130-146.

Author Bio:

Dr. Elke Krasny is Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Her scholarship and her curatorial work focus on issues of justice and transformative practices in architecture, art, and urbanism.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Elke Krasny // Vienna We are living with the new pandemic regime. It is a crisis regime. Listening closely and carefully to the vocabulary that regimes use is illuminating. This vocabulary is useful to study in order to understand the orientations on which regimes base their politics. Words articulate the regime.

# data[].attributes.body
Online Course by Elke Krasny

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Online Courses

Ethics of Care in Curating

Lecturer: Elke Krasny

Ethics of Care in Curating

⮕ Enrol here until 13 March 2021.
Fee: 390 CHF
Maximum participants: 25

Course dates: 20 March + 27 March 2021, 2-6pm CET

A detailed description can be found here soon.

Elke Krasny, PhD, is Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She is a cultural theorist, urban researcher, and curator with a focus on issues of justice and emancipatory, transformative practices in architecture, urbanism, and art addressing ecology, economy, labor, memory, and feminisms. Mapping the Everyday: Neighborhood Claims for the Future with the Downtown Eastside Women Centre and the Audain Gallery in Vancouver addressed resistance against poverty and sexual violence. Hands-on Urbanism. The Right to Green, shown at the 2012 Venice Biennale of Architecture, provided a history of informal urbanization through the lens of subsistence economies. Professor Krasny is the author and editor of numerous essays and books, most recently Critical Care: Architecture

Image: Women's Movements: Feminist Agency, rotor association for contemporary arts Graz, November 30 and December 1, 2012. left: Dorothee Richter, Susanna Gualmiryan, Mirjam Westen, Jelena Petrovic´,
right: Eva Merian (rotor, team member), Viola Bianchetti (rotor, team member), Lara Perry, Carla Bobadilla, Julia Wieger

Preparation for the course:
Please use a headset (or headphones) and stay in a quiet place with a stable internet connection. Please read the texts which you will get access to once you have booked the course.

Procedure
This intensive two-part direct live teaching course will be held over Zoom on two consecutive Saturdays, 2-6pm CET. Please prepare a very short introduction of yourself. The first session will be used for an in-depth introduction to the topic, and workshop research. Assignments will be given for the second session. Feedback and evaluation will be given in the second session. After successful completion, a certificate with 1 ECTS point will be handed out.

Technical instructions
Download the Zoom application. You will find a detailed installation guide here. Zoom can be also used in a browser window on a Mac, PC, iPad, iPhone, Android tablet or Android phone. You will find a Zoom invitation with a link to access the workshop.

You will find the General Terms (excluding paragraph 6) for the Online Courses on Contemporary Curating of the ZHdK General Terms of the Continuing Education Departement, Zurich University of the Arts
here? In the process of applying you have to agree to them.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Postgraduate Programme in Curating Zürich

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Lecturer: Elke Krasny Ethics of Care in Curating ⮕ Enrol here until 13 March 2021. Fee: 390 CHF Maximum participants: 25 Course dates: 20 March + 27 March 2021, 2-6pm CET A detailed description can be found here soon. Elke Krasny, PhD, is Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

# data[].attributes.headline
Contradictions of Capital, Curating, and Care

# data[].attributes.subject
Contradictions of Capital, Curating, and Care

# data[].attributes.body
Online Course by Sascia Bailer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Online Courses

Contradictions of Capital, Curating, and Care

Lecturer: Sascia Bailer

⮕ Enrol here until 30 January 2021.
Fee: 390 CHF
Maximum participants: 25
Course dates: 6 Feb + 13 Feb 2021, each 2-6pm (CET)
Even though carework has historically been one of the most exploitative and invisible forms of labor mainly performed by women, it seems to have taken a pandemic to bring these unequal conditions to the foreground of public debate. This course will take a critical look at the history of social reproduction and how the roles of women as primary caregivers have changed over time up to today; this includes a look at a range of feminist activist initiatives that challenge the status quo of un(der)paid care work. The course will furthermore revisit the etymological root of curating (Latin, curare = care) and how curatorial labor, in many ways like care-work, is a highly feminized, invisible, and precarious practice. Lastly, the course looks at the discourse around curating-as-care as a curatorial activist practice to challenge the uneven conditions around gender, care, and community.
This course is conceived as a dialog-based, participatory format that contains group work and hands-on exercises in relation to the topics and ethics of care, and the ways in which these can be introduced into the participants own curatorial practice.

Sascia Bailer works at the intersection of curating, public space, and social justice. She is the Artistic Director 2019/20 of M.1 by the Arthur Boskamp-Stiftung and is a PhD candidate in the practice-based curatorial program at the Zurich University of the Arts and the University of Reading. She has worked internationally within the arts, including MoMA PS1, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. She holds an MA from Parsons School of Design and a BA from Zeppelin University.

Image: Care for Caregivers, Performative exercise with artist Myriam Lefkowitz during Workshop at M.1 Hohenlockstedt, curated by Sascia Bailer

Preparation for the course:
Please use a headset (or headphones) and stay in a quiet place with a stable internet connection. Please read the texts which you will get access to once you have booked the course.

Procedure
This intensive two-part direct live teaching course will be held over Zoom on two consecutive Saturdays, 2-6pm CET. Please prepare a very short introduction of yourself. The first session will be used for an in-depth introduction to the topic, and workshop research. Assignments will be given for the second session. Feedback and evaluation will be given in the second session. After successful completion, a certificate with 1 ECTS point will be handed out.

Technical instructions
Download the Zoom application. You will find a detailed installation guide here. Zoom can be also used in a browser window on a Mac, PC, iPad, iPhone, Android tablet or Android phone. You will find a Zoom invitation with a link to access the workshop.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Postgraduate Programme in Curating Zürich

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Lecturer: Sascia Bailer ⮕ Enrol here until 30 January 2021. Fee: 390 CHF Maximum participants: 25 Course dates: 6 Feb + 13 Feb 2021, each 2-6pm (CET) Even though carework has historically been one of the most exploitative and invisible forms of labor mainly performed by women, it seems to have taken a pandemic to bring these unequal conditions to the foreground of public debate.

# data[].attributes.body
Khairani Barokka considers ableism in art in the light of the Covid-19 lockdown

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Report

Khairani Barokka considers ableism in art in the light of the Covid-19 lockdown

As we continue to disinfect our homes and hopefully wear non-medical facemasks outside, news begins to reveal how many governments, including the UK, have abjectly failed to protect our lives - particularly those of keyworkers, those in care homes and those most vulnerable. What does it mean to think, feel and write about art-making during a global pandemic? We may well be fatigued by anxiety and the question might seem irrelevant. But, as ever, what constitutes 'art-making' contains innumerable different experiences - in the face of this crisis, perhaps we can sense the possibility of it being decentralised and remade.

Under these present conditions of lockdown, many artists working as freelancers have lost significant opportunities to earn income, exposing many to poverty, joblessness and even homelessness as exhibitions and events are cancelled or postponed. We are left with a wait-and-see situation: who and indeed what organisations might still be around in 12 months? While mainstream media regularly updates us on frazzled, striving, middle-class parents trying to make craft with their children at home, this is far from the only art currently being made. A better researched account would reveal that artworks are appearing in under-resourced neighbourhoods in towns and suburbs from Southeast Asia to South America, and with artworks hanging from balconies, stuck to windows or painted on the sides of buildings.

Arts organisations continually update us on the value of art in a time of crisis, but we need to remember that art-making is never value-neutral; and not always 'positive'. Responding to the pandemic, many art organisations have finally made art courses and gallery tours 'accessible' online. But without accessibility in education procedures - such as asynchronous remote learning, captioning (which scholars such as Aimi Hamraie have been trying to educate people about) - these approaches might further alienate many who are chronically ill and/or disabled (the largest global minority who continue to be overlooked).

Ironically, the swift adoption by most art organisations - in many cases, in the first few days of the pandemic - of remote procedures to enable staff to work from home (often developing support systems to make it as easy as possible) is something disabled and chronically ill people have been campaigning for in the arts for many decades. In other words, it is only when non-disabled people's livelihoods are at risk that these measures are seen as an urgent necessity. And for many of us disabled art workers, and art workers outside large cities, who have faced lack of employment options and/or risks to health because of the lack of remote-working options, for example, the lack of true accessibility in these new measures not only seems an incredible oversight, but also hurts significantly.

The pain comes from how these belated measures have been made without acknowledgment or consideration of those who have been fighting for these rights for years (in many cases, lifetimes). New art opportunities, events and projects on 'isolation' and 'illness' are cropping up, and I have even heard facile statements from non-disabled artists: 'Now I understand what it means to be chronically ill.' Depressingly familiar, these projects are not aimed at artists who have lived for many years as chronically ill and/or isolated and/or incarcerated and/or disabled people and vulnerable to illness. Even now, the work of disabled people remains overshadowed by that of non-disabled counterparts.

One form of answer to the question of how to make art in a pandemic is to collectively dismantle ableist prejudice in art organisations, to make communities' and individuals' lives better. This means rejecting the capitalist models of art-making that permeate popular culture, as evidenced in the misguided calls that pressure artists to make work during the pandemic, under terms of 'productivity' and responding to a 'discourse' of illness. Certainly, consumption and creation of art can be incredibly nourishing, calming and helpful for all of us, but not because we are pushing ourselves to 'achieve' art goals, without which we are somehow seen to be lesser, and less successful, people.

I argue that we should not go back to the state of the art world before the pandemic - we should attempt to make it more humane, more equitable. If, as Arundhati Roy says, the pandemic is a portal, we need to move away from the violence that has undergirded so much of art practice and move forward to principles of solidarity. We need art initiatives to be disability-led, artists with lifelong experiences of disability; activist Alice Wong has described disabled people as modern-day oracles - responsive to how to deal with and combat ableist violent discrimination in the arts. Ableism continues to enforce who has 'a good body' - who is deserving of survival and wellness.

There are various disabled artists who have written about how to tackle ableism in the art world, including myself, in terms of policies such as accessible venues, access aids such as motorised wheelchairs, tours for D/deaf and/or blind visitors to galleries and museums, and relaxed performances (in which disabled people who may make various sounds, for instance, are welcome).

However, especially in the current Covid-19 era, we need to think far beyond these measures and look at 'the art world' in terms of transnational, colonial, socioeconomic structures. Jasbir Puar's 2017 book The Right to Maim covers how 'access' and 'inclusion' of D/deaf and/or disabled people in the so-called Global North runs parallel to the deliberate maiming, the deliberate debilitating and disabling, of communities bearing the brunt of western imperialism, for instance in Palestine. Resources are extracted wholesale in mining and plantation operations in Indonesia, which may allow the enrichment of an oligarch's charitable body to fund an increase in accessibility measures at a large art gallery in Europe. At the same time, these plantations and mines leach toxic tailings that poison adults and kill children. To truly understand ableism, one has to follow the flows of violence and extraction capital at a global scale.

To speak about how ableism affects the art world, one needs to recognise how citizenship and residency statuses are subject to violently policed borders (particularly considering the lives of immigrants in the US, the UK, Europe, Australia and elsewhere), which continue to affect the lives of artists.

In late-stage capitalism, we are complicit - as all of us are in the marketised, overarching sphere of financial flows - in the material nature of 'the art world'. The pre-pandemic 'normal' of the art world benefited the few, endangering, injuring and killing the many. The art world to come, the art world in this pandemic, should be geared towards anti-imperialism, anti-ableism and a world of art that protects all that it has long made vulnerable.

Khairani Barokka is an Indonesian writer and artist based in London. She is a research fellow at UAL's Decolonising Arts Institute and associate artist at the National Centre for Writing. Her book Rope was published by Nine Arches in 2017.

First published in Art Monthly 437: June 2020.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Khairani Barokka considers ableism in art in the light of the Covid-19 lockdown As we continue to disinfect our homes and hopefully wear non-medical facemasks outside, news begins to reveal how many governments, including the UK, have abjectly failed to protect our lives - particularly those of keyworkers, those in care homes and those most vulnerable.

# data[].attributes.headline
How Colonial Visual Cultures Have Worsened This Pandemic and What Needs To Change by Khairani Barokka

# data[].attributes.subject
How Colonial Visual Cultures Have Worsened This Pandemic and What Needs To Change by Khairani Barokka

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
How Colonial Visual Cultures Have Worsened This Pandemic and What Needs To Change

Khairani Barokka

The people holding parties instead of social distancing. The girl in my apartment building, casually hanging out in a cordoned-off public area. The man who delivered my groceries, who told me "It's just like the flu" in passing, unaware I'm high-risk as a chronically ill person.

We've witnessed global waves of non-disabled people refusing to socially distance during the COVID-19 pandemic, including by crowding public spaces, and otherwise endangering themselves and vulnerable people. This presumption that many such people have, that they are "healthy" and invulnerable, stems from centuries-long conditioning by ableist, racist, colonial systems of visual cultures. By visual cultures, I mean the way visual images (particularly of humans) are presented to us by, and in, colonial societies, whether in advertising or television or paintings in museums. This is something I've been researching for almost a decade-and experiencing first-hand, as an "invisibly" disabled person, who is often not believed about my body, or forced to give up sensitive medical information for others to ascertain belief.

These systems work to ingrain these assumptions in people en masse: that someone is non-disabled until "proven" disabled by non-disabled norms. That these norms of whether or not a body is "abled" are visual, uniform, and detectable always by the non-disabled. And that disability is not likely to be experienced by a "healthy" person, particularly in their youth. These assumptions have proven catastrophic, and inciting many of the deaths we witness in the COVID-19 era.

The manifestations of these centuries-old systems of colonial visual cultures, that claim a non-disabled person can "tell" when a person is sick, can determine that socially-variable distinction between the "sick" and the "healthy," that young people are "healthy," that what they deem to be "sickness" is not that bad: the deaths of tens of thousands at this point, and most likely, unfortunately, up to millions in places like my home country Indonesia. There and elsewhere, poor public policy implementation on behalf of the state is also, I believe, a result of these prejudices rooted in visual cultures.

How have we gotten to this tragic point?

I've spent the past nine years performing, making visual art, and writing about my continued traumas as someone whose pain has been "undetectable" to non-disabled people, including doctors in medical settings, even when it is at ten out of ten in terms of intensity.

I write and speak about how the central, core thesis of my PhD-that there is the possibility of pain in every picture, especially in images of enslaved colonial subjects, especially in bodies coded as brown and femme-has been met with defensiveness and/or disbelief and/or the need to couch that possibility in "visible signals." Meaning, if someone is sitting in a tilted manner, that might show discomfort. Yes, because every person you meet is possibly in discomfort-regardless of "cues." Think about times you've been emotionally turbulent but still had to smile in front of people at work or at home, perhaps your children, perhaps your friends. Think about women masking our period pains around people who aren't likely to understand them. Think about headaches you've had while smiling at someone else. Think about non-disabled understandings of what "counts" as signs of "underlying health conditions"-a term often used in ableist ways during this pandemic, to denote the bodies of people who are disposable or should be spoken about but not deliver opinions ourselves.

And the reason for these ableist biases stems from colonialism and beyond-the message is that Black and brown people who can be and are coded as "abled" can better perform the tasks of capitalism and churn out profit. These racialised bodies coded as "abled" are positioned above those visually coded according to non-disabled norms as "disabled," and "abled" bodies also can never show signs of being vulnerable-again, because of colonial capitalism's needs for our bodies to perform a function, to extract labor from us.

This is why Black and brown women and femme people in particular are often disbelieved about our pain in medical settings-because we have historically not been deemed human and capable of pain. Because our historical position has been to serve, and to serve, we must be coded as "able" to do so.

So here we are in late stage capitalism, in an era when surveillance is ubiquitous, when austerity measures globally are reducing funds for disabled people, and when it has been suggested that social media profiles be used to determine whether or not people are no longer depressed, when in the UK my peers have to "prove" their level of physical pain to the government in humiliating fashion on a regular basis. Everything is linked to colonial visual cultures' need to have us all thinking and feeling in an ablenormative (that is, assuming people are non-disabled, and that we all must behave in non-disabled fashion) way-that we can always tell what someone is feeling on the inside, based on their outsides. When as human beings we know fundamentally this is a lie.

A long time ago, I was in a New York City ER, screaming in pain, when a nurse yelled in my face on the gurney to be quiet, that I was bothering the other patients. This traumatic incident, along with so many others like it in which I have had my pains dismissed, disbelieved, and thus exacerbated for long periods over years, inculcated in me the understanding that I shouldn't show "normal" signs of pain, because people wouldn't believe me. In a London clinic a few years ago, when I screamed, I was yelled at until I became quiet on the bed, as the nurses thought I was committing an act of aggression against them. I have been threatened with being reported to the police when I've shown signs of extreme pain in public, mistaken for being a drug addict. It matters that I'm a brown woman. It matters that as a non-citizen in the UK, not eligible for public funds nor many state sources of access, I am deeply vulnerable. This is why, when people make blanket statements like the assumption that those of us "passing" as non-disabled have it better off, I'd like to caution against painting experiences of "passing for healthy" with the same brush-think about people with cancer, think about people with endometriosis, think about people with acute chronic pain, think about people who are consistently threatened with deportation and/or incarceration, where lack of access to medication could well mean death.

Although I greatly appreciate Transport for London's "Not All Disabilities Are Visible" campaign the truth is that many so-called "invisible" disabilities ARE visible-but visible to the person with them, not the non-disabled people around them. I have to stop and sit or squat every ten steps or so and rest, yet my disability is deemed "invisible," and I am told "I don't look like a disabled person," as opposed to someone with a cane or a limp, or someone who is older.

If I'm honest, I fear for the many "invisibly" disabled I imagine must be impacted by this pandemic, and injured again and again by it-those of us who don't "look sick" and therefore might not be seen with urgency. Those of us who don't "look disabled" and therefore have had difficulty getting vital access needs met, whether in line for food or in transit. As disabled people know, it is so often not worth complaining about these experiences to corporations, especially in a hyperprivatised world, even if we attempt to shame and bring attention on social media to bring about change. Corporations who will neglect our inquiries.

This is the culmination of centuries of visual ablenormativity. I'd argue that we've been hurting and/or losing millions of lives over the years due to complications of this toxic, visual ablenormativity-just not aggregated, not treated as mass calamity.

And in during this COVID-19 pandemic, in which disabled populations are being killed and jeopardised needlessly by irresponsible governments, I know in my heart that there are many who should have gotten better help earlier, but didn't "look sick." There are many who underestimate COVID-19 because it is an invisible virus, because they think they are invulnerable healthy people and so is everyone in their circles. And that continues to be proven a lie in the death toll and the state of the world today. And it is no surprise to see the most marginalized communities disproportionately impacted by race, disability, age, nationality, immigration status, and class.

"Underlying health conditions" is often synonymous with "invisible" disability in this pandemic, as something non-disabled people greatly fear, and must be stamped out because it automatically leads to death, no matter what. Yet the blame does not lie often enough, in the media nor among conservative politicians, on the lack of government funding for healthcare including PPE (personal protective equipment), lack of urgently needed public health advice dissemination, and so on. These causes of death are still being elided in certain mass news outlets, whether in Indonesia or the US.

At the same time, governments can continue to cruelly tell people with "invisible" disabilities that we're not disabled enough to warrant being high risk, including in this pandemic. In the UK, people who were high risk were all supposed to have gotten a letter indicating their status , if they registered with the government-this was not at all a comprehensive effort, as myself and peers have not received such a letter. The overall policy means that people with "invisible disabilities" are being told by states such as the UK to be shielded, which is accurate for our safety-though I wish more people would understand shielding as a verb that still, always, needs to include patient voices as self-shielders, and not just those of everyone else around us-but are not always helped by the state.

What is necessary right now are pained-aware, decolonial readings of other people, other bodyminds, and of ourselves. In being aware of the fact that truly anyone can be disabled, in pain, that there is the possibility of pain and/or of many bodymind variations in every person we meet, and, in everyone we see depicted in art or in the news.

Visual cultures in everyday life and especially in arts institutions have led up to this tragic point. We can combat these forms of ableist visual bias in ourselves and other people, seeing the possibility of vulnerability in every person, not to mention becoming more sophisticated in how we term "disability." This could truly be the difference that saves lives.

About

Dr. Khairani Barokka is an Indonesian writer, artist, and researcher in London, with a PhD in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, whose work has been presented extensively, in fifteen countries. She was Modern Poetry in Translation 's Inaugural Poet-In-Residence, and is currently Researcher-in-Residence at UAL's Decolonising Arts Institute. Among Okka's honours, she was an NYU Tisch Departmental Fellow and is a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change. Okka is co-editor of STAIRS AND WHISPERS: D/dEAF AND DISABLED POETS WRITE BACK (Nine Arches), author-illustrator of INDIGENOUS SPECIES (Tilted Axis; Vietnamese translation published by AJAR Press), and author of debut poetry collection ROPE (Nine Arches Press).

Twitter: @mailbykite

Website: http://www.khairanibarokka.com/
Support Disability Media and Culture DONATE to the Disability Visibility Project®

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Colonial Visual Cultures Have Worsened This Pandemic and What Needs To Change

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How Colonial Visual Cultures Have Worsened This Pandemic and What Needs To Change Khairani Barokka The people holding parties instead of social distancing. The girl in my apartment building, casually hanging out in a cordoned-off public area. The man who delivered my groceries, who told me "It's just like the flu" in passing, unaware...

# data[].attributes.headline
In formation III: Khairani Barokka Annah: Nomenclature - Q&A

# data[].attributes.subject
In formation III: Khairani Barokka Annah: Nomenclature - Q&A

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
In formation III: Khairani Barokka Annah: Nomenclature - Q&A

# data[].attributes.headline
In formation III: Khairani Barokka, Annah: Nomenclature

# data[].attributes.subject
In formation III: Khairani Barokka, Annah: Nomenclature

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
In formation III: Khairani Barokka, Annah: Nomenclature - Performance

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The significance of trees to Mother Earth and to us humans is immeasurable. Since the dawn of time, these majestic living organisms have been a strong feature in folktales, history, paintings, and other forms of culture and art. Their awe-inspiring shapes and strength - sometimes daunting - can invoke a powerful sense of spirituality. For centuries, civilizations have praised trees as a symbol of worship, celebration, and death; some rituals persist today. Based on aesthetic or religious significance, the following list of 10 sacred trees is meant to acclaim the spiritual relationship between humans and trees.
10. Willow Tree
Willow trees from the genus Salix come in all sorts of varieties and shapes. Most species of this tree thrive in riparian landscapes. A willow's presence near water can be haunting. In Japanese tradition, it is believed that wherever a willow is present, a ghost will appear. Due to the association with the movement of the water to the moon, willows are also considered sacred in witchcraft. Priestesses of the Goddess Hecate of the Moon use willow water in their magic.
9. Ash
There are records of several trees of mythical importance to the Celts, including oak, apple, birch, and ash. The latter has a connection to the order of the bards, ovates, and druids (Celtic priests). The ash tree (scientific name: Fraxinus) is mainly associated with healing and enchantment, and in particular to the Welsh magician/god Gwyddion, who had an ash wand. The tree is also similarly associated in Norse mythology to the god Odin.
8. Sacred Oak
Believed to be the largest yellow oak (scientific name: Quercus muhlenbergii) in the United States, this iconic tree located in Oley, Pa., dates back almost 500 years. The tree received its "sacred" attribution due to a native Indian legend that claims that the tree possesses the power to heal. This sacred tree was looked upon as the shrine tree of the Delaware Indians, who prayed for it whenever they needed help.
7. Italian Cypress
Known as "The Mournful Tree", the Italian cypress (scientific name: Cupressus sempervirens) has been associated with death and mourning for the past 2,000 years. Planted in Islamic and European cemeteries, the tree's legend goes back to ancient Greek and Roman mythology, when a man named Cyparissus accidentally killed his stag and begged the gods to punish him with eternal grief. Granting his wish, the gods turned him into a cypress tree, which would forever stand and mourn the dead.
6. The Bodhi Tree
The sacred fig (scientific name: Ficus religiosa) is native to Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. It is known as the Bodhi Tree (Sanskrit for "wisdom" or "enlightened"). It is believed that it is under this tree that Buddha gained his enlightenment. After Buddha's death, the tree became a symbol of his presence and an object of worship. At Bodh Gaya, a new Bodhi was planted in 1881 after the original one died. Many other Buddhist temples plant this tree, as well.
5. Witch Tree
The Little Cedar Spirit Tree, or the Witch Tree, is an ancient iconic specimen from the specie Thuja Occidentalis. This tree grows on the shore of a lake in Minnesota and is sacred among the Chippewa Indian tribe. Earliest records of this lone tree date back to 1731. From the fear of it being vandalized, the tribe has purchased the land and people are now prohibited to come near the tree. 4. Banyan Tree

Another tree that is sacred in Buddhism as well as in Hinduism is the banyan tree (scientific name: Ficus benghalensis). Native to Southeast Asia, the tree's uniqueness lies in its aerial roots, which spread upward. eventually becoming accessory trunks. Due to this shape, the tree represents eternal life. In a song called the "Bhagavad Gita" or "Song of the Lord", Krishna uses the banyan tree as a symbol to describe the true meaning of life to the warrior hero Arjuna. Banyan is also mentioned in the Buddhist Jataka tales.

3. Lebanese Cedar Image credit: Diak/shutterstock

Ever since the Phoenician times, this tree has attained an economic significance due to the preciousness and power of its wood, as well as a symbolic one due to its ability to age for thousands of years and withstand a snowy, mountainous climate. The Lebanese cedar (scientific name: Cedrus libani) does not only hold a religious Christian significance - it is mentioned in the bible 75 times - but is also a symbol of national pride, as it is the national emblem of Lebanon.
2. Baobab Tree
Image credit: Nazzu/shutterstock Native to India and the African Savannas, the baobab (scientific name: Adansonia digitata) is a national emblem of Madagascar. Due to its massive size, fascinating shape, and long aging (around 3,000 years), people believe the baobab holds the spirits of the dead, and that is why it is sacred in African culture. Throughout history, kings have organized their meetings under this tree, believing that it holds magical properties that could aid them in making wise decisions.
1. Christmas Tree
Image credit: Volodymyr Goinyk/shutterstock The most renowned sacred tree of our time is the Christmas tree. Around December, almost every Christian home and many non-Christian houses have one adorned with all sorts of lights, ornaments, and gifts. Various species of conifers can be used as a Christmas tree, such as Abis alba pyramidalis. Prior to attaining its Christian religious significance, it was known as the Yule tree (Yule is the day celebrating the coming of the winter solstice) in pagan tradition and was decorated as an outdoor live tree with hanging candles. The latter tradition still persists today in neo-pagan religions such as Wicca. Trees have always provided food, shelter, wood, shade, and many other basic life needs for human beings. It is no wonder, then, that they are worshiped or praised in every civilization. In many cultures, it is believed that hugging a tree releases negative energy from the human body. So do not forget to hug trees from time to time, and happy holidays! Article written by Dalia Zein Featured image: Image credit: Javarman/shutterstock

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Top 10 Sacred Trees - Landscape Architects Network

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The significance of trees to Mother Earth and to us humans is immeasurable. Since the dawn of time, these majestic living organisms have been a strong feature in folktales, history, paintings, and other forms of culture and art. Their awe-inspiring shapes and strength - sometimes daunting - can invoke a powerful sense of spirituality.

# data[].attributes.body
When eggs were precious as source of nutritions, they were wrapped in rice straw like this, a perfect packaging.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Made in Japan

Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand.

When eggs were precious as source of nutritions, they were wrapped in rice straw like this, a perfect packaging.

These are imitation eggs.

Approx. 45 x 7cm

Please note that each piece vary slightly.

Gift Wrap Service

We offer a gift wrap service. Click here for more info and to add it to your order.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Made in Japan Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand. When eggs were precious as source of nutritions, they were wrapped in rice straw like this, a perfect packaging.

# data[].attributes.body
A complicated knots makes it hard to undo. It is a good luck charm.
The expression of strength and beauty in the bundles.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Made in Japan

Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand.

A complicated knots makes it hard to undo.
It is a good luck charm.
The expression of strength and beauty in the bundles.

Approx. 45 x 75cm
Please note that each piece vary slightly.

* Only available in store since it's size and the fragile nature of this item.

Gift Wrap Service

We offer a gift wrap service. Click here for more info and to add it to your order.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Made in Japan Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand. A complicated knots makes it hard to undo.It is a good luck charm.The expression of strength and beauty in the bundles.

# data[].attributes.body
This one is a decoration to cherish the connection with people and fate. Incorporating the traditional Sauvastika Knot.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Made in Japan

Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand.

This one is a decoration to cherish the connection with people and fate.
Incorporating the traditional Sauvastika Knot.

Approx. 35 x 15cm

Please note that each piece vary slightly.

Gift Wrap Service

We offer a gift wrap service. Click here for more info and to add it to your order.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Made in Japan Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand. This one is a decoration to cherish the connection with people and fate.Incorporating the traditional Sauvastika Knot.

# data[].attributes.body
A decoration to wish for a life full of joy and richness.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Made in Japan

Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand.

A decoration to wish for a life full of joy and richness.

Approx. 42 x 16cm
Please note that each piece vary slightly.

Gift Wrap Service

We offer a gift wrap service. Click here for more info and to add it to your order.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Made in Japan Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand. A decoration to wish for a life full of joy and richness. Approx.

# data[].attributes.body
This particular one is a decoration for the well‐being of one's family. Expressing a strong tie by knotting the left bundle and right bundle together, it brings good luck.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Made in Japan

Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand.

This particular one is a decoration for the well‐being of one's family.
Expressing a strong tie by knotting the left bundle and right bundle together, it brings good luck.

S: Approx. 35 x 28cm
M: Approx. 75 x 55cm

Please note that each piece vary slightly

Gift Wrap Service

We offer a gift wrap service. Click here for more info and to add it to your order.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Made in Japan Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand. This particular one is a decoration for the well‐being of one's family.Expressing a strong tie by knotting the left bundle and right bundle together, it brings good luck.

# data[].attributes.body
This one is a decoration to wish for a good relationship. Incorporating the traditional Sauvastika Knot.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Made in Japan

Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand.

This one is a decoration to wish for a good relationship.
Incorporating the traditional Sauvastika Knot.

Approx. 17 x 12cm

Please note that each piece vary slightly.

Gift Wrap Service

We offer a gift wrap service. Click here for more info and to add it to your order.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Made in Japan Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand. This one is a decoration to wish for a good relationship.Incorporating the traditional Sauvastika Knot. Approx.

# data[].attributes.body
This is hot pot matt shaped of ume, plum flower.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Made in Japan

Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand.

This is hot pot matt shaped of ume, plum flower. Comes in two sizes.

Approx. ø16cm / ø12cm

Please note that each piece vary slightly.

Gift Wrap Service

We offer a gift wrap service. Click here for more info and to add it to your order.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Made in Japan Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand. This is hot pot matt shaped of ume, plum flower. Comes in two sizes. Approx.

# data[].attributes.body
Talisman decoration made of rice straw and dried chillies. It is believed to bring happiness.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Made in Japan

Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand.

Talisman decoration made of rice straw and dried chillies.
It is believed to bring happiness.

Approx. 43 x 7cm

Please note that each piece vary slightly.

Gift Wrap Service

We offer a gift wrap service. Click here for more info and to add it to your order.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Made in Japan Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand. Talisman decoration made of rice straw and dried chillies.It is believed to bring happiness. Approx.

# data[].attributes.body
This ring is to be hang as it is or used as the base of decoration combining with other charms.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Made in Japan

Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand.

This ring is to be hang as it is or used as the base of decoration combining with other charms.

Approx. 23 x 15cm

Please note that each piece vary slightly.

Gift Wrap Service

We offer a gift wrap service. Click here for more info and to add it to your order.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Made in Japan Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand. This ring is to be hang as it is or used as the base of decoration combining with other charms. Approx.

# data[].attributes.body
A simple sacred decoration.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Made in Japan

Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand.

A simple sacred decoration.

Approx. 85 x 20cm
Please note that each piece vary slightly.

Gift Wrap Service

We offer a gift wrap service. Click here for more info and to add it to your order.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Made in Japan Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand. A simple sacred decoration. Approx. 85 x 20cmPlease note that each piece vary slightly.

# data[].attributes.body
The ring represent the circle of people, the rice represents fruitfulness. It is a talisman decoration to wish for a fruitful life with many great relationships.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Made in Japan

Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand.

The ring represent the circle of people, the rice represents fruitfulness.
It is a talisman decoration to wish for a fruitful life with many great relationships.

Approx. 28 x 9cm

Please note that each piece vary slightly.

Gift Wrap Service

We offer a gift wrap service. Click here for more info and to add it to your order.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Made in Japan Over three generations, Kai Family has been making these rice straw good luck charms. From harvesting of rice to making of these straw decorations, every process is done by hand. The ring represent the circle of people, the rice represents fruitfulness.It is a talisman decoration to wish for a fruitful life with many great relationships.

# data[].attributes.body
This spreadsheet is a simple system to help connect individuals or groups of people in Singapore who have needs and offers for support.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Mutual Aid and Community Solidarity- Coordination

# data[].attributes.body
This initiative is conceived as a crisis response and shared resource for cultural workers based in Singapore. It includes emergency monetary assistance, working space, tech and studio expertise, equipment, art materials, counselling hours, and other forms of care for cultural workers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This initiative is conceived as a crisis response and shared resource for cultural workers based in Singapore, which includes freelance workers (artists, designers, writers, performers, technicians), art and design students, and any others for whom these shared commons might be helpful. It includes emergency monetary assistance, working space, tech and studio expertise, equipment, art materials, counselling hours, and other forms of care for cultural workers.

The aid provided is not bound to requirements such as the need to produce an artwork/project or to render a service to receive assistance. In times of the COVID-19 pandemic, we want to be sensitive to needs and capacities in flux, and of pre-existing inequalities magnified, which contribute to the difficulty of continuing creative processes or production. We offer what we can in hopes of building support outside of pre-existing networks and structures, many of which will diminish, or have already diminished. We hope to locate these efforts alongside what is already provided by institutions, to attend to more localised needs and persons who may not be able to access resources provided elsewhere.

Together with Coda Culture, Grey Projects, INTER-MISSION, and soft/WALL/studs, we are collectively offering:
✤ Crisis relief microgrants in amounts of $100, $200, $300, and $500
✤ Free counselling hours
✤ Our spaces for one-off or recurring uses
✤ Borrowing of equipment from our spaces

Click here to open form in new window.

Click here to open spreadsheet in new window.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This initiative is conceived as a crisis response and shared resource for cultural workers based in Singapore, which includes freelance workers (artists, designers, writers, performers, technicians), art and design students, and any others for whom these shared commons might be helpful.

# data[].attributes.headline
A preliminary attempt at building a vocabulary of idioms for art, sociality, curating and exhibition-making from a list of Malay words compiled by Kamiliah Bahdar

# data[].attributes.subject
A preliminary attempt at building a vocabulary of idioms for art, sociality, curating and exhibition-making from a list of Malay words compiled by Kamiliah Bahdar

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Malay vocabulary of idioms for art 2018.04.01.pdf

# data[].attributes.body
A Korean drama series by JTBC about a person who owes to solve 100 problems in the real world after committing suicide by a sacred tree

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Mystic Pop-up Bar tells the story of a mysterious pojangmacha (outdoor drinking establishment) run by an ill-tempered woman named Weol-ju ( Hwang Jung-eum), an innocent part-time employee named Han Kang-bae ( Yook Sung-jae), and a former afterlife detective known as Chief Gwi ( Choi Won-young) who visit customers in their dreams to help resolve their problems.

A hot-tempered woman who is the owner of Mystic Pop-up Bar. 500 years ago, Weol-ju healed the Crown Prince through his dreams but was falsely accused of seducing him, and was targeted by an assassin who killed Weol-ju's mother instead. Weol-ju's sin was committing suicide on the Sacred Tree, causing it to lose its power on a conflict that took 100,000 lives. For the past 500 years, she was sent to the Living Realm to settle the grudges of 100,000 souls and comfort them as a punishment to atone for her past sin.

A cheerful young man who has the ability to make people confess the truth by making physical contact with them. Hence, he creeps the people around him and grew up being an outcast. He worked with Weol-ju as she promised him to get rid of this unique ability in exchange. He is eventually revealed to be the spirit of Weol-ju and Yi-Hon's unborn child which was cursed with the Sorrow of the Sacred Tree.

Formerly the Crown Prince who fell in love with Weol-ju but was unable to protect her, so he slew the instigator of her death, his former bestfriend, Kim Won-young. Once worked for the Afterlife Police Agency, he eventually went to work as the manager at Mystic Pop-up Bar to be at Weol-ju's side.

Realm of the Dead

He is Lord Kim Jin's son and Crown Prince Yi-hon's best friend, however his coup d'état was uncovered and he was beheaded by the Crown Prince. In present day, he became an evil spirit to get revenge upon Crown Prince Yi-hon and Weol-ju.

Kapeul Mart

The only human who is immune to Kang-bae's ability. She was Chairman Choi's personal bodyguard but after her encounter with Weol-ju and Kang-bae, she was fired from her job and eventually became security guard of Kapeul Mart. Although Kang-bae and Yeo-rin love each other, her trauma with her past boyfriends causes her to deny her feelings. She is later revealed to be the reincarnation of the Cinnabar.

Ahn Tae-hwan as Choi Jin-dong

Park Ha-na as Song Mi-ran

Park Joo-hyung as Assistant Manager Park

Park Eun-hye as Crown Prince's mother / Shin Ji-hye (Ep. 1, 9-10)

Kim Hee-jung as Wol-joo's mother (Ep. 1)

Hwang Bo-ra as Chun-hyang (Ep. 1)

Lee Sang-hwa as Heung-bu (Ep. 1)

Kwak Sun-young as Eun-soo / Sun-hwa (Ep. 2)

Baek Ji-won as Ms. Andong (Ep. 2)

Youn-a as lady-in-waiting (Ep. 3)

Yoo Sung-joo as Chairman Choi / Local governor (Ep. 3)

Oh Kyung-joo as Park Byung-jae (Ep. 3)

Oh Ha-nee as Yu-mi (Ep. 3)

Woo Hyun as Kim Du-young (Ep. 4)

Jung Eun-pyo as Choi Seok-pan (Ep. 4)

Lee Joo-shil as Lee Kkeut-sun (Ep.4)

Jung Jung-ah as upset customer (Ep. 5)

Oh Man-seok (stage actor) as Oh Sang-gun (Ep. 5)

Lee Ji-hyun as Jin-seok (Ep. 5)

Kim Mi-hwa as health drink vendor (Ep. 5)

Kwon Hyeok-soo as a company executive (Ep. 5)

Lee Seo-an as Chae Su-gyung (Ep. 6)

Tae In-ho as Kang In-ho (Ep. 6)

Yoon Park as The Gout Lovers actor (Ep. 6)

Ha Shi-eun as The Gout Lovers actress (Ep.6)

Choi Dae-hoon as Jang Bok-su (Ep. 7)

Hwang Hyo-eun as Mrs. Kim (Ep. 7)

Park Young-soo as Mr. Jang (Ep. 7)

Kim Yong-gun as Kapeul Mart Chairman (Ep. 7)

Han So-eun as Shin Bo-ra / Ice Witch (Ep. 8)

Shin Hyun-soo as Kim Do-young (Ep. 8)

Moon Jeong-hee as Hyun-ok (Ep. 9)

So Chan-whee as herself (Ep. 11)

Ahn Chang-hwan as Mr. Han (Ep. 12)

Lee Soo-ji as Mr. Han's co-worker (Ep. 12)

The first script reading took place in August 2019 at JTBC Building in Sangam-dong, Seoul, South Korea.

Filming began in September 2019 and ended on February 28, 2020.
Mystic Pop-up Bar : South Korea viewers per episode (thousands)
Source: Audience measurement performed nationwide by Nielsen Media Research.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Mystic Pop-up Bar tells the story of a mysterious pojangmacha (outdoor drinking establishment) run by an ill-tempered woman named Weol-ju ( Hwang Jung-eum), an innocent part-time employee named Han Kang-bae ( Yook Sung-jae), and a former afterlife detective known as Chief Gwi ( Choi Won-young) who visit customers in their dreams to help resolve their problems. A hot-tempered woman who is the owner of Mystic Pop-up Bar.

# data[].attributes.body
A Japanese/Ghibli movie that tells of a forest deforestation due to a textile factory and a princess that is trying to protect her forest

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Princess Mononoke is a 1997 Japanese adult animated epic historical fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten, Nippon Television Network and Dentsu. The film stars the voices of Yōji Matsuda, Yuriko Ishida, Yūko Tanaka, Kaoru Kobayashi, Masahiko Nishimura, Tsunehiko Kamijo, Akihiro Miwa, Mitsuko Mori, and Hisaya Morishige.

Princess Mononoke is set in the late Muromachi period of Japan (approximately 1336 to 1573 AD), but it includes fantasy elements. The story follows a young Emishi prince named Ashitaka, and his involvement in a struggle between the gods () of a forest and the humans who consume its resources. The film deals with themes of Shinto and environmentalism. The term is not a name, but a Japanese word for supernatural, shape-shifting beings that possess people and cause suffering, disease, or death.

The film was released in Japan on July 12, 1997, by Toho, and in the United States on October 29, 1999. This was the first Studio Ghibli film in the United States to be rated PG-13 by the MPA. It was a critical and commercial blockbuster, becoming the highest-grossing film in Japan of 1997, and also held Japan's box office record for domestic films until 2001's Spirited Away, another Miyazaki film. It was dubbed into English with a script by Neil Gaiman and initially distributed in North America by Miramax, where it sold well on home media despite not performing strongly at the box office. The film greatly increased Ghibli's popularity and influence outside Japan.

During the Muromachi period in Japan, an Emishi village is attacked by a hideous demon. The last Emishi prince, Ashitaka, kills it before it reaches the village, but it manages to grasp his arm and curse him before its death. The curse grants him superhuman strength, but it also causes a scar-like mark that will surround him, cause him pain, and eventually kill him. The villagers discover that the demon was a boar god (boar ), corrupted by an iron ball lodged in his body. The village's wise woman tells Ashitaka that he may find a cure in the western lands that the demon came from, and that he cannot return to his homeland.

Heading west, Ashitaka meets Jigo, an opportunistic monk who tells Ashitaka he may find help from the Great Forest Spirit, a deer-like animal god by day and a giant Night Walker by night. Nearby, men on a cliffside herd oxen to their home of Iron Town, led by Lady Eboshi, and repel an attack by a wolf pack led by the wolf goddess Moro, whom Eboshi wounds with a gun shot. Riding one of the wolves is San, a human girl. Down below, Ashitaka encounters San and the wolves, who rebuff his greeting. He then manages to rescue two of the men fallen from the cliff and transports them back through the forest, where he briefly glimpses the Great Forest Spirit.

Ashitaka and the survivors arrive at Iron Town, where he is greeted with fascination. Iron Town is a refuge for outcasts and lepers employed to process iron and create firearms, such as hand cannons and matchlock muskets. Ashitaka learns that the town was built by clearcutting forests to mine the iron, leading to conflicts with Asano, a local daimyō, and a giant boar god named Nago. Eboshi admits that she shot Nago, incidentally turning him into the demon that attacked Ashitaka's village. She also reveals that San, dubbed Princess Mononoke, was raised by the wolves and hates humankind.

San infiltrates Iron Town to kill Eboshi. Ashitaka intervenes and quickly subdues Eboshi and San while they are locked in combat. Amidst the hysteria he is shot by a villager, but the curse gives him the strength to carry San out of the village. San awakens and prepares to kill the weakened Ashitaka, but hesitates when he tells her that she is beautiful. She decides to trust him after the Forest Spirit heals his bullet wound that night. The next day, a boar clan led by the blind god Okkoto plans to attack Iron Town to save the forest. Eboshi sets out to kill the Forest Spirit with Jigo; Eboshi intends to give the god's head to the Emperor (who believes it will grant him immortality) in return for protection from Lord Asano, while Jigo desires the large reward being offered.

Ashitaka recovers and finds Iron Town besieged by Asano's samurai. The boar clan has been annihilated in battle, and Okkoto is badly wounded. Jigo's men trick Okkoto into leading them to the Forest Spirit. San tries to stop Okkoto but is swept up as his pain corrupts him into a demon. As everyone clashes at the pool of the Forest Spirit, Ashitaka and Moro save San, and then the Forest Spirit euthanizes Moro and Okkoto. As it begins to transform into the Night Walker, Eboshi shoots and decapitates it. Jigo steals the head, while the Forest Spirit's body bleeds ooze that spreads over the land and kills anything it touches. The forest and begin to die; Moro's head briefly comes alive and bites off Eboshi's right arm, but she survives. Enraged, San attempts to kill Eboshi again, but is stopped by Ashitaka, who consoles her and encourages her not to give up.

After Iron Town is evacuated, Ashitaka and San pursue Jigo and retrieve the head, returning it to the Forest Spirit. The Spirit dies, but its form washes over the land, healing it and lifting Ashitaka's curse. Ashitaka stays to help rebuild Iron Town, but promises to visit San in the forest. Grateful to Ashitaka and San, Eboshi vows to build a better town. The forest begins to regrow as a single kodama emerges from the brush.

Yōji Matsuda voices Prince Ashitaka, the last Ainu prince of the Emishi tribe whose traveling companion is Yakul, a red elk, a fictional species of elk that Miyazaki created for the film. Novelist Ali Shaw has described Yakul as being more similar to a red Lechwe than an elk. Miyazaki called Ashitaka a "melancholic boy who has a fate" and stated that Ashitaka's curse "is similar to the lives of people [at the time]". Ashitaka's English voice actor Billy Crudup stated that he liked Ashitaka as "an unexpected hero. He's not your usual wild, brave guy. He's really just a young, earnest man who's trying to lead a valuable life and protect his village."

Yuriko Ishida voices San, a young woman who was raised by the wolves and feels hatred for humans, but eventually comes to care for Ashitaka. In the English version, San is voiced by Claire Danes.

Ishida also voices Kaya, Ashitaka's bride-elect who breaks the rules of the village to gift him her dagger to remember her by. Tara Strong provides her voice in the English version, where she is referred to as his younger sister due to the translation.

Kaya is Ashitaka's fiancée. She is the fiancé decided in the village. In Japan, people call young men "aniki" or "nii-chan" or "anii-sama" even if they are not blood brothers.

Yūko Tanaka provides the voice of Lady Eboshi, the ruler of Irontown who continually clears the forest. Miyazaki stated that Eboshi was supposed to have a traumatic past, although it is not specifically mentioned in the film. Miyazaki said that Eboshi has a strong and secure personality, evident in the fact that she let Ashitaka move freely through the settlement unescorted, despite his unclear motives. He also said that Eboshi does not acknowledge the Emperor's authority in Irontown, a revolutionary view for the time, and displays an atypical attitude for a woman of that era in that she would not hesitate to sacrifice herself or those around her for her dreams. Miyazaki also said that Eboshi resembles a shirabyōshi. Eboshi's English voice actress Minnie Driver stated that she was interested in "the challenge of playing [a] woman who supports industry and represents the interests of man, in terms of achievement and greed." Driver viewed Eboshi as "a warrior, an innovator and a protector."

Kaoru Kobayashi provides the voice of Jiko-bō (, called "Jigo" in the English version), a monk and mercenary who befriends Ashitaka on his journey to the west. Miyazaki was unsure whether to make Jiko-bō a government spy, a ninja, a member of a religious group or "a very good guy." He eventually decided to give him elements of all of the above groups. In the English version, Jigo is voiced by Billy Bob Thornton.

Masahiko Nishimura voices Kohroku, an ox driver; John DeMita voices Kohroku in the English version. Miyazaki wrote Kohroku to be "an ordinary guy [who] didn't do anything heroic, right to the end", something he stated was contrary to films he had made up to that point.

Tsunehiko Kamijō provides the voice of Gonza, Eboshi's short-tempered but loyal bodyguard; he is voiced by John DiMaggio in the English version.

Akihiro Miwa voices Moro, a giant wolf god and San's adopted mother; Gillian Anderson provides her voice in the English version.

Mitsuko Mori provides the voice of Hii-sama, the wise woman of Ashitaka's village. In the English version, Hii-sama is voiced by Debi Derryberry.

Hisaya Morishige provides the voice of Okkoto-nushi (, called "Okkoto" in the English version), a blind boar god. In the English version, Okkoto is voiced by Keith David, who also voices the narrator in the film's opening sequence.

The cast also includes:

Akira Nagoya as the cattleman leader (牛飼いの長 , Ushikai no Osa);

Kimihiro Reizei as a Jibashiri (ジバシリ );

Tetsu Watanabe as a mountain wolf (山犬 , Yamainu);

Makoto Sato as Nago (ナゴの守 , Nago no Mori ) , a wild boar turned into a demon who curses Ashitaka when he attacks the Emishi village, voiced by John DiMaggio in the English version;

and Sumi Shimamoto as Toki (トキ ), Kohroku's wife, a former prostitute, and the leader of Eboshi's women, voiced by Jada Pinkett Smith in the English version.

Shiratani Unsui forest, Yakushima

In the late 1970s, Miyazaki drew sketches of a film about a princess living in the woods with a beast. Miyazaki began writing the film's plotline and drew the initial storyboards for the film in August 1994. He had difficulties adapting his early ideas and visualisations, because elements had already been used in My Neighbor Totoro and because of societal changes since the creation of the original sketches and image boards. This writer's block prompted him to accept a request for the creation of the On Your Mark promotional music video for the Chage and Aska song of the same title. According to Toshio Suzuki, the diversion allowed Miyazaki to return for a fresh start on the creation of Princess Mononoke. In April 1995, supervising animator Masashi Ando devised the character designs from Miyazaki's storyboard. In May 1995, Miyazaki drew the initial storyboards. That same month, Miyazaki and Ando went to the ancient forests of Yakushima, of Kyushu, an inspiration for the landscape of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, and the mountains of Shirakami-Sanchi in northern Honshu for location scouting along with a group of art directors, background artists and digital animators for three days. Animation production commenced in July 1995. Miyazaki personally oversaw each of the 144,000 cels in the film, and is estimated to have retouched parts of 80,000 of them. The final storyboards of the film's ending were finished only months before the Japanese premiere date.

Inspired by John Ford, an Irish-American director best known for his Westerns, Miyazaki created Irontown as a "tight-knit frontier town" and populated it with "characters from outcast groups and oppressed minorities who rarely, if ever, appear in Japanese films." He made the characters "yearning, ambitious and tough." Miyazaki did not want to create an accurate history of Medieval Japan, and wanted to "portray the very beginnings of the seemingly insoluble conflict between the natural world and modern industrial civilization." The landscapes appearing in the film were inspired by Yakushima. Despite being set during the Muromachi period, the actual time period of Princess Mononoke depicts a "symbolic neverwhen clash of three proto-Japanese races (the Jomon, Yamato and Emishi)."

3D rendering was used to create writhing demon flesh and composite it onto a hand-drawn Ashitaka.

Princess Mononoke was produced with an estimated budget of ¥2.35 billion (approximately US$23.5 million). It was mostly hand-drawn, but incorporates some use of computer animation in approximately ten percent of the film. The computer-animated parts are designed to blend in and support the traditional cel animation, and are mainly used in images consisting of a mixture of computer generated graphics and traditional drawing. A further 10 minutes uses inked-and-painted, a technique used in all subsequent Studio Ghibli films. Most of the film is colored with traditional paint, based on the color schemes designed by Miyazaki and Michiyo Yasuda. However, producers agreed on the installation of computers to successfully complete the film prior to the Japanese premiere date. Telecom Animation Film Company and Oh! Production helped animate the film. Toei Animation and DR Movie helped with the painting process.

Two titles were originally considered for the film. One, ultimately chosen, has been translated into English as Princess Mononoke. The other title can be translated into English as The Legend of Ashitaka, and it contains an uncommon kanji 𦻙 that represents "a legend passed down from ear to ear without being recorded in official history", according to Miyazaki. In a Tokyo Broadcasting System program, televised on November 26, 2013, Toshio Suzuki mentioned that Miyazaki had preferred The Legend of Ashitaka as the title while Suzuki himself favoured Princess Mononoke, though the former title was eventually reused for the first song on the soundtrack. The English dub contains minor additional voice overs to explain nuances of Japanese culture to western audiences.

A central theme of Princess Mononoke is the environment. The film centers on the adventure of Ashitaka as he journeys to the west to undo a fatal curse inflicted upon him by Nago, a boar turned into a demon by Eboshi. Michelle J. Smith and Elizabeth Parsons said that the film "makes heroes of outsiders in all identity politics categories and blurs the stereotypes that usually define such characters". In the case of the deer god's destruction of the forest and Tataraba, Smith and Parsons said that the "supernatural forces of destruction are unleashed by humans greedily consuming natural resources". They also characterized Eboshi as a businesswoman who has a desire to make money at the expense of the forest, and also cite Eboshi's intention to destroy the forest to mine the mountain "embodies environmentalist evil". Deirdre M. Pike writes that Princess Mononoke is simultaneously part of nature and part of the problem. Mononoke represents the connection between the environment and humans, but also demonstrates that there is an imbalance in power between the two.

Two other themes found in the plot of Princess Mononoke are sexuality and disability. Speaking at the International Symposium on Leprosy / Hansen's Disease History in Tokyo, Miyazaki explained that he was inspired to portray people living with leprosy, "said to be an incurable disease caused by bad karma", after visiting the Tama Zenshoen Sanatorium near his home in Tokyo. Lady Eboshi is driven by her compassion for the disabled, and believes that blood from the Great Forest Spirit could allow her to "cure [her] poor lepers". Michelle Jarman, Assistant Professor of Disability Studies at the University of Wyoming, and Eunjung Kim, Assistant Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the disabled and gendered sexual bodies were partially used as a transition from the feudal era to a hegemony that "embraces modern social systems, such as industrialization, gendered division of labor, institutionalization of people with diseases, and militarization of men and women." They likened Lady Eboshi to a monarch. Kim and Jarman suggested that Eboshi's disregard of ancient laws and curses towards sex workers and lepers was enlightenment reasoning and her exploitation of disabled people furthered her modernist viewpoints. Kim and Jarman conclude that Lady Eboshi's supposed benevolence in incorporating lepers and sex workers into her society leverages the social stigma attached to marginalized groups, pointing out that the hierarchical structures within Irontown still support the stigmatization of lepers and sex workers.

An additional theme is the morally ambiguous conflict between humankind's growth and development and Nature's need for preservation. According to the Chicago Sun-Times's Roger Ebert, "It is not a simplistic tale of good and evil, but the story of how humans, forest animals and nature gods all fight for their share of the new emerging order." Billy Crudup, who provided the English voice for Ashitaka, said "The movie was such an entirely different experience; it had a whole new sensibility I had never seen in animation. It also had something profound to say: that there has to be a give and take between man and nature. One of the things that really impressed me is that Miyazaki shows life in all its multi-faceted complexity, without the traditional perfect heroes and wicked villains. Even Lady Eboshi, who Ashitaka respects, is not so much evil as short-sighted." Minnie Driver, the English voice actress for Lady Eboshi, commented similarly: "It's one of the most remarkable things about the film: Miyazaki gives a complete argument for both sides of the battle between technological achievement and our spiritual roots in the forest. He shows that good and evil, violence and peace exist in us all. It's all about how you harmonize it all." Anime historian Susan Napier said there is no clear good vs. evil conflict in Princess Mononoke, unlike other films popular with children. Based on the multiple points of view the film adopts, San and Lady Eboshi can simultaneously be viewed as heroic or villainous. San defends the forest and viewers empathize with her. But she also attacks innocent people, complicating how we evaluate her. Opposed to San, Eboshi tries to destroy the forest and could be considered a villain. But everything she does is out of a desire to protect her village and see it prosper. San and Lady Eboshi survive until film's end, defying the usual convention of good triumphing over evil with the antagonist defeated. Napier concluded that the resolution of the conflict is left ambiguous, implying that Lady Eboshi and San will be able to come to some sort of compromise. The ambiguity suggests that there are no true villains or heroes.

Dan Jolin of said that a potential theme could be that of lost innocence. Miyazaki attributes this to his experience of making his previous film, Porco Rosso, and the wars in the former Yugoslavia, which he cites as an example of mankind never learning, making it difficult for him to go back to making a film such as Kiki's Delivery Service, where he has been quoted as saying "It felt like children were being born to this world without being blessed. How could we pretend to them that we're happy?"

Duality is central to Eboshi's characterization. Benjamin Thevenin, Assistant Professor of Theater and Media Arts at Brigham Young University, said Eboshi does not fully understand the harm she does to the spirits. Her focus is on creating a safe home for her people. She holds no malicious intent toward nature and its spirits until they begin attacking her people. Once nature attacks, she gathers her soldiers to protect the inhabitants of her town, a place where all are welcome. Irontown is a haven for former sex workers and lepers. She brings them to Irontown and gives them jobs, hospitality, and a kindness that they have never experienced before. The same treatment goes for all Irontown's inhabitants, not just the sickly and the scorned. Lady Eboshi treats everyone equally, no matter the race, sex, or history of the individual, creating a caring community. While Eboshi hates San and the forest spirits, she keeps a garden in her town. Her care for the garden implies that her intention is not to ravage nature to no end, but rather to help her own people. Thevenin concluded that although Eboshi can be seen as the film's villain, she is also a hero to the citizens of Irontown and to humankind in general.

At first glance Lady Eboshi and Princess Mononoke suggest a very dualistic and dichotomous view of life. Lady Eboshi works for the survival of humankind and San for the survival of nature. But Miyazaki, through the character of Ashitaka, argues that we should accept a non-dualistic view of living, accepting that nature and humans coexist. Ashitaka acts as a healer, mediating between humanity and nature. Ashitaka's curse, obtained while defending his people from a demonized boar god, ultimately symbolizes the destructive force of life, forcing him to recognize the commonalities present in the conflict between industrialized society and nature. Ashitaka's quest for a cure by the Great Forest Spirit symbolizes humanity's quest to find a way to live on earth that accepts the interbeing of all of earth's creatures. Ashitaka takes responsibility for the preservation and restoration of nature when he returns the Great Forest Spirit's head, transferring the guardianship of nature from the now dead Great Forest Spirit to humanity. With guardianship of nature delegated to humanity, the dichotomy between humanity and nature is dismantled and the two forces are tasked with recognizing their coexistence.

Another theme in this film is between individualism and societal conformity. According to University of Bristol professors Christos Ellinas, Neil Allan and Anders Johansson, this struggle can be seen between San, a strong individualistic force, and Eboshi, the leader of a great society. San has fully committed to living with the wolves in the forest and to renouncing her association with the human race. Eboshi has vowed to sustain her society of Irontown by any means including destroying the environment. The people of Irontown have a cohesive ideology and agree with Eboshi to protect Irontown at the cost of the environment's destruction. This conformity can be found within their society, because "even though there is an envisioned culture at which an organization abides to [sic], achieving coherence at lower aggregation levels (e.g. individuals) is increasingly challenging due to its emergent nature".

Princess Mononoke was released theatrically in Japan on July 12, 1997. The film was extremely successful in Japan and with both anime fans and arthouse moviegoers in English-speaking countries.

Since Walt Disney Studios had made a distribution deal with Tokuma Shoten for Studio Ghibli's films in 1996, it was the first film from Studio Ghibli along with Kiki's Delivery Service and Castle in the Sky to have been dubbed into English by Disney; in this case, subsidiary Miramax Films was assigned to release the movie in the US on October 29, 1999. In response to demands from Miramax chairman Harvey Weinstein to edit the film, one of Miyazaki's producers sent Weinstein a samurai sword with the message: "No cuts." Promotion manager, Steve Alpert, revealed that Weinstein had wanted to trim the film down from 135 minutes to 90 minutes "despite having promised not to do so." When Alpert informed him that Miyazaki would not agree to these demands, Weinstein flew into one of his infamous rages and threatened Alpert that he would "never work in this...industry again".

Weinstein hired Neil Gaiman to write the English script, and he chose to simplify some of the Japanese terminology for this dub, with words like Jibarashi becoming "Mercenary" and Shishigami becoming "Forest Spirit". According to him at one of the American screenings of the dub, the release was somewhat delayed because the original recordings deviated from the English script as written. Despite Gaiman's independent fame as an author, his role as scriptwriter for the dub was not heavily promoted: Studio Ghibli requested that Miramax remove some executives' names from the poster for the film, but the executives (Harvey Weinstein, Bob Weinstein, and Scott Martin) decided that Gaiman's name was contractually expendable.

On April 29, 2000, the English-dub version of Princess Mononoke was released theatrically in Japan along with the documentary Mononoke hime in U.S.A. The documentary was directed by Toshikazu Sato and featured Miyazaki visiting the Walt Disney Studios and various film festivals. The film had a limited theatrical re-release in the United States during July 2018, and again during April 2022 for the 25th anniversary of its original Japanese release.

Princess Mononoke was the highest-grossing Japanese film of 1997, earning ¥11.3 billion in distribution rental earnings. It became the highest-grossing film in Japan, beating the record set by in 1982, but was surpassed several months later by . The film earned total domestic gross receipts of ¥20.18 billion.

It was the top-grossing anime film in the United States in January 2001, but because its US release was only in select theaters, the film did not fare as well financially in the country when released in October 1999. It grossed $2,298,191 for the first eight weeks. It showed more strength internationally, where it earned a total of $11 million outside Japan, bringing its worldwide total to $159,375,308 at the time. On December 6, 2016, GKIDS announced that it would screen the film in US cinemas on January 5 and January 9, 2017, to celebrate its 20th anniversary, bundled with the On Your Mark short. The film's limited US re-release in 2018 grossed $1,423,877 over five days, bringing its US total to $3,799,185 and worldwide total to $160,799,185. As of 2020, the film has grossed $194.3 million.

For its 25th anniversary, Princess Mononoke was screened in 35mm at New York City's Japan Society on July 22, 2022.

In Japan, the film was released on VHS by Buena Vista Home Entertainment on June 26, 1998. A LaserDisc edition was also released by Tokuma Japan Communications on the same day. The film was released on DVD by Buena Vista Home Entertainment on November 21, 2001, with bonus extras added, including the international versions of the film as well as the storyboards. By 2007, Princess Mononoke sold 4.4million DVD units in Japan. At an average retail price of ¥4,700, this is equivalent to approximately ¥20,680 million ($259.18 million) in Japanese sales revenue as of 2007.

In July 2000, Buena Vista Home Entertainment via Miramax Home Entertainment announced plans to release the film on VHS and DVD in North America on August 29. Initially, the DVD version of Princess Mononoke wasn't going to include the Japanese-language track at the request of Buena Vista's Japan division. Because the film hadn't been released on DVD in Japan yet, there were concerns that "a foreign-released DVD containing the Japanese language track will allow for the importation of such a DVD to Japan, which could seriously hurt the local sales of a future release of the [film]". The fansite Nausicaa.net organized an email campaign for fans to include the Japanese language track, while DVD Talk began an online petition to retain the Japanese language track. The DVD release of Princess Mononoke was delayed as a result. Miramax Home Entertainment released the DVD on December 19, 2000 with the original Japanese audio, the English dubbed audio and extras including a trailer and a documentary with interviews from the English dub voice actors. The film was released on Blu-ray disc in Japan on December 4, 2013.

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released Princess Mononoke on Blu-ray Disc on November 18, 2014. In its first week, it sold 21,860 units; by November 23, 2014, it had grossed $502,332. It was later included in Disney's "The Collected Works of Hayao Miyazaki" Blu-ray set, released on November 17, 2015. GKIDS re-issued the film on Blu-ray and DVD on October 17, 2017. As of October 2020, the film has grossed $9,232,906 from Blu-ray sales in the United States. In total, Mononoke's video releases in Japan and the United States grossed an estimated $268 million in physical sales.

In the United Kingdom, the film's Studio Ghibli anniversary release appeared several times on the annual lists of best-selling foreign language film on home video, ranking number six in 2015 (below five other Studio Ghibli anime films), number ten in 2016, number five in 2018 (below four other Japanese films), and number three in 2019 (below Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro).

The film was aired on Nippon TV (NTV) in Japan, on 22 January 1999. It became NTV's most-watched film up until then with a 35.1% audience rating, surpassing the 28.4% record previously set by Tsuribaka Nisshi 4 in 1994. In turn, Princess Mononoke was later surpassed by Spirited Away, when it aired in 2003.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 115 critic reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.1/10. The website's consensus reads, "With its epic story and breathtaking visuals, Princess Mononoke is a landmark in the world of animation." On Metacritic, it has an average score of 76 out of 100 based on 29 reviews, indictating "generally favorable reviews".

The Daily Yomiuri's Aaron Gerow called the film a "powerful compilation of Miyazaki's world, a cumulative statement of his moral and filmic concerns." Leonard Klady of said that Princess Mononoke "is not only more sharply drawn, it has an extremely complex and adult script" and the film "has the soul of a romantic epic, and its lush tones, elegant score by Joe Hisaishi and full-blooded characterizations give it the sweep of cinema's most grand canvases". Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called Princess Mononoke "a great achievement and a wonderful experience, and one of the best films of the year. [...] You won't find many Hollywood love stories (animated or otherwise) so philosophical." Ty Burr of Entertainment Weekly called the film "a windswept pinnacle of its art" and that it "has the effect of making the average Disney film look like just another toy story". Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times said that the film "brings a very different sensibility to animation, a medium [Miyazaki] views as completely suitable for straight dramatic narrative and serious themes." In his review, Dave Smith from Gamers' Republic called it "one of the greatest animated films ever created, and easily one of the best films of 1999."

Roger Ebert placed Princess Mononoke sixth on his top ten movies of 1999. In 2001, the Japanese magazine ranked Princess Mononoke 47th in their list of 100 Best Anime Productions of All Time. It ranked 488th on 's list of the 500 greatest films. Time Out ranked the film 26th on 50 greatest animated films. It also ranked 26 on s list of 50 greatest animated films.

James Cameron cited Princess Mononoke as an influence on his 2009 film . He acknowledged that it shares themes with Princess Mononoke, including its clash between cultures and civilizations, and cited Princess Mononoke as an influence on the ecosystem of Pandora.

Princess Mononoke is the first animated feature film to win the Japan Academy Prize for Best Picture. For the 70th Academy Awards ceremony, Princess Mononoke was the Japanese submission to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but was not successfully nominated. Hayao Miyazaki was also nominated for an Annie Award for his work on the film.

The film score of Princess Mononoke was composed and performed by Joe Hisaishi, the soundtrack composer for nearly all of Miyazaki's productions, and Miyazaki wrote the lyrics of the two vocal tracks, "The Tatara Women Work Song" and its title song. The music was performed by Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by Hiroshi Kumagai. The soundtrack was released in Japan by Tokuma Japan Communications on July 2, 1997, and the North American version was released by Milan Records on October 12, 1999.

The titular theme song was performed by counter-tenor Yoshikazu Mera. For the English adaptation, Sasha Lazard sang the song. During the movie Hisaishi makes use of a few known classical pieces and quotes them, such as Dmitri Shostakovich's 5th symphony. As with other Studio Ghibli films, additional albums featuring soundtrack themes in alternative versions have been released. The image album features early versions of the themes, recorded at the beginning of the film production process, and used as source of inspiration for the various artists involved. The symphonic suite features longer compositions, each encompassing several of the movie themes, performed by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Mario Klemens.

In 2012, it was announced that Studio Ghibli and British theatre company Whole Hog Theatre would be bringing Princess Mononoke to the stage. It is the first stage adaptation of a Studio Ghibli work. The contact between Whole Hog Theatre and Studio Ghibli was facilitated by Nick Park of Aardman Animations after he sent footage of Whole Hog performances to Studio Ghibli's Toshio Suzuki. The play features large puppets made out of recycled and reclaimed materials.

The first performances were scheduled for London's New Diorama Theatre and sold out in 72 hours, a year in advance. In March 2013, it was announced that the show would transfer to Japan after its first run of shows in London. A second series of performances followed in London after the return from Tokyo. The second run of London performances sold out in four and half hours. The play received positive reviews and was one of Lyn Gardner's theatre picks in The Guardian. On April 27, 2013, the play was presented at Nico Nico Douga's Cho Party and was streamed online in Japan.

1. ^ "5 reasons to celebrate Princess Mononoke: Hayao Miyazaki's animated masterpiece turns 20". BFI.

2. ^ Miyazaki, H. (Director). (1997). Princess Mononoke [Film]. Studio Ghibli.

3. ^ "Interview: Miyazaki on Mononoke-hime". Nausicaa.net. Translated by Ryoko Toyama. Tokuma Shoten. July 1997. Archived from the original on April 10, 2009. Q: Kaya, who saw Ashitaka off, loved Ashitaka, didn't she?
M: Yes of course. She calls him "Anisama (older brother)", but it just means that he is an older boy in her clan.
Q: So they are not real brother and sister.
M: If they were, that wouldn't be interesting at all. There used to be a lot of marriage among blood relations in Japan. I thought of Kaya as a girl who is determined to do so (marry Ashitaka). But Ashitaka chose San. It's not strange at all to live with San, who lives with such a brutal fate. That's life.

4. ^ Leavey, John (2010). "Possessed by and of: Up against Seeing: Princess Mononoke". ImageTexT. University of Florida. 5 (2). Archived from the original on December 15, 2012.

5. ^ Fuster, Jeremy (January 6, 2017). "'Princess Mononoke' Turns 20: 10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About The Animated Classic". . Archived from the original on July 30, 2021.

6. ^ "Hayao Miyazaki Chat Transcript - Movie: Princess Mononoke". princess-mononoke.com. Miramax Films. November 4, 1999. Archived from the original on June 29, 2007. Q: The report is that you retouched by hand over 80,000 cels of animation in Mononoke Hime. Is this true?
M: I certainly never counted how many cels one by one. But I look at and sign off on every cel. It's not like every cel needs correcting or touching up. Many are perfect the way they are. That that makes me very gratified. My job is to maintain overall, in every cel, a standard that I have set for the film. So as long as each cel reaches that standard, the less work for me.

7. Toshio Uratani (2004). Princess Mononoke: Making of a Masterpiece (Documentary). Japan: Buena Vista Home Entertainment.

8. ^ "Wettbewerb/In Competition". Moving Pictures, Berlinale Extra. Berlin: 32. February 11-22, 1998.

9. ^ Miyazaki, Hayao (July 31, 1996). "「もののけ姫」 企画書" [Princess Mononoke Planning Memo]. 出発点 [Starting Point]. San Francisco: Viz Media. pp. 272-274. ISBN 978-1-4215-0594-7. Archived from the original on August 28, 2014.

10. ^ Gwendolyn Morgan (2015). "Creatures in Crisis: Apocalyptic Environmental Visions in Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke". Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities. 2 (3): 172-183. doi:10.5250/resilience.2.3.0172. JSTOR 10.5250/resilience.2.3.0172. S2CID 156400474.

11. Pike, Deidre M. (2014). Enviro-Toons: Green Themes in Animated Cinema and Television. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. p. 159. ISBN 978-0-7864-9002-8.

12. ^ Wendi, Sierra; Alysah, Berwald; Melissa, Guck; Erica, Maeder (January 1, 2015). "Nature, Technology, and Ruined Women: Ecofeminism and Princess Mononoke". The Seneca Falls Dialogues Journal. 1 (1). Archived from the original on February 13, 2019.

13. ^ McCarter, Charles (October 20, 1999). "The Remaking of a Myth: Princess Mononoke in America". Ex.org - EX: The Online World of Anime & Manga. Archived from the original on August 6, 2010.

14. ^ Thevenin, Benjamin (October 1, 2013). "Princess Mononoke and beyond: New nature narratives for children". Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture. 4 (2): 147-170. doi:10.1386/iscc.4.2.147_1.

15. ^ Cheng, Catherine (June 2019). "Nature and the Smiths in Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke". Tamkang Review. 49.2: 27-48. doi:10.6184/TKR.201906_49(2).0002. Archived from the original on April 28, 2023.

16. ^ Ellinas, Christos; Allan, Neil; Johansson, Anders (June 30, 2017). "Dynamics of organizational culture: Individual beliefs vs. social conformity". PLOS ONE. 12 (6): e0180193. arXiv:. Bibcode:2017PLoSO..1280193E. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0180193. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC . PMID 28665960.

17. ^ "'Princess Mononoke: 20th Anniversary' Comes to U.S. Cinemas on January 5 and 9 Only". Anime News Network. December 6, 2016. Archived from the original on October 28, 2020.

18. (in Japanese). Walt Disney Japan. Archived from the original on October 15, 2011.

19. ^ Statistical Yearbook 2017 (PDF). United Kingdom: British Film Institute (BFI). 2017. pp. 140-1. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 20, 2022.

20. ^ Statistical Yearbook 2019 (PDF). United Kingdom: British Film Institute (BFI). 2019. pp. 103-4. Archived (PDF) from the original on April 26, 2022.

21. ^ Hamano, Keiji; Kitae, Hiroyuki; Udagawa, Shoji; Watanabe, Yasuko; Uchiyama, Takashi (November 2007). The Japanese Market for UK Films. Cinema Alliance Limited, UK Film Council, British Film Institute. pp. 58-9. Archived from the original on September 23, 2022 - via Yumpu.

22. ^ Turan, Kenneth (October 29, 1999). "'Mononoke' a Haunting, Magical World of Fantasy". Los Angeles Times. p. 1. Archived from the original on October 16, 2012.

23. ^ Ito, Norihiro (December 25, 2009). "新作「アバター」宮崎アニメにオマージュ Ｊ・キャメロン監督 (New Film Avatar Homage to Miyazaki's Animated Film: J. Cameron)". Sankei Shimbun (in Japanese). Archived from the original on December 28, 2009.

Clements, Jonathan; McCarthy, Helen (2006). "Princess Mononoke". The Anime Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese Animation since 1917. California: Stone Bridge Press. pp. 505-506. ISBN 1-933330-10-4.

Galbraith IV, Stuart (2008). The Toho Studios Story: A History and Complete Filmography. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-1461673743.

Kim, Eunjung; Jarman, Michelle (April 2008). "Modernity's Rescue Mission: Postcolonial Transactions of Disability and Sexuality" (PDF). Canadian Journal of Film Studies. 17 (1): 52-68. doi:10.3138/cjfs.17.1.52. ISSN 0847-5911. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 30, 2013.

McCarthy, Helen (1999). "Princess Mononoke: The Nature of Love". Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation. Berkeley, California: Stone Bridge Press. pp. 181-204. ISBN 978-1880656419.

Smith, Michelle J.; Parsons, Elizabeth (February 2012). "Animating child activism: Environmentalism and class politics in Ghibli's Princess Mononoke (1997) and Fox's Fern Gully (1992)". Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies. Routledge. 26 (1): 25-37. doi:10.1080/10304312.2012.630138. S2CID 144411247.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Princess Mononoke is a 1997 Japanese adult animated epic historical fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten, Nippon Television Network and Dentsu. The film stars the voices of Yōji Matsuda, Yuriko Ishida, Yūko Tanaka, Kaoru Kobayashi, Masahiko Nishimura, Tsunehiko Kamijo, Akihiro Miwa, Mitsuko Mori, and Hisaya Morishige.

# data[].attributes.body
A Japanese/Ghibli movie that tell the story of forest deforestation and badgers that can transform to human

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
(Pom Poko Japanese: 平成狸合戦ぽんぽこ, Hepburn: Heisei Tanuki Gassen Ponpoko, lit. " Heisei-era Raccoon Dog War Ponpoko") is a 1994 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Isao Takahata, animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten, Nippon Television Network and Hakuhodo, and distributed by Toho.

An environmental allegory, the story features tanuki, or Japanese raccoon dogs (incorrectly referred to as "raccoons" in the English dialog). In Japanese folklore, tanuki are considered to be magical creatures, capable of shape-shifting into people or other objects. They are a highly sociable, mischievous species, too fun-loving and fond of tasty treats to be a real threat - unlike (foxes) and other shape-shifters.

The phrase "Pom Poko" in the title refers to the sound of tanuki drumming their bellies, from a 1919 poem by Ujō Noguchi which became a popular children's song when it was set to music in 1925.

Prominent scrotums are an integral part of tanuki folklore, and they are shown and referred to throughout the film, and also used frequently in their shape-shifting. This remains unchanged in the DVD release, though the English dub (but not the subtitles) refers to them as "raccoon pouches".

The story begins in late 1960s Japan. A group of tanuki are threatened by a gigantic suburban development project called New Tama, in the Tama Hills on the outskirts of Tokyo. The development is cutting into their forest habitat and dividing their land. The story resumes in early 1990s Japan, during the early years of the Heisei era. With limited living space and food decreasing every year, the tanuki begin fighting among themselves for the diminishing resources, but at the urging of the matriarch Oroku, they decide to unify to stop the development.

Several tanuki lead the resistance, including the aggressive chief Gonta, the old guru Seizaemon, the wise-woman Oroku, and the young and resourceful Shoukichi. Using their illusion skills (which they must re-learn after having forgotten them), they stage a number of diversions including industrial sabotage. These attacks injure and even kill people, frightening construction workers into quitting, but more workers immediately replace them. In desperation, the tanuki send out messengers to seek help from various legendary elders from other regions.

After several years, one of the messengers returns bringing a trio of elders from the distant island of Shikoku, where development is not a problem and the tanuki are still worshipped. In an effort at re-establishing respect for the supernatural, the group stages a massive ghost parade to make the humans think the town is haunted. The strain of the massive illusion kills one of the elders and his spirit is lifted up in a , and the effort seems wasted when the owner of a nearby theme park takes credit for the parade, claiming it was a publicity stunt.

With this setback, the unity of the tanuki finally fails and they break up into smaller groups, each following a different strategy. One group led by Gonta takes the route of eco-terrorism, holding off workers until they are wiped out in a pitched battle with the police, and finally, fused into the form of a tsurube-otoshi, killed blocking the path of an oncoming dekotora. Another group desperately attempts to gain media attention through television appearances to plead their case against the habitat's destruction. One of the elders becomes senile and starts a Buddhist dancing cult among the tanuki who are unable to transform, eventually sailing away with them in a ship that takes them to their deaths, while the other elder investigates joining the human world as the last of the transforming (foxes) have already done.

When all else fails, in a last act of defiance, the remaining tanuki stage a grand illusion, temporarily transforming the urbanized land back into its pristine state to remind everyone of what has been lost. Finally, with their strength exhausted, the tanuki most trained in illusion follow the example of the kitsune: they blend into human society one by one, abandoning those who cannot transform. While the media appeal comes too late to stop the construction, the public responds sympathetically to the tanuki, pushing the developers to set aside some areas as parks. However, the parks are too small to accommodate all the non-transforming tanuki. Some try to survive there, dodging traffic to rummage through human scraps for food, while others disperse farther out to the countryside to compete with the tanuki who are already there.

One day, Shoukichi, who also joined the human world, is coming home from work when he sees a non-transformed tanuki leaping into a gap in a wall. Shoukichi crawls into the gap and follows the path, which leads to a grassy clearing where some of his former companions are gathering. He joyfully transforms back into a tanuki to join them. Shoukichi's friend, Ponkichi, addresses the viewer, asking humans to be more considerate of tanuki and other animals less endowed with transformation skills, and not to destroy their living space; as the view pulls out and away, their surroundings are revealed as a golf course within a suburban sprawl.

Additional voices in the English dub include Newell Alexander, Jeff Bennett, Mitch Carter, Holly Dorff, Zac Gardner, Sherry Hursey, Jordan Orr, Philece Sampler, Alyson Stoner, Erica Beck, Reeve Carney, David Cowgill, Ike Eisenmann, Richard Steven Horvitz, Hope Levy, Mary Mouser, Peter Renaday, Audrey Wasilewski, and Adam Wylie.

The film was released in Japan on July 16, 1994. It was released on DVD on August 16, 2005 in North America by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment along with My Neighbors the Yamadas. Optimum Releasing released the film on DVD in the United Kingdom, a year later. Disney released a Blu-ray disc on February 3, 2015. GKIDS re-issued the film on Blu-ray and DVD on February 6, 2018 under a new deal with Studio Ghibli.

Pom Poko was the number one Japanese film on the domestic market in 1994, earning ¥2.63 billion in distribution income, and grossing ¥4.47 billion in total box office revenue.

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 86% based on 14 reviews. It was chosen as the Japanese submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for that year. It won Best Animation Film at the 49th Mainichi Film Awards.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
(Pom Poko Japanese: 平成狸合戦ぽんぽこ, Hepburn: Heisei Tanuki Gassen Ponpoko, lit. " Heisei-era Raccoon Dog War Ponpoko") is a 1994 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Isao Takahata, animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten, Nippon Television Network and Hakuhodo, and distributed by Toho.

# data[].attributes.body
A Japanese/Ghibli movie that tells about a spirit that lives in a big tree and protects the new family's house

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
My Neighbor Totoro is a 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten. The film stars voice actors Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto, and Hitoshi Takagi, and tells the story of a professor's young daughters Satsuki and Mei, and their interactions with friendly wood spirits in postwar rural Japan.

In 1989, Streamline Pictures produced an English-language dub for exclusive use on transpacific flights of Japan Airlines. Troma Films, under their 50th St. Films banner, distributed the dub of the film. This dub was released in 1993 to United States theaters, and the following year on VHS and LaserDisc in the US by Fox Video in 1994, and on DVD in 2002. The rights to this dub expired in 2004, so Walt Disney Home Entertainment re-released the film on March 7, 2006 with a new dub cast. This DVD release is the first version of the film in the US to include both Japanese and English language tracks.

The film explores themes such as animism, Shinto symbology, environmentalism and the joys of rural living; it received worldwide critical acclaim and has amassed a global cult following. My Neighbor Totoro has grossed over $41 million worldwide at the box office as of September 2019; the film also grossed significantly more from home video sales and merchandise.

My Neighbor Totoro received numerous awards, including the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize, the Mainichi Film Award, and Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film in 1988. It also received the Special Award at the Blue Ribbon Awards in the same year. The film is considered as one of the top animation films, ranking 41st in magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010 and the number-one animated film on the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll of all-time greatest films. The film and its titular character have become cultural icons, and made multiple cameo appearances in other films. Totoro also serves as the mascot for Studio Ghibli and is recognized as one of the most popular characters in Japanese animation.

In 1950s Japan, university professor Tatsuo Kusakabe and his daughters Satsuki and Mei (approximately ten and four years old, respectively) move into an old house close to the hospital where the girls' mother, Yasuko, is recovering from a long-term illness. The house is inhabited by small, dark, dust-like house spirits called susuwatari, that can be seen when moving from bright places to dark ones. The susuwatari leave to find another empty house. Mei discovers two small spirits that lead her into the hollow of a large camphor tree. She befriends a larger spirit, which identifies itself using a series of roars that she interprets as "Totoro". Mei thinks Totoro is the troll from her illustrated book Three Billy Goats Gruff. She falls asleep atop Totoro but when Satsuki finds her, she is on the ground. Despite many attempts, Mei cannot show her family Totoro's tree. Tatsuo comforts her, saying Totoro will reveal himself when he wants to.

The girls wait for Tatsuo's bus, which is late. Mei falls asleep on Satsuki's back and Totoro appears beside them, allowing Satsuki to see him for the first time. Totoro has only a leaf on his head for protection against the rain, prompting Satsuki to offer her umbrella to him. Delighted, he gives her a bundle of nuts and seeds in return. A giant, bus-shaped cat arrives; Totoro boards it and leaves. A few days after planting the seeds, the girls awaken at midnight to find Totoro and his fellow spirits engaged in a ceremonial dance around the planted seeds. They join in, causing the seeds to grow into an enormous tree. Totoro takes the girls for a ride on a magical flying top. In the morning, the tree is gone but the seeds have sprouted.

The girls discover that a planned visit by their mother has been postponed because of a setback in her treatment. Mei is upset and argues with Satsuki. She leaves for the hospital to take fresh corn to their mother, but gets lost on the way. Mei's disappearance prompts Satsuki and the neighbors to search for her. In desperation, Satsuki pleads for Totoro's help. Totoro summons the Catbus, which carries Satsuki to Mei's location, and the sisters reunite. The bus then takes them to the hospital, where the girls learn that their mother has been kept in the hospital by a minor cold but is otherwise recovering well. The girls secretly leave the ear of corn on the windowsill, where their parents discover it.

Eventually, their mother returns home and the sisters play with other children while Totoro and his friends watch from afar.

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it.

Animism is a major theme in My Neighbor Totoro, according to Eriko Ogihara-Schuck. Totoro has animistic traits and has kami status because he lives in a camphor tree in a Shinto shrine surrounded by a Shinto rope, and he is referred to as mori no nushi (master of the forest). Ogihara-Schuck writes that when Mei returns from her encounter with Totoro, her father takes Mei and her sister to the shrine to greet and thank Totoro. This is a common practice in the Shinto tradition following an encounter with a kami. According to Phillip E. Wegner, the film is an example of alternative history, citing the utopian-like setting of the anime.

After working on 3000 Miles in Search of a Mother, Miyazaki wanted to make a "delightful, wonderful film" that would be set in Japan with the idea to "entertain and touch its viewers, but stay with them long after they have left the theaters". Initially, Miyazaki had the main characters Totoro, Mei, Tatsuo, and Kanta. The director based Mei on his niece, and Totoros as "serene, carefree creatures" that were "supposedly the forest keeper, but that's only a half-baked idea, a rough approximation".

Art director Kazuo Oga was drawn to the film when Hayao Miyazaki showed him an original image of Totoro standing in a . Miyazaki challenged Oga to raise his standards, and Oga's experience with My Neighbor Totoro began Oga's career. Oga and Miyazaki debated the film's color palette; Oga wanted to paint black soil from Akita Prefecture and Miyazaki preferred the color of red soil from Kantō region. The finished film was described by Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki; "It was nature painted with translucent colors".

Oga's conscientious approach to My Neighbor Totoro was a style the International Herald Tribune recognized as "[updating] the traditional Japanese animist sense of a natural world that is fully, spiritually alive". The newspaper said of the film:

Set in a period that is both modern and nostalgic, the film creates a fantastic, yet strangely believable universe of supernatural creatures coexisting with modernity. A great part of this sense comes from Oga's evocative backgrounds, which give each tree, hedge and twist in the road an indefinable feeling of warmth that seems ready to spring into sentient life.

Oga's work on My Neighbor Totoro led to his continued involvement with Studio Ghibli, which assigned him jobs that would play to his strengths, and Oga's style became a trademark style of Studio Ghibli.

Only one young girl, rather than two sisters, is depicted in several of Miyazaki's initial conceptual watercolor paintings, as well as on the theatrical release poster and on later home-video releases. According to Miyazaki; "If she was a little girl who plays around in the yard, she wouldn't be meeting her father at a bus stop, so we had to come up with two girls instead. And that was difficult." Miyazaki said the film's opening sequence was not storyboarded; "The sequence was determined through permutations and combinations determined by the time sheets. Each element was made individually and combined in the time sheets ..." The ending sequence depicts the mother's return home and the signs of her return to good health by playing with Satsuki and Mei outside.

Miyazaki stated that the story was initially intended to be set in 1955, however, the team was not thorough in the research and instead worked on a setting "in the recent past". The film was originally set to be an hour long but during production it grew to respond to the social context, including the reason for the move and the father's occupation. Eight animators worked on the film, which was completed in eight months.

Tetsuya Endo noted numerous animation techniques were used in the film. For example, ripples were designed with "two colors of high-lighting and shading" and the rain for My Neighbor Totoro was "scratched in the cels" and superimposed for it to convey a soft feel. The animators stated one month was taken to create the tadpoles, which included four colors; the water for it was also blurred.

The music for My Neighbor Totoro was composed by Joe Hisaishi, who previously collaborated with Miyazaki on the movies Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Castle in the Sky. Hisaishi was inspired by the contemporary composers Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and John Cage, and described Miyazaki's films as "rich and personally compeling". He hired an orchestra for the soundtrack and primarily used a Fairlight instrument.

The soundtrack for My Neighbor Totoro was first released in Japan on May 1, 1988, by Tokuma Shoten, and includes the musical score used in the film, except for five vocal pieces that were performed by Azumi Inoue, including "Stroll", "A Lost Child", and "My Neighbor Totoro". It had previously been released as an Image Song CD in 1987 that contains some songs that were not included in the film.

After writing and filming Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) and Castle in the Sky (1986), Hayao Miyazaki began directing My Neighbor Totoro for Studio Ghibli. Miyazaki's production paralleled his colleague Isao Takahata's production of Grave of the Fireflies. Miyazaki's film was financed by executive producer Yasuyoshi Tokuma, and both My Neighbor Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies were released on the same bill in 1988. The dual billing was considered "one of the most moving and remarkable double bills ever offered to a cinema audience".

In Japan, My Neighbor Totoro initially sold 801,680 tickets and earned a distribution rental income of ¥588 million in 1988. According to image researcher Seiji Kano, by 2005, the film's box-office gross receipts in Japan totalled ¥1.17 billion ($10.6 million). In France, the film has sold 429,822 tickets since 1999. The film has been internationally released several times since 2002. The film has grossed $30,476,708 worldwide since 2002. A South China Morning Post article in 2021 reported that the film has grossed more than $41 million in total.

Thirty years after its original release in Japan, My Neighbor Totoro received a Chinese theatrical release in December 2018. The delay was due to long-standing political tensions between China and Japan but many Chinese people had become familiar with Miyazaki's films due to rampant video piracy. In its opening weekend, ending December 16, 2018, My Neighbor Totoro grossed $13 million, entering the box-office charts at number two behind Hollywood film and ahead of Bollywood film at number three. By its second weekend, My Neighbor Totoro had grossed $20 million in China. As of February 2019, it had grossed $25,798,550 in China.

In 1989, US-based company Streamline Pictures produced an exclusive English language dub of My Neighbor Totoro for use as an in-flight movie on Japan Airlines flights. In April 1993, Troma Films, under its label 50th St. Films, distributed the dub of the film as a theatrical release. The songs for the Streamline version of My Neighbor Totoro were sung by Cassie Byram.

In 2004, Walt Disney Pictures produced a new English dub of My Neighbor Totoro to be released after the rights to the Streamline dub had expired. As is the case with Disney's other English dubs of Miyazaki films, the Disney version of My Neighbor Totoro has a star-heavy cast, including Dakota and Elle Fanning as Satsuki and Mei, Timothy Daly as Mr. Kusakabe, Pat Carroll as Granny, Lea Salonga as Mrs. Kusakabe, and Frank Welker as Totoro and Catbus. The songs for the new dub retain the translation as the earlier dub but are sung by Sonya Isaacs. The Disney dub was directed by Rick Dempsey, a Disney executive in charge of the company's dubbing services, and was written by Don and Cindy Hewitt, who had written other dubs for Studio Ghibli.

Disney's English-language dub premiered on October 23, 2005; it was screened at the 2005 Hollywood Film Festival. The cable television network Turner Classic Movies (TCM) held the television premiere of Disney's new English dub on January 2006, as part of the network's tribute to Hayao Miyazaki. TCM aired the dub and the original Japanese film with English subtitles. The Disney version was released on DVD in the United States on March 7, 2006. In Australia, an English dub was also released by Madman Entertainment on March 15, 2006.

In 2023, the film was re-released in 970 United States locations as part of celebrations to mark the 35th anniversary of its first theatrical release, with showings in both Japanese with English subtitles and with the English dub.

Tokuma Shoten released My Neighbor Totoro on VHS and LaserDisc in August 1988. Buena Vista Home Entertainment Japan (now Walt Disney Japan) reissued the VHS on June 27, 1997, as part of their series Ghibli ga Ippai. Disney released the film on Blu-ray in Japan on 2012.

After the rights to the Streamline dub expired in 2004, Walt Disney Home Entertainment re-released the movie on DVD on March 7, 2006, with Disney's newly produced English dub and the original Japanese version. The company reissued My Neighbor Totoro, as well as Castle in the Sky, and Kiki's Delivery Service, with updated cover art highlighting its Studio Ghibli origins, on March 2, 2010, coinciding with the US DVD and Blu-ray debut of . My Neighbor Totoro was re-released by Disney on Blu-Ray on May 21, 2013. GKIDS re-issued the film on Blu-ray and DVD on October 17, 2017.

In Japan, My Neighbor Totoro had sold 3.5million VHS and DVD units as of April 2012, equivalent to approximately ¥16,100 million ($202 million) at an average retail price of ¥4,600 (¥4,700 on DVD and ¥4,500 on VHS). In the United States, the film sold over 500,000 VHS units by 1996, with the later 2010 DVD release selling a further 3.8million units and grossing $64.5 million in the United States as of October 2018.

In the UK, the film's Studio Ghibli anniversary release appeared on the annual lists of ten-best-selling foreign language films on home video for five consecutive years, ranking number seven in 2015, number six in 2016 and 2017, number one in 2018, and number two in 2019 below Spirited Away.

My Neighbor Totoro received widespread acclaim from film critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 57 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.4/10. The website's consensus reads: " My Neighbor Totoro is a heartwarming, sentimental masterpiece that captures the simple grace of childhood." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 86 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

In 2001, Japanese magazine ranked My Neighbor Totoro 45th in its list of 100 Best Anime Productions of All Time. My Neighbor Totoro was voted the highest-ranking animated film on Sight & Sound's critics' poll of all-time greatest films, and joint 154th overall. In 2022, the magazine ranked the film as the joint-72nd-greatest film overall, being one of two animated films included in the list. My Neighbor Totoro was ranked third on the list of "Greatest Japanese Animated Films of All Time" by film magazine Kinema Junpo in 2009, 41st in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010, second on a similar list of best children's films, and number one in the greatest animated films in Time Out; a similar list by the editors ranked the film in third place.

Film critic Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times identified My Neighbor Totoro as one of his "Great Movies", calling it "one of the lovingly hand-crafted works of Hayao Miyazaki". In his review, Ebert said the film "is based on experience, situation and exploration-not on conflict and threat", and added:

it would never have won its worldwide audience just because of its warm heart. It is also rich with human comedy in the way it observes the two remarkably convincing, lifelike little girls ... It is a little sad, a little scary, a little surprising and a little informative, just like life itself. It depends on a situation instead of a plot, and suggests that the wonder of life and the resources of imagination supply all the adventure you need.

Steve Rose from The Guardian gave the film five stars, praising Miyazaki's "rich, bright, hand-drawn" animation and describing it as "full of benign spirituality, prelapsarian innocence and joyous discovery, all rooted in a carefully detailed reality". Trevor Johnston from Time Out also awarded the film five stars, commenting on its "delicate rendering of the atmosphere" and its first half that "delicately captures both mystery and quietness". Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited My Neighbor Totoro as one of his favorite films. Writing for the London Evening Standard, Charlotte O'Sullivan praised the charm of the film but said it lacks complexity in comparison with Spirited Away. Jordan Cronk from Slant awarded the film three-and-a-half stars but said it is "devoid of much of the fantasia of Miyazaki's more outwardly visionary work". In the 1996 movie guide "Seen That, Now What?", My Neighbor Totoro was given the rating of "A". The guide stated that the film is an "enchanting, lushly animated view of the natural world with child's sense of wonder", and noting its suitability for young children while being "a perennial favorite among [film buffs]".

The 1993 translation was not as well-received as the 2006 translation; Leonard Klady of wrote the 1993 translation demonstrates "adequate television technical craft" that is characterized by "muted pastels, homogenized pictorial style and [a] vapid storyline". Klady described the film's environment as "obviously aimed at an international audience" but "evinces a disorienting combination of cultures that produces a nowhere land more confused than fascinating". Stephen Holden of The New York Times described the 1993 translation as "very visually handsome", and said the film is "very charming" when "dispensing enchantment". Despite the highlights, Holden wrote "too much of the film, however, is taken up with stiff, mechanical chitchat".

Matthew Leyland of Sight & Sound reviewed the DVD released in 2006, commenting; "Miyazaki's family fable is remarkably light on tension, conflict and plot twists, yet it beguiles from beginning to end ... what sticks with the viewer is the every-kid credibility of the girls' actions as they work, play and settle into their new surroundings". Leyland praised the DVD transfer of the film but noted the disc lacks a look at the film's production, instead being overabundant with storyboards. Writing in Joe Hisaishi's Soundtrack for My Neighbor Totoro, Kunio Hara praised the soundtrack, describing the song "My Neighbor Totoro" as a "sonic icon" of the film. Hara also commented the music "arouse[s] a similar sentiment of yearning for the past".

My Neighbor Totoro was considered a milestone for writer-director Hayao Miyazaki. The popularity of film's central character Totoro among Japanese children has been likened to that of Winnie-the-Pooh in Britain. The Independent said Totoro is one of the greatest cartoon characters, describing the creature; "At once innocent and awe-inspiring, King Totoro captures the innocence and magic of childhood more than any of Miyazaki's other magical creations". The Financial Times recognized the character's appeal, commenting Totoro "is more genuinely loved than Mickey Mouse could hope to be in his wildest-not nearly so beautifully illustrated-fantasies". Empire also commented on Totoro's appeal, ranking him at number 18 on a list of the greatest animated characters of all time.

According to the environmental journal Ambio, My Neighbor Totoro "has served as a powerful force to focus the positive feelings that the Japanese people have for satoyama and traditional village life". The film's central character Totoro was used as a mascot by the Japanese campaign "Totoro Hometown Fund Campaign", which aimed to preserve areas of satoyama in Saitama Prefecture. The fund, started in 1990 after the film's release, held an auction in August 2008 at Pixar Animation Studios to sell over 210 original paintings, illustrations, and sculptures inspired by My Neighbor Totoro.

Miyazaki additionally uses Totoro as a part of his logo for Studio Ghibli. Totoro also makes a cameo appearance in the Pixar film (2010) but was not included in due to licensing problems. Toy Story 3's art director Daisuke Tsutsumi is married to Miyazaki's niece, who inspired the character Mei in My Neighbor Totoro.

Eoperipatus totoro - a velvet worm from Vietnam

A main-belt asteroid that was discovered on December 31, 1994, was named 10160 Totoro. In 2013, Eoperipatus totoro, a species of velvet worm that was discovered in Vietnam, was named after Totoro. Following the request of the paper's authors, the species was named for the character because he "uses a many-legged animal as a vehicle, which according to the collectors resembles a velvet worm".

In Japan in May 1988, Tokuma published a four-volume series of books, which use color images and lines directly from My Neighbor Totoro. The series was licensed for English-language release in North America by Viz Media, which released the books from November 10, 2004, through February 15, 2005. A 111-page picture book based on the film and aimed at young children was released by Tokuma on June 28, 1988, and, in a 112-page English translation, by Viz on November 8, 2005. Tokuma later released another 176-page art book containing conceptual art from the film and interviews with production staff on July 15, 1988, and, in English translation, by Viz on November 8, 2005. In 2013, Viz released a hardcover light novel that was written by Tsugiko Kubo and illustrated by Hayao Miyazaki.

Mei and the Kittenbus is a thirteen-minute sequel to My Neighbor Totoro that was written and directed by Miyazaki. Chika Sakamoto, who voiced Mei in Totoro, returned to voice Mei in this short. Hayao Miyazaki voiced Granny Cat ( Neko Baa-chan) and Totoro. The sequel focuses on the character Mei Kusakabe from the original film and her one-night adventures with Kittenbus, the offspring of Catbus, and other cat-oriented vehicles. The sequel was first released in Japan in 2003 and is regularly shown at Ghibli Museum but has not been released on home video.

Licensed My Neighbor Totoro merchandise of Totoro has been sold in Japan for decades after the film's release. Sales of the film's licensed merchandise in Japan grossed ¥10.97 billion in 1999, ¥56.08 billion during 2003-2007, at least ¥4.1 billion in 2008, and ¥19.96 billion during 2010-2012.

In May 2022, the Royal Shakespeare Company and composer Joe Hisaishi announced a stage adaptation of the film titled My Neighbor Totoro would run from 8 October 2022 to 21 January 2023 at the Barbican Centre, London. It was adapted by British playwright Tom Morton-Smith and directed by Improbable's Phelim McDermott. Tickets went on sale on 19 May 2022, breaking the theater's box-office record for sales in one day that was previously held by the 2015 production of starring Benedict Cumberbatch. On 30 March 2023, it was announced that the production will return to the Barbican for another season.

1. ^ Ogihara-Schuck, Eriko (2014). Miyazaki's Animism Abroad: The Reception of Japanese Religious Themes by American and German Audiences. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. pp. 81-83. ISBN 978-1-4766-1395-6.

2. ^ Phillip E. Wegner (March 14, 2010). "An Unfinished Project that was Also a Missed Opportunity: Utopia and Alternate History in Hayao Miyazakis My Neighbor Totoro". English.ufl.edu. Archived from the original on July 29, 2012.

3. ^ Watsuki, Nobuhiro (2005). The Art of My Neighbor Totoro: A Film by Hayao Miyazaki. VIZ Media LLC. ISBN 978-1591166986.

4. "When Studio Ghibli is mentioned, usually the name of its co-founder and chief director Hayao Miyazaki springs to mind. But anyone with an awareness of the labor-intensive animation process knows that such masterpieces as Tonari no Totoro...". International Herald Tribune-Asahi Shimbun. August 24, 2007.

5. ^ Joe Hisaishi's Soundtrack for My Neighbor Totoro. Bloomsbury. February 6, 2020. ISBN 9781501345128. Archived from the original on November 1, 2020.

6. ^ McCarthy, Helen (1999). Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation. Stone Bridge Press. pp. 43, 120-121. ISBN 978-1-880656-41-9.

7. ^ "China's No. 2 Film This Weekend Was Hayao Miyazaki's 'My Neighbor Totoro'". . December 17, 2018. Archived from the original on December 19, 2019.

8. "'My Neighbor Totoro' debuts in English at U.S. film fest". The Japan Times. October 26, 2005.

9. ^ Barder, Ollie. "'My Neighbor Totoro' Is Coming Back To Theaters This March To Celebrate Its 35th Anniversary". Forbes.

10. ^ Time Out's 50 greatest animated films, with added commentary by Terry Gilliam. Archived from the original October 9, 2009

11. ^ Holden, Stephen (June 14, 1993). "Review/Film; Even a Beast Is Sweet as Can Be". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 26, 2017.

12. ^ Chua, Dennis (September 10, 2016). "An other-worldly neighbour". The New Straits Times.

13. Pilling, David (September 15, 2007). "Defining Moment: My Neighbour Totoro, 1988, directed by Hayao Miyazaki". Financial Times.

14. ^ Forbes, Dee (November 7, 2005). "Analysis Cartoons: Toontown's greatest characters". The Independent.

15. ^ Kobori, Hiromi; Richard B. Primack (June 2003). "Participatory Conservation Approaches for Satoyama, the Traditional Forest and Agricultural Landscape of Japan". Ambio. 32 (4): 307-311. doi:10.1639/0044-7447(2003)032[0307:pcafst]2.0.co;2. PMID 12956598.

16. ^ I D S Oliveira, S Schaffer, P V Kvartalnov , E A Galoyan, I V Palko, A Weck-Heimann, P Geissler, H Ruhberg (2013). "A new species of Eoperipatus (Onychophora) from Vietnam reveals novel morphological characters for the South-East Asian Peripatidae". Zoologischer Anzeiger - A Journal of Comparative Zoology. 252 (4): 495-510. doi:10.1016/j.jcz.2013.01.001.

17. ^ Miyazaki, Hayao; Kubo, Tsugiko (October 1, 2013). My Neighbor Totoro: The Novel. Illustrated by Hayao Miyazaki. Viz Media, Imprint: Studio Ghibli Library. ISBN 9781421561202. Archived from the original on August 12, 2017.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
My Neighbor Totoro is a 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten. The film stars voice actors Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto, and Hitoshi Takagi, and tells the story of a professor's young daughters Satsuki and Mei, and their interactions with friendly wood spirits in postwar rural Japan.

# data[].attributes.headline
Kapwa Tarot by Jana Lynne Umipig-Lawag Nakem

# data[].attributes.subject
Kapwa Tarot by Jana Lynne Umipig-Lawag Nakem

# data[].attributes.body
The Re-Emergence Of Public Divination Work And Honoring Ancestral Practice In A Time Of Spiritual Capitalism

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
O ften, when being asked about Kapwa Tarot I am asked "What was your inspiration?" "What brought me to create the cards?" and "Why did I decide to create them?" The answer was that it was not a decision at all, it was a necessity- that was amplified by the encouragement of community. And the cards themselves are not just cards, they are not just a deck of illustrations, or words written on a PDF file. Kapwa Tarot is a creation connected to my way of life. I have been answering my ancestral, scared calling for many years now, in truth I have been answering it my whole Life, without understanding the fullness of it, and without the intention and awareness I walk with. 2 years ago the messages were clearly directing me to create Kapwa Tarot, as a way to hold many of the core teachings I had gathered and was developing through my work of re-membering ancestors and practicing decolonization. I didn't imagine the Divine timing of it all. I just knew I was ready and that they would be manifested through me.

The call was echoed by community and family to create what I didn't know I had the capacity to and to share it at a time where the "demand" for this work was being made. I could not have created these cards at any other time, but in this very auspicious period when so much that is of Diasporic Divination work is emerging and being made visible to the world. I bring us into awareness of the generations that are rising, that are being born on Turtle Island that are the descendants of those who were, in many ways, forced to leave their Motherlands and brought to be servants to the "American Dream." That dream was rooted in that servitude, in allegiance to Colonization- Capitalism, Racism, Patriarcny/Heteronormativity- and it is us, and our descendants that are being born in these similar land bases in the Diaspora, on Turtle Island, that are creating a new paradigm, creating radical change, and creating tangible revolution, through the re-membering of Divination and Magic based practices that we seek to re-member. These practices and tools that are emerging through our inception and manifestation, are entryways that are being distributed throughout the global diaspora to help ground our, communities to begin the path of returning to Life as Spiritual Practice.

Individuals and communities are currently seeking divination and magic as means of survival, for guidance, for healing and for creating a relationship with Spirit that can help to heal the traumas of this existence. That is why we see our learning of these tools and these modalities of metaphysical healing and empowerment as practice. What I have understood that the true goal is not to be great at reading cards, or at creating herbal tinctures and oils, or at playing sound bowls, and identifying and working with crystals to elevate spirit- the actual goal is to re-member the magic we can surface in all tangible things, and in all our relations because of the magic that is within ourselves. The goal is to understand the magic of us all, and these tools and practices are there as a reminder.

That is what I feel in this work with Kapwa Tarot and with all the divination tools that are being created in this time. How many decks have you seen emerging from different communities? How many tools of divination, books, crystals, herbs, iconic figures and use of earthly elements configured to support so many seeking spiritual knowing and connection? There is a call, within us, from a place so sacred and beyond this physical world that is asking us to create in line with the greater creations of change that have been built throughout these years in the work toward liberation of our communities. I believe this so firmly. Our ancestral re-membering has brought us here, to this time, where magic is emerging on the surface, and is resonating with everything from what we eat, to what we wear- so much because that is being paradoxically supported by Colonization itself. It is being fetishized and capitalized on, just as it is healing and liberating us.

The powers that be are working to contain the Divination Work that is being interpreted by them as that "demand" I mentioned. And thus Spiritual Capitalism has been born of this intersection. They are looking to be the markets in which we "purchase" our prayer. But what they don't understand is that our communities are working around all of this in such intentional ways. And maybe even in none intentional ways, but are creating because it is necessary to, because something inside of us as creators is inviting us to embody the Divine in all that we create in this world. And a larger part of ourselves re-members. We re-member what it was to have our magic stripped from us, what it was like to be killed and tortured into shifting our beliefs for reading our cards in public, for praying amongst the trees and open sky, to gather in ceremony and ritual. We re-member the labeling of savagery, and uncivil, the being seen as un-human, unclean and demonic. We re-member how much it took for our Ancestors to adopt the beliefs of their Colonizers, all the death, all the pain, all the trauma to the bodies, minds and spirits of our people.

There is a conflict that is intrinsically arising, the conflict between producing for capital and our relation to monetary survival and the necessity for money to live - and creating in relation to sacred calling and purpose and the survival and liberation tools that are necessary for revolution to come to be. The lines often get blurred because we are only beginning to understand the truth of what it means to be in Radical Imagining and Manifesting. Capitalism still feels necessary to live, and to live in wellness. That has been the most trying part of having brought Kapwa Tarot into this world- and the trying part of all my divination work that is rooted in my artistry, activism and work as an educator- that in relation to ability to create this work for it to be used by community that there has to be a process of monetary exchange that allows for the materials, the labor and the creation fully manifested, to be sustained. In this world everything has monetary cost, we have invested in this as the way of life and bound ourselves to putting price points to all aspects of our creations and measuring demand with whether or not to pursue what may feel like a part of our understanding of what we must create and perform. I think of the many times where I was taught that something was a "waste of my time" because it did not honor me with payment. Negotiating this is challenging.

We have made it our way as human beings, to find necessity in one another, in service- that what we cannot, or have not learn to do for ourselves, we look to others to produce for us, and we'll pay them, for the convenience, for the ease. So if you have more money, then you have more options, more resources and more ability to utilize the service of others and in turn can then create a greater service and gain greater capital in return. It all is a complex system that was created and sustained by humans all these years and relieving ourselves of the oppressions that it is rooted in is not something that will happen without complete destruction of its structures.

The navigation of this is rooted in the Principles of Sacred Exchange where I am continually working to build for myself and to share with my community. For now, it is a reworking of my relationship to capitalism, but what it is intentionally working toward is a radical shift and dismantling of capitalistic practices and creating practices of exchange within our communities that will not feed into the persistence and growth of Big Banks and Corporations ruling over our survival, our well-being and our ways of living. I share the following with you all as a part of a process that is always being added to, reoriented, reimagined and communally created on the daily. I believe that it is crucial to have these conversations, without it the Powers that Be will take hold and this will be the beginnings of how people weaponize our spiritual movements- through capitalism- by having ego, power and fame lead our creation and practice of divination work.
1) Re-membering the Deep Histories of Creation that Makes My Creations Possible
No thought of creation is to be owned by another. Conceptions of copyrights, patents and other labels of ownership dishonor the truth of how at the core of all creation is the Ancient Divine. Our creations, just as our lives were created by a Great Creator, have lineage, have ancestry, that begin and are rooted someplace Ancient and Divine. If we can recognize and honor this, then we can pay reverence and homage to our work without having the Ego in place. If we see our brilliance as being detached from the brilliance of all, then we run into technicalities created by Capitalism that create practices and procedures of enforcing misguided states of scarcity, competition, glorification and divisiveness. I create with honoring of all that is called in for that creation to take place. Create with the permission and/or the recognition of those before me and those who I am in Sacred Service of in my creation. Honor the lineages of your work. Understand that no idea is ever just yours. It is important to understand and pay homage to how you have created from a space of channeling something Divine, but true Revolutionary Creations, were never just ours to have. Kapwa Tarot yes, was manifested and labored by my hands, and came through me from my imaginings and creations, but I know every image, and every word shared will never be just my own. If the words echo yours, or the images are similar to what you have imagined, it is because they are meant to be ours to connect and hold in union and Kapwa (the Shared Self).
2) Reframing Being "Independent" or" Corporate" as Options that Bind Us to Ideas of Capital Worth and Overall Value in Creating
I don't consider myself an Independent Artist- I know that all my Art, all that I create, is through the support of community. And to be Corporate is never the goal. I was raised in beginning with this type of languaging and I remember the first time I claimed myself I be an independent artist, how empowering that really was to make a statement that I was doing it all on my own, not bound by a company that would determine how I spent my creative energy and capacities. And then throughout the years, I realized every being an "Independent" artist still bound me to the Master of Money leading the way I navigate my work. I found myself being coached and mentored to "brand" myself, and to be in a position of selling that brand. I was imagining products that would suit my consumers/audience versus imagining limitless possibilities. I was also looking at how to be cost efficient, and how to source materials in order to get the best deal, and make the most profit. That mentality poisoned my space of creation. My Art was losing its depth and connection to the Divine. I began to gauge the value of my work on monetary acclaim. This, became another dishonorable practice. I found myself not taking any exchanges for my art because of it, or taking very little- and at some points not doing any art at all for fear of becoming consumed by capitalistic relationship and value of my Art. It was not until Kapwa Tarot, that I understood in greater capacity how important it was to find a balance in exchange. And so just beginning with no longer consider myself an "Independent Artist" and categorize myself based on how my Art created income, but identifying myself profoundly as a Creator, a Cultural Bearer and a Revolutionary has allowed me to lead by the Spirit and Sacredness of my creations in connection to how they are filled with influence and wisdom of community, ancestry and descendants.
3) Being Right with Materials That I Utilize to Create and the People Whose Labor is Offered to My Work
I have come to understand that no creation that comes from our making will be manifested without the collaborative efforts of other creators and of the Great Creator(s) themselves. An intention from the beginning of designing the cards for the Kapwa Tarot deck was to find a printer that would be equitable and that had practices that felt collaborative and would not make me feel like I was just another customer making a transaction. I went through 4 printers before landing with one, where there was practice of humanized communication and that really saw my deck as work that they were co-creating and cared for as well. It made the process one that felt honorable for all of us, I felt the way they cared for each card as it was processed into their design lab, and there was continuous clarity up until the packages were shipped. I also worked to be in understanding of where the paper was sourced, and sought recycled stock to print on, to pay homage to the trees that gave their bodies for the manifestation of the work. I have been in reflection of all that gives to these cards being manifested, the ink, the steel that cut the cards in processing, every hand that packaged and shipped them. And I imagine all the Earthly Elements and how they gave to the tangibility of these cards. My part was only a portion of a larger scheme of manifestation that I recognize and honor. These days, this a large part of how I am seeking to relate to all objects created by human being- to re-member their sacredness.
4) Considering the Way I Hold the Process of Exchange- The way the Process is Humanized and That Exchange Does Occur
This process of creating the cards and distributing them has been one of the most challenging acts of creation I have ever given my life to. My work has not ended in just creating the cards, it has continued in making Sacred Exchange and taking care of this in the best way I can. Every deck is packaged by me and carried to the post office to be sent to the homes of community that have given of their support and seen this creation as a support to their own Spiritual practice or their re-membering and Decolonization path. I have had so many individual exchanges with those who have been receiving the cards, and inviting them to hold them and their communities with their lessons. Some exchanges have been tough, with the delay of delivery, mistaking of addresses, the damaging of casing, and other unforeseen challenges. And when these moments have occurred I have experienced how much the exchange cards have become an extension of how people relate to me. I work to relieve any individual of these feelings that often arise in us when we make a monetary exchange, that feeling like we are not getting what we paid for- or that the service does not feel sufficient. The distribution of these decks in a good way, does not come from the want for repeated consumerism, or for satisfied customers. The exchanges are Sacred ones, because I know that what I am sending to them is filled with the Spirit of re-membering the divine in all things, of honoring ancestry and descendants, and of understanding Kapwa (the shared self). I fill my exchanges with Kapwa, I seek to connect with whoever it is that has invited these learnings into their home. I am elated with each note sent, each conversation about the cards, with every post tagged in and photo/screen shot forwarded of the cards being used for what they were meant to- in service of Diasporic Divination work in relation to my heritage and ancestry being elevated. I am working every day to make these exchanges more than meaningful, and in this reflection, I realize I am even seeking for them to be more than acts of humanization- I want these Sacred Exchanges to feel Divine, and I pray they have.

This writing is an invitation for all of us who are being called at this time to be in connection to Divination Tools, to create a good relationship with what rituals and ceremonies you are practicing and what you are using to surface and make tangible that practice. Understand the power in your Sacred work, creations and exchanges and be in reflection about the way you honor the tools you work in union with. If you are a creator of any of the tools of Divination that are being greatly manifested, I embrace you from a far and thank you for answering your calling. May you honor the Sacredness of what your work embodies of the Divine. We are together Kapwa, toward the re-membering and liberation of all our peoples

If you are interested in KAPWA TAROT click here: http://www.janalynnecreativeproductions.com/shop

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Kapwa Tarot: The Re-emergence of Public Divination Work and Honoring Ancestral Practice in a Time of Spiritual Capitalism

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Often, when being asked about Kapwa Tarot I am asked "What was your inspiration?" "What brought me to create the cards?" and "Why did I decide to create them?" The answer was that it was not a decision at all, it was a necessity- that was amplified by the encouragement of community.

# data[].attributes.headline
“I Wish to Have This Conversation with You” A Solo Exhibition by I Made Agus Darmika Solar

# data[].attributes.subject
“I Wish to Have This Conversation with You” A Solo Exhibition by I Made Agus Darmika Solar

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I WISH TO HAVE THIS CONVERSATION WITH YOU Cooperation between Kedai Kebun Forum (KKF) and in-co pro A Solo Exhibition by I Made Agus Darmika "Solar" Curator : Sita Magfira Foreword
Jajan sarad, Balinese snacks that are often present as one of the offerings in various ceremonies, become the starting point and the medium of Solar's artwork for this time. The process of making 'jajan sarad' always involves the collective work of mothers and teenagers. Just like many things are done together, conversation becomes an integral part of the process of making 'jajan sarad'. People can talk about anything while processing the rice flour: from personal stories to values in Balinese culture. There, teens also learn a lot about life from mothers. Having a mother who in her old age worked as a 'jajan sarad' maker, Solar imagined what he might get such as diligently talking with his mother when she was still alive.

This exhibition later became a ritual to build a conversation with himself. Rituals for conversing with what composes them: stories from home, cultural values, religious ceremonies, mother's teachings, and so on. This return, he realized, was only present after his mother was gone. An attempt to re-examine what was scattered behind while continuing to walk forward. Solar's choice to share his personal rituals, at some point, can be seen as his attempt to converse with other people. As well as succession for others to build conversations with individual self.
About I Made Agus Darmika "Solar"
I Made Agus Darmika 'Solar' (Bali, 1991) graduated from a painting studio, ISI Yogyakarta. His works include paintings, ceramics and mixed media installations. Participating in various exhibitions since he was in college until now. In addition to developing his personal practice, Solar is incorporated in Whaton House, a collective initiation in the form of a private restaurant consisting of creative individuals with various artistic practices.
A Solo Exhibition "I Wish to Have This Conversation with You" by I Made Agus Darmika "Solar"
Opening : Friday, 31 May 2019, 7.30 pm
in Gallery, Kedai Kebun Forum
The exhibition lasts until 20 June, 2019
Open for public and free of charge
every day at 11:00 am to 9:00 pm
(KKF is closed every Tuesday)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
"I Wish to Have This Conversation with You" A Solo Exhibition by I Made Agus Darmika "Solar", Curated by Sita Magfira - Kedai Kebun Forum

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I WISH TO HAVE THIS CONVERSATION WITH YOU Cooperation between Kedai Kebun Forum (KKF) and in-co pro A Solo Exhibition by I Made Agus Darmika "Solar" Curator : Sita Magfira Foreword Jajan sarad, Balinese snacks that are often present as one of the offerings in various ceremonies, become the starting point and the medium of Solar's artwork for this time.

# data[].attributes.headline
Breast Stupa Cookery: the world turns upside down by Pinaree Sanpitak

# data[].attributes.subject
Breast Stupa Cookery: the world turns upside down by Pinaree Sanpitak

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Breast Stupa Cookery
: the world turns upside down 
Pinaree Sanpitak

Breast Stupa Cookery Dinner collaborates with Chefs Napol ‘Joe’ Jantraget and Saki Hoshino from the Michelin starred @80/20bkk...

# data[].attributes.headline
'Pertiwi' exhibition at Galeri Griya Santrian

# data[].attributes.subject
'Pertiwi' exhibition at Galeri Griya Santrian

# data[].attributes.body
podcast in bahasa Indonesia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Episode 11 - Perjalanan Perempuan Perupa Pameran "Pertiwi" di Galeri Griya Santrian

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Listen to this episode from Rupa Bali Podcast on Spotify. Siapa sangka, di saat Pembukaan Pameran "Pertiwi" di Galeri Griya Santrian dikatakan ini baru pertama kalinya galeri yang berumur 19 tahun itu dapat mengadakan pameran spesial perempuan perupa. Tiga perupa yang berpameran kali ini adalah Ni Nyoman Sani, Ni Ketut Ayu Sri Wardani Dan Gusti Ketut Oka Armini.

# data[].attributes.headline
A dictionary of the revolution (2014 - 2017)

# data[].attributes.subject
A dictionary of the revolution (2014 - 2017)

# data[].attributes.body
by artist Amira Hanafi

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A dictionary of the revolution is an experiment in multi-vocal storytelling. It is a series of 125 texts woven from the voices of hundreds of people who were asked to define the evolving language of the Egyptian revolution.

The project was designed to document the rapid amplification of political conversation in public following the uprising of 25 January 2011. To engage a large and diverse group of people in the documentation, I created a vocabulary box containing 160 words in Egyptian colloquial that were frequently used from 2011 to 2013 in public political conversation.

The words are in four categories: concepts, characters, objects, and places & events.

In 2014, the box was used in around 200 conversations with individuals across six governorates of Egypt: Alexandria, Aswan, Cairo, Mansoura, Sinai and Suez. Choosing cards from the box, people talked about what the words meant to them, who they heard using them, and how their meanings had changed since the uprising. Using transcription of this speech, I wove imagined dialogues around each of the terms in the lexicon.

Click the image below to read A dictionary of the revolution online.
This text is translated from the original Arabic.
Our greatest strength is our youth.

The informed youth are stronger than the Muslim Brothers, stronger than the Islamists, stronger than the police and stronger than the Army. They were stronger than anyone. They were stronger than the President, and stronger than the state. It's great that they have clear minds, and they are the country's hope.

Before the revolution, the youth were oppressed. They couldn't get married, couldn't get work, couldn't get housing. They couldn't get anything, and they were frustrated. So when the revolution happened, they said,

'The country is going to be fixed, and we'll get work, and whoever's not already married will get married. Everything's going to be fixed and it'll be better than before the revolution.'

The youth who rose up, rose up from all the pressure and the frustration inside them. They rose up to express their freedom, to say that we are the youth of Egypt and no ruler can rule us, because we really are Pharaohs and no one can stop us.

Without a doubt, the youth were the fuel of the 25 January revolution, and they are the vanguard of the future.

As I see it, this revolution was a revolution of youth. They are the ones who went out and moved the stagnant waters of the last 30 years.

After the revolution...after the revolution succeeded and Mubarak left, nothing happened. They returned to the way they were, and their frustration increased.

Unfortunately, the youth didn't get any rights after that change.

We tried. In the end, they cursed us in the media and that was it. We're the ones who destroyed the country, we're the ones who made it this way.

At one point the media held up some of the youth, then after a while it brought them back down again. That's it. I mean how can you tell me that the youth are the backbone of any state, that the state is propped up by the youth and that's a good thing and stuff...all that talk and then you insult me, you arrest me, and you kill me as a young man.

We took far too many steps, following the youth at every stage, and the results weren't positive. It's a youth revolution but it isn't organized. If it were more organized, if they had organized themselves around one thing, there would have been more results. The children of Egypt came from all different leanings; they didn't reach a coherent understanding.

We exchange accusations with our kids. They say that we ruined the revolution, and we say to them that you didn't rise up to the occasion as you should have. They thought that we shouldn't have gone out on 30 June and say to the Army,

'Be with us so we can get rid of the Muslim Brothers.'

There was no guarantee with the Muslim Brothers and we couldn't stop them because we are peaceful and they are not. That's clear now anyway; that a lot of people would have died. I say to my kids,

'There were things you needed to do that you didn't do.'

So what's your part in it?!

The youth who don't go to vote and don't want to state their opinion - who didn't go, who stayed silent, who left the elders to it and then sat around accusing them:

Do your part!

When you do your part, go out and state your opinion, and then nothing happens, then you can talk.

In a little bit of time, I'd say maybe 10 years, if there's a climate with a bit less corruption, and the youth can get work, we'll see Egypt in a very good place. Follow that with another twenty years, and we'll get to the same place that European countries are in. But unfortunately the youth need to be enabled, and corruption has to be set aside a little bit.

Now you say to yourself,

'I haven't got any more hope that the revolution will achieves its goals, except when the useless generation is ripped to shreds and the new generation comes.'

I don't think that youth is about age. It's about people with free, enlightened minds. You can find someone who is forty years old but who goes to Tahrir Square, so the word youth doesn't necessarily mean young.

As long as you're living life, you're still learning. As long as you're learning, you still have spirit, and you have to use it. As long as you're still thinking, you should fight for your ideas, stand beside them. If you're convinced by something, you'll make it happen, no matter what your age.

I see older people going out in marches and demonstrations. There are a lot of them there. My mother still goes. I respect her for that, because she goes to fight for what she believes in.
Published at Ibraaz This text is translated from the original Arabic
Before the revolution, the future was dark and everything was broken, but the country was going well.

Before 25 January, there was no future at all. The future was black. Everything went by bribes and connections. The son of a minister, a minister; the son of a doorman, a doorman.

During the January revolution, there was a dream for a better, brighter future.

After 25 January and the resignation, you felt like there was a better and brighter future.

The future got hazy. Meaning, you couldn't see that there was a future.

In my opinion, it's unclear. And there's still no hope that our future will become clear.

Everyone wants to see that tomorrow will be a good day, and that the future will be great with the presidency of General El-Sisi. But I'm doubtful of the whole thing, to be honest. But we have hope for him, I swear, we have hope.

The problem is that we have a problem, but people don't see that we have a problem. Nothing has changed. The economy is collapsing, and people don't think there's a problem.

Anyone running for office always sits around talking about the future and how it will be beautiful and I don't know what else.

I won't listen to any who says, 'Tomorrow is coming and tomorrow is beautiful'.

No, tomorrow is not coming and it is not beautiful. It's not coming, it's not beautiful, and we are all distorted.

How can you say tomorrow and there's no social justice?

How can you say tomorrow and there's no security?

How can you say tomorrow and there are no human rights?

How can you say tomorrow and the police are thugs?

How can you tell me:

'Tomorrow'

There is no tomorrow.

Tomorrow will be black days. Black days!

The whole world's future, because of the economy, is going straight to hell. The future of the Middle East has gone completely to hell because of the ongoing revolutions. So what about Egypt, which is affected by both of those factors, not to mention the foreign markets? Its future is completely hazy and dark.

I feel like the future is totally frightening, and it will be so much harder than now.

I feel like the future will be more crowded.

I'm starting to get scared about my future. As I keep getting older...yeah, I know I'm only 18...but still every day I get more scared for my future. I feel like my country isn't going to offer me what I want. You know that up till now we're still renting our apartment? We don't even own an apartment! All of that since our country doesn't offer housing for its citizens. I'm scared, I'm scared to get older and get married, and still not have an apartment.

We have a problem in Egypt. All the people are in different classes. You'll find people waking up in the morning and the day goes like this: wake up, sit by the pool, go home. Everything's just perfect, that's the whole day, and they stay up all night with their friends. Now let's look at another person who gets up dejected in the morning, works so hard that he can barely see in front of him, and what he takes home barely covers anything. What he takes home in a month he spends in two weeks.

There are three things that can work out in this country: military officer, judge, or police officer. Those three are the ones who really live in this country. What does a normal citizen want? Housing, a living, and freedom to walk around with no one bothering him, not an officer or anyone, as long as he's following the law. The law that's in the interest of the citizen, not the law that's in the interest of those who rule them.

The electricity goes out now. If I protest, they'll take my future for 15 years. That's the future: a black future.

So you're talking about a state that is going to do what for you? Basically the state doesn't even exist. You find things in it that aren't right; things aren't in their right place. To put things in their right place takes a lot of effort. To really look to the future, Egypt has another 10 years in front of it.

And if any change is going to happen after this, it's going to be from the coming, young generations, not our generation. The younger generation that's in secondary school now. The younger generation that...maybe it's a double-edged sword...but they don't respect anyone. They literally don't care about anyone. That's a good thing. The truth is that they will take their rights and that's what's needed. That's what they do.

I saw them going out in marches, they were going out in demonstrations and they were not afraid. They stand there not afraid of anything at all. How did they get that feeling? They saw their siblings die. They saw their older siblings lose their future. They don't have a future, they have no education, they don't work. So when they see their siblings like that, what are they going to care about? Really, what do they have to care about? They definitely won't care about anything. So I see that these young generations...I mean I hope to God that they'll make some change. I hope to God that they'll do something.
Published at Ibraaz

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A dictionary of the revolution is an experiment in multi-vocal storytelling. It is a series of 125 texts woven from the voices of hundreds of people who were asked to define the evolving language of the Egyptian revolution. The project was designed to document the rapid amplification of political conversation in public following the uprising of 25 January 2011.

# data[].attributes.headline
Crafting a dictionary of Egypt's revolution

# data[].attributes.subject
Crafting a dictionary of Egypt's revolution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Words powered Egypt's 2011 uprising. Millions took to the streets demanding the fall of the regime, as well as the more romantic "bread, freedom and social justice". These chants took on new meanings as a post-revolution government was formed, deposed and replaced. For many, they have become synonymous with the upheaval of the revolution.

But at risk of being forgotten is a host of other words and phrases - some banal, some surprising and some downright bizarre - that exploded into the public consciousness four years ago.

"Just after the revolution of 25 January 2011, I started to hear conversations that would never have happened in public space before," said Amira Hanafi, an Egyptian artist and modern-day lexicographer who is compiling a "Dictionary of the Revolution".

"I wanted to document that phenomenon, and I chose to do that by looking to the language itself," Hanafi told Middle East Eye by phone from Cairo, where she spends hours every day listening to recordings of everyday Egyptians from up and down the country.

The project is enormous. Hanafi sat with hundreds of Egyptians, placing in front of them a box filled with 160 white cards. On each was printed one of the words and phrases that resonated with people during the revolution and after it. Obvious candidates were included, like "oppression", "day of rage" and "blood". But more offbeat phrases also made the cut: "Nesto cheese" for the hated brand of cheap cheese often distributed by government institutions before the revolution, "Kentucky" after rumours circulated that various revolutionary groups were giving out free fried chicken to encourage people to join the demonstrations, and "Guy Fawkes mask" for the ominous disguises donned by revolutionaries.

"I wanted it to feel a little like a game," said Hanafi, who first dreamed up the project over two years ago. "People would open the box and go through the cards, and I would ask them to pick words they felt connected to. I asked them to define each word and talk about how its meaning had changed - what it meant before the revolution and what it means now."

Travelling around the country, the cards elicited hugely different responses - a reflection, Hanafi said, of the different experiences of the revolution across Egypt. "People often talk as if the revolution was just in Tahrir Square [in Cairo]. So it was very important for us to travel around to different governorates. We went mainly to cities and slums."

Hanafi also travelled to South Sinai, Egypt's least populated governorate and far removed from the political wrangling in Cairo. "The responses were very different there. People were very removed from events in the rest of Egypt, and much more focused on their own problems. They felt very unserved."

Hanafi discovered a diversity of opinions everywhere she looked, even in the terms that might seem uncontroversial. "'Thawra' [revolution] is one of the more popular words in the dictionary," said Hanafi. "I would ask people how the word's meaning had changed before the revolution and after it, and they would say, 'Which revolution? The one in 2011 or June 30?' That was a very important question when talking about the revolution: has it even happened? What's your definition of revolution and has one happened here? Opinions on that were extremely diverse."

Hanafi wanted to record people's feelings about her chosen words in the local Arabic dialect, aamiya, rather than the formal media language known as fusha. "We wanted to document public speech - and nobody speaks fusha in the streets," she told MEE. "As soon as someone gets emotional and feels connected to what they're saying, they start talking in aamiya. So people would sometimes start out speaking fusha, but within five minutes they would be using aamiya."

Now, after eight months spent collecting the anonymous recordings, Hanafi is sifting through the vast amount of material and turning it into a book. An accompanying website aims to keep the dialogue going, as the turmoil in Egypt continues to make a mark on the memory of the 2011 revolution.

"Before the revolution there was a lot of fear and censorship, a constant security presence in the streets. Then the uprising happened and things just exploded open. At that time, it felt like every non-Egyptian in Egypt was making a documentary film. There is far less of that now - but I still feel there is great value in documenting events from afar. You can sit back and reflect on what has happened over a longer period of time."

"Key words are used in manipulative ways by the media," Hanafi said of the linguistic battleground that has emerged since the revolution. The word revolution itself has become contested territory - supporters of the 30 June 2013 overthrow of former President Mohammed Morsi hailed it as a popular revolution, while opponents dubbed it a coup.

"I want us to be able to look back and remember the specifics, not just how the media has chosen to speak about it."

"I called the project a dictionary, but at the end of the day, it is really about asking people to repossess the language and to define it for themselves."

"People are always surprised to hear that a lot of people chose to speak about this word - it was definitely not just women," said Hanafi of this entry. "At the time when I was doing the interviews, it was a very present issue in the consciousness of people's lives."

Sexual harassment became a touchstone issue during and after the 2011 uprising - women and men took to the streets to demand an end to what they said was a prevalent culture of intimidation.
Dictionary entries - "Harassment ... that's one of the things that the revolution must change. Harassment has been around for a long, long time. Women will be walking in the street and boys harass them. It's increasing at the moment, maybe because people walking around feel like they can do anything. It goes along with the chaos that we're living in. The solution isn't to put a soldier behind each person in the street and see what he's up to. Or that women shouldn't go down to the streets, or that they wear hijab or niqab so they don't get harassed. No." - "The first time I was harassed I was in secondary school, walking to our house. Actually it could've been when I was in primary school. I went to the police and said: 'Someone touched me - I don't know who!' I sat crying all day. After that I became afraid to walk in the street. Very afraid. The street became a terrifying thing to me." - "I don't like blood at all. Even bird or animal blood. When the time of the revolution came, and after the revolution, there was really a lot of blood. I saw that blood was not just for animals - it was for people too. I saw it on the TV and here in the country. The situation changed ... People injured, wounded, dead. I really hated seeing that." - "The elections before the revolution are the same as those after it. A process for rigging people's votes. They bring someone to rule who the people don't want. And those [elections] that happened before the revolution and those after it are one and the same. That Egyptians interact with elections all the time is really weird ... - "I mean, before the revolution I never used to participate in anything like this ... I never took part in elections at all. Not for the cabinet or the president or anything. As we used to say, the process could run on its own. There was no need to go down and vote - we knew the result before it started ... After the revolution, to be honest, I began to have more awareness. Everyone in my house started to go out and vote. This word [elections] didn't used to have any importance for me before the revolution. I wasn't interested."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Crafting a dictionary of Egypt's revolution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Words powered Egypt's 2011 uprising. Millions took to the streets demanding the fall of the regime, as well as the more romantic "bread, freedom and social justice". These chants took on new meanings as a post-revolution government was formed, deposed and replaced. For many, they have become synonymous with the upheaval of the revolution.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Art of The Ancestors | Island Southeast Asia, Oceania, and Global Tribal Art News

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
"Balinese Art Treasures of the 1940s: The Rediscovery of a Collection" by Francine Brinkgreve, David J. Stuart-Fox (eds.) - Art of The Ancestors | Island Southeast Asia, Oceania, and Global Tribal Art News

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
BALINESE ART TREASURES OF THE 1940s The Rediscovery of a Collection

# data[].attributes.headline
Rice Farming Game 'Sakuna' Is So Hardcore That Gamers Visit Agricultural Website For Walkthrough

# data[].attributes.subject
Rice Farming Game 'Sakuna' Is So Hardcore That Gamers Visit Agricultural Website For Walkthrough

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Rice Farming Game 'Sakuna' Is So Hardcore That Gamers Visit Agricultural Website For Walkthrough

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
219 points * 31 comments - Rice Farming Game 'Sakuna' Is So Hardcore That Gamers Visit Agricultural Website For Walkthrough - 9GAG has the best funny pics, gifs, videos, gaming, anime, manga, movie, tv, cosplay, sport, food, memes, cute, fail, wtf photos on the internet!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
©rice(S) Dinner @delfinafdn was a success!

My first off campus arty big group project at London is now done, going to be really missed!
Cooked 70 something indomie omelettes (my bf's mom recipe) and normal indomie mie goreng for 32 people, and making my friends like indomie (should i be sad or happy? Lol) has been surprisingly ticked on my bucket list now

Thank you Astrid, Nat, and Delfina Foundation for the opportunity! And thank you + well done my lovely girls, Suzanne, Fanny, Emma, Aruma, I-chien, Tan, Kanerva and Christina, we did it!

crices delfina foundation art performance dinner crisis food 2015

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
(C)rice(S), An evening of crisis foods | Facebook

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
©rice(S) Dinner @delfinafdn was a success! My first off campus arty big group project at London is now done, going to be really missed! Cooked 70 something indomie omelettes (my bf's mom recipe) and normal indomie mie goreng for 32 people, and making my friends like indomie (should i be sad or happy?

# data[].attributes.headline
NUS Museum Archives and Desires: Selections from the Muhammad Din Muhammad Collection

# data[].attributes.subject
NUS Museum Archives and Desires: Selections from the Muhammad Din Muhammad Collection

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Gallery Impressions | Archives and Desires: Selections from the Mohammad Din Mohammad Collection

# data[].attributes.headline
Miss Grand International Indonesia 2017 costume as Pertiwi

# data[].attributes.subject
Miss Grand International Indonesia 2017 costume as Pertiwi

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Riuh Kostum Nasional Indonesia di Miss Grand International

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dea Rizkita, Miss Grand Indonesia 2017 dengan kostum berekor penuh dengan candi bersaing ketat untuk memperebutkan kursi 15 besar Kostum Nasional Terbaik.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
or Prithvi Mata ( Sanskrit: पृथ्वी, pṛthvī, also पृथिवी, pṛthivī) "the Vast One" is the Sanskrit name for the earth as well as the name of a devi (goddess) in Hinduism and some branches of Buddhism. She is also known as Bhūmi in later texts like Puranas. In the Rigveda, she is the consort of Dyaus Pita. But later in Puranas, she was renamed as Bhūmi and identified as lord Varaha's wife. She is considered to be an avatar of goddess Lakshmi in the Puranas.

As Pṛthvī Mātā ("Mother Earth") she is complementary to Dyaus Pita ("Father Sky"). In the , Earth and Sky are primarily addressed in the dual as Dyavapṛthivi. She is associated with the cow. Prithu, an incarnation of Viṣṇu, milked her in cow's form.

Despite strong historical Hindu influence, the name is also used for national personifications of countries Indonesia and Malaysia, where both countries in certain points have been internally referred to as " Ibu Pertiwi" (in Indonesian and Malaysian Malay).

In Buddhist texts and visual representations, Pṛthvī is described as both protecting Gautama Buddha and as being his witness for his enlightenment. Prithvi appears in Early Buddhism in the Pāli Canon, dispelling the temptation figure Mara by attesting to Gautama Buddha's worthiness to attain enlightenment. The Buddha is frequently depicted performing the bhūmisparśa or "earth-touching" mudrā as a symbolic invocation of the goddess.

Dictionary of Hindu Lore and Legend (ISBN 0-500-51088-1) by Anna Dallapiccola

Hindu Goddesses: Vision of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Traditions (ISBN 81-208-0379-5) by David Kinsley

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
or Prithvi Mata ( Sanskrit: पृथ्वी, pṛthvī , also पृथिवी, pṛthivī ) "the Vast One" is the Sanskrit name for the earth as well as the name of a devi (goddess) in Hinduism and some branches of Buddhism. She is also known as Bhūmi in later texts like Puranas.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
January 25th , June 30th , abaya with snaps , activist , air aimbulance , armored car , the Army , blood , boot , bread , the Brotherhood , Brotherhoodization , bullets , Camel Battle , the chair , change , chaos , citizen , civil war , clashes , clearing the sit-in , coalition , constitution , continuous revolution , cops , couch party , counterrevolution , coup , curfew , Day of Rage , deep state , democracy , dignity , elections , emergency law , fall of the regime , felool , a few infiltrators , field hospital , fifty dollars , foreign fingers , freedom , future , gas , gas mask , get out , go out , graffiti , gunfire , Guy Fawkes mask , harassment , hope , human rights , ideal girl , infidel , informant , injustice , Islamists , Itihadiya Palace , KFC , the Left , legitimacy , liberals , machine gun , march , martyrs , Maspero , massacre , the media , military trial , Mohamed Mahmoud , Molotov , national dialogue , neighborhood watch , Nesto Cheese , one hand , onion , opposition , paddy wagon , pamphlets , the people , police , president , protest , Rabaa , reconciliation , regime , resignation , retribution , revolution , revolutionaries , rule , safety and security , SCAF , secular , sheep , Sinai , sit-in , social justice , spy , Square guards , stability , stone , strike , supporters , supreme guide , Tahrir Square , Tamarod , tank , terrorism , terrorists , third hand , thugs , torture , traitor , transitional period , trial , the Ultras , vinegar , virginity test , voice , void , wheel of production , World Bank Loan , youth , Egypt

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
January 25th , June 30th , abaya with snaps , activist , air aimbulance , armored car , the Army , blood , boot , bread , the Brotherhood , Brotherhoodization , bullets , Camel Battle , the chair , change , chaos , citizen , civil war , clashes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Glossary of resilience and Pertiwi_public.xlsx

# data[].attributes.headline
Ho Tzu Nyen's The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia

# data[].attributes.subject
Ho Tzu Nyen's The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
g for gene z. hanrahan

the communist struggle in malaya, first published in 1954 by the institute of pacific relations and subsequently republished by the university of malaya press in 1979 was one of the earliest general historical accounts of the malayan communist party.

this short and concise text by gene z. hanrahan remains to this day a key resource for this period of malayan history, and has been regularly cited by subsequent studies of communist histories in southeast asia. his writing was crisp, his analyses reasonable, if never spectacular. but what made the text valuable was the author's access to confidential documents beyond the reach of other researchers, although hanrahan never explained how his sources were explained.

the bibliography of hanrahan is dazzlingly diverse. the books that he has been involved with as a researcher, translator (of multiple languages), editor and writer, include documents on the mexican revolution (documentary publications, 1981 to 1985), a 9 volume collection of confidential documents related to the madero revolution of 1910, writings on military strategies and guerilla warfare, as well as introducing, translating and editing the writings of carlos marighella, the brazilian marxist revolutionary and urban guerilla theoretician.

then, there is hanrahan's more "literary" streak, in putting out assault! (bantam books, 1962), an anthology of "real" descriptions of the pacific war by "real" us marines, hemingway - the wild years (dell publishing, 1962) a selection of ernest hemingway's articles for the toronto star, as well as 50 great oriental stories (bantam books, 1965), a collection of the "finest oriental tales ever written", chosen and edited by hanrahan. he also wrote brief but erudite commentaries for each section of the anthology, meant for "students of oriental literature".

hints to the biography of this polymath, or hack are meagerly scattered on the dust jackets of his publications, or in prefaces and forewords written by others. hanrahan has been variously described as a naval intelligence officer, a lecturer and a specialist of guerilla warfare. but judging from the tone of these prefaces and forewords, it would seem as though none of the authors know him on intimate terms. and in from pki to the comintern, 1924 - 1941: the apprenticeship of the malayan communist party (cornell university press, 1992), the malaysian historian cheah boon kheng declares: "it is believed that gene z. hanrahan as the pseudonym of a research assistant or a research organization".

but if "gene z. hanrahan" was indeed a pseudonym, it was one that in turn, had a pseudonym. according to the u.s. library of congress, the author known as william j. kennedy is the pseudonym of gene z. hanrahan. as william j. kennedy, he authored pre-service course in shop practice (john wiley & sons, 1943), a technical manual for "pre-induction training based upon the requirements of the u.s. army" to be offered to high school seniors during the second world war, and secret history of the oil companies in the middle east (documentary publications, 1979).

the oeuvre of "gene z. hanrahan" can be described as consisting largely of texts that are "documentary" in nature, but it partakes of fiction at a different level - the construction of an author. gene z. hanrahan is an author dreamt up by his books, and in the oneiric skein of his bibliography, is entangled the history of malayan communism.

h for hydrography, hydraulics, hydrology, humidity

water is a constant and central feature in descriptions of early southeast asia. closed in on the north by the mountain ranges of the eastern himalayas, and internally choked by dense tropical forests and swamps, this was a region difficult to access by land, but everywhere opened up to navigable waterways. its long, hospitable coastlines welcomed steady streams of seafarers for more than two thousand years, bringing together a mosaic of people, things, ideas and languages, dispersed inland through its network of rivers. this understanding of the role of water in the fertile plurality of the region's genetic and memetic matrix is born of an alignment between history and hydrography - a science originating in the making of navigational charts, based on understanding the physical features of water bodies and a mapping of their changes over time.

by the beginning of the common era, two distinct but sometimes overlapping forms of polities had emerged in the region. the first, found along the river plains of continental, or mainland, southeast asia were religious-political systems centered on wet-rice agriculture. these were societies organized around the construction of large-scale irrigation and drainage systems, from which a type of padi-politics was born - the planting of rice and the pinning down of people, a population rendered sedentary, countable and taxable. the second, found in archipelagic, or island southeast asia, were thalassocracies fueled by flows of maritime and riverine trade. their modus operandi was the struggle for the control of coastlines and strategic "choke-points" along river-ways and their power measured by the number of boats controlled. however, both types of domination are in their own ways, techniques of distributing bodies through the manipulation of water flows. therefore, analyses of both political systems are necessarily a kind of hydraulic analytics, attentive to the generation, control, and transmission of power by the use and control of pressurized water. (1)

although both the hydrographical and hydraulical modes of historical understanding remain crucial to making sense of the region, they are primarily mechanical systems engaged with quantitative relations of force and matter, dealing with water solely in its liquid state. what escapes them is water's inherent liminality and innate propensity for qualitative phase changes; water not only flows, it freezes and it evaporates. to fully grasp the manifold relationship between water and southeast asia requires a third mode of thought - a hydrology devoted to cyclical transformations; an ontology of metamorphosis to supplement the mechanistic systemics of hydrography and hydraulics.

intuitions of such a hydrology can be found in the animistic cosmologies of the region, where water plays a central role in the emergence of life or in the founding of a people (usually through the union of a local woman with a man who arrives from the sea). yet the sacredness of water in southeast asia has always been accompanied by an attitude of deep ambiguity to this element. it is attributed with the powers of healing and purification, just as it is commonly dreaded as the source of epidemics, bad spirits and bad deaths. (2) water does not, in itself, possess a value that is unequivocally positive or negative. it is beyond good and evil because it enables the transition between good and evil. as a lubricant for transgressing boundaries of all kinds, it faciliates passage across inanimate and animate states (the emergence of life) and dissolves the separation between the inside and the outside (the birth of a people through the synthesis of the local and foreign). (3) this is why in many parts of southeast asia, it is said that a shaman or a sorcerer who seeks to turn himself into a tiger did so in the midst of crossing a river. should a body of water not be close at hand, the would-be weretiger performs three somersaults, drawing in the air the sign of the swastika - the symbol of water and of cyclical return. to think hydrologically is to think metamorphically, and in the context of southeast asia to water, this means attending to water in its most prevalent but also most invisible mode, as vapors permeating the atmosphere. southeast asia is an empire of humidity. (4)

humidity is ambient oppression, at once imperceptible and visceral. a human subject in a humid atmosphere is prone to breathing difficulties and respiratory conditions such as asthma, along with symptoms of hyperventilation, chronic anxiety, numbness, fainting, dizziness, fatigue, nausea, and loss of concentration. the invisible forcefield of water vapors in the air palpably impedes the body's normal processes of heat dissipation primarily by preventing sweat from evaporating. and if the environment is as warm, or warmer than the skin, the heat-carrying blood that rises to the body surface is also prevented from cooling via conduction into the air. this results in a continuous surging of blood to the surface of the body and a corollary reduction of blood flow to the active muscles, the brain, and other internal organs, which in turn brings about a decline of physical strength, loss of alertness and mental capacity, a condition known as "heat stress", which in extreme cases, leads to death by heat stroke. it has been predicted that by 2045 climate change would push heat stress impacts in southeast asia to a boiling point, with dire implications for national economies and the safety of workers. in singapore, the number of heat stress days has been projected to rise to 364 days (from the current 335), resulting in a 25% loss of productivity. (5) for an island state engineered as a model of ruthless efficiency, humidity is an apocalyptic threat that can only be contained by an intensification of microscopic control over the air. the former, hydraulic systems of discipline are mutating into the hydrological model of societal control, embodied by invisible, but pervasive, air-conditioning.

if death by fire is exuberant and immediate; death by water (and its vapors) is a kind of endless falling into a dense darkness, lethargic and dream-like, a daily death that is infinite, akin to the sluggish melancholy we experience in the presence of a dormant pool, or a stagnant, asphyxiated pond on a hot, humid afternoon, where time itself seems to have slowed down to an infinite crawl.

* * *

(1) a hydraulical mapping of power also offers insights into the forms of resistance and evasion under these modes of domination. to think in terms of water is to think the latent possibility of seepage and a restless search for side-stepping blockages. on the southeast asian mainland, the key strategy for people wishing to escape state control has always been to abandon the sedentary existence of wet-rice agriculture, adopting a nomadic existence in the refuge of forests or the mountains. see james c. scott, the art of not being governed: an anarchist history of upland southeast asia, yale university press (new haven), 2009. on the other hand, on island southeast asia, anarchy often took the form of a subversive use of the same water channels that the state had sought to control, by intensifying the inherent dynamics of water. in the malay archipelago, nomadic sea tribes could swiftly strike, before quickly disappearing into the the labyrinthine water ways.

(2) for example, the cosmology of the ngaju dayak of borneo is centered on the notion of a life-giving water stored up within the tree of life, while many tribes in indonesia attribute their origins to the union of a local woman with an "overseas" man. see peter boomgaard, "a state of flux" in world of water: rain, rivers and seas in southeast asian histories, kitlv press (leiden), 2007, pp. 5 - 7. this text is also a typical example of scholarship somewhat "stumped" by the contradictory attitudes of southeast asian people to water. for example, boomgaard describes how the ngajuk dayak also associate water will illnesses, and consider the annual flooding of the river their "lifelines" as a source of prosperity by connecting upstream and downstream territories, but at the same time, causing death by drowning and by crocodile.

(3) a variant of the common indonesian myth of origin through local woman and "overseas" man is also present in the account of the founding of the funan kingdom, which emerged on the lower mekong delta between the first to sixth century ce. it was said that a woman ruler of that region led an attack on a passing merchant ship. after successfully defending themselves, the merchants made their way to shore, whereupon their leader "drank water from the land" and married the woman ruler, who is described as the daughter of the ruler of the realm of water. water eases the transitions between the inside and the outside.

(4) the combination of equatorial heat, proximity to water bodies and high rainfall makes southeast asia home to some of the most humid cities on earth.

(5) the resarch was carried out by the british firm verisk maplecroft in 2015. see report "too hot to work: climate change puts south-east asia economies at risk" in the guardian, 28 october 2015.

l for lai teck

a fleet of illegible and nameless specters haunts the political landscapes of early and mid-twentieth-century southeast asia. british special branch reports from this period tended to present its communist enemies as faceless statistical digits, revealing few personal details about them. the abstraction of these reports is further exacerbated by the fact that the most frequent sources of intelligence were agents, double agents, double-crossers, informers, snitches, squealers, stool-pigeons, rats, spies, traitors, tattletales, turncoats, and apostates - all of whom have been known to fabricate stories.

this problem is symmetrically compounded by the highly secretive and conspiratorial nature of the malayan communist party, which bordered on the paranoid. party statements scarcely mentioned names, especially those of their leaders and agents. this security measure for concealing the identities of its operatives seldom worked out in the long term, and its chief weakness was that it rendered these figures invisible to the public, which had no image of the party's leadership, or knowledge of its policies and activities.

from 1939 to 1947, the secretary general of the malayan communist party was a man known as lai teck, sometimes written as loi tak, lai te, or lai rac as he was known to some in vietnam. it has been said that he lived as truong phuoc dat until 1934, but other sources report his birth name to be nguyen van long, hoang a nhac, or pham van dac. throughout his career, lai teck accumulated more than fifty names: lai te, lighter, mr light, mr wright, c. h. chang, chan hung chang, chan hoon, chang hung, soh king, lao wu, lee soong, wong kim geok, huang shao-dong, jin tang, d. ling, the right hand of ho chih-minh, ah le, ah lin, or malaya's lenin. he is every name in history. and in may 1948, the central committee of the malayan communist party named him: "the greatest traitor in the history of our party."

while there seems to be a consensus that he was born in 1903, accounts vary on his birthplace, which ranges from the nghe tinh province of vietnam, to saigon, to ba ria in the south. but all commentators seem to agree that he was of mixed blood - with a chinese mother and an annamese father - as though this mélange prefigured the form, or rather, the formlessness of his life.

drawn to communism at an early age, he joined the indochina communist party while he was still a student in saigon. after leaving school, he entered the french navy and lived a life of water, circulating through the underbellies of asian port cities, among an interregional cast of transients, seedy outlaws, and small-time revolutionaries. for a person gifted with strong mimetic faculties, life out in the open, fluid sea was a constant temptation toward dissolution, a slow unbounding of the self. for someone like lai teck, to be at sea was to become sea, to become water, in water.

in 1925, he was arrested by the french sûreté générale indochinoise for disseminating communist literature among sailors. some believe this to be the moment when he "turned" to the other side; he would have been only twenty-two years old. others think that the turning point took place six years later, when he was arrested at the french concession in shanghai. in any case, lai teck worked in vietnam as an informer until 1934, when his cover was blown in an incident in annam. no longer useful to french intelligence, he was gifted to the british, with whom he would begin a new chapter in his career. authenticated by documents that the special branch had seized in raids in hong kong and shanghai, lai teck arrived in singapore in 1934 with impressive credentials. the british slyly cast him as a former aide of ho chih minh, which was convenient, given that ho had been arrested in hong kong in 1932. lai teck arrived as a comintern agent specially sent to resolve an internal rift that was paralyzing the malayan communist party.

according to a japanese military report that surfaced after the war, "comrade wright" made an immediate impression within the party. his knowledge of theoretical marxism earned him the epithet of "malaya's lenin," while his natural ability for organized destruction showed itself in an intensive, six-month purge that restored "ideological unity within the party." using the police to remove his competition, he rapidly rose within the ranks of the party, becoming secretary general in 1939.

when singapore fell into japanese hands in february 1942, lai teck did not take to the jungle like many of his comrades. he chose to remain in the occupied city, according to one source, accompanied by two vietnamese wives and a chinese mistress, until he was picked up by the kempeitai in a security sweep. from then on, lai teck began working for the japanese. news of his arrest spread, but so great was his aura within the party that it was believed that this master of espionage talked his way out of prison. in the years of the japanese occupation, lai teck went about his business flamboyantly, in a morris eight saloon given to him by the japanese. but there can be little doubt that he facilitated the extensive destruction of the party's organization in singapore and malaya, often by setting up high-ranking party members for kempeitai ambushes. throughout his career, he was responsible for the arrest and execution of at least 105 party colleagues.

with the japanese surrender and the return of malaya to british rule, lai teck, with characteristic seamlessness, resumed his work with the british. however, suspicions against him had been accumulating in the last years of the war, and the central committee of the party summoned lai teck for a meeting on march 6, 1947. sensing that something was amiss, lai teck did not turn up. instead, he spent the next months in hiding before disappearing with most of the party's funds to hong kong. however, prior to this, lai teck had made what was arguably his most far-reaching political move - steering the armed, anti-japanese communist guerillas away from a forceful take over of malaya before the british return. and when chin peng, who succeeded lai teck as secretary general in 1947, led the party to armed struggle, the initiative had already been lost. vessel to every power, in the vicissitudes of lai teck's career, can be traced a chronicle of the entire region's political turmoil.

the death of lai teck, like so much of his life, came through hearsay. according to chin peng, whose account was in itself the result of a sequence of chinese whispers, lai teck was tracked down in thailand in 1947 by a death squad. he was suffocated, his body stuffed in a sack, and thrown into the chao phraya river. a watery grave for a man whose being in the world was like water in water.

the closest thing to an official confirmation of lai teck's death is the recent release of his picture by the special branch, something that is usually done upon the death of former agents. in this single photograph of him that survives, we see a lean and severe man with large, deep-set eyes staring straight out at us. cloaked in blankness, this is a face that lends itself easily to our imaginative projections of cloak-and-dagger fantasies. and in the very inconstancy of his soul, we sense an incompleteness that defines the region as a whole; an identity not defined by interiority or substance, but shaped through exteriority and relationality. in the uncertain and ambiguous biography of this nameless shape-shifter is inscribed the history of southeast asia: subjected to multiple possessions and manifold dominations, alongside a brute - and mute - will to survive.

t for tiger

a common notion found throughout the peoples of southeast asia is that there are some individuals who have the ability to magically transform themselves into tigers. the basis for this belief lies in the ambiguity of the tiger's association with people: the two species occupy similar ecological niches, in which they neither have a relationship of direct competition or mutual cooperation. the tiger's preferred habitat is an ecologically liminal or transitional zone: spaces near water and at the edges of forests. similarly, the people of southeast asia had historically settled along water, while their agricultural activities created forest edges, the tiger's preferred transitional zone. the agricultural produce of men attracted deer, pigs, and monkeys, which in turn attracted the tigers that hunted them, leading tigers to populate the liminal areas between villages and the forest.

people have a tendency to attribute human-like qualities to the animals they live in close proximity with. thus, tigers are sometimes believed to live in villages, subject to rulers, and with their own social structures and rules. occasionally these tigers transform into humans, a magical act that usually takes place in the crossing of a boundary such as passing through a tunnel or swimming across a river. these tiger-people were thought to be dangerous, and were feared, although they were not necessarily always considered evil.

to the peoples of southeast asia, tigers embodied the power of nature, which was essentially ambiguous. the forest was a space outside civilisation and beyond human control, but it was also the place where magical herbs for healing could be gathered. in this sense, tigers were guardians and emissaries from the forest, passing between nature and culture, a boundary also traversed by shamans, who are in turn also attributed with the power to transform into tigers. this relationship with the tiger is apparent in the healing rituals of some village shamans: their hands may appear to change into tiger claws, or their behaviors might take on aspects of a tiger. sometimes, the presence of tigers can even be perceived to be beneficial to a human community, as they help to rid cultivated land of foragers. and since the protection of crops is a task usually assigned to the community's ancestors, it is perhaps unsurprising that a partial merger should occur between tigers and ancestors: tigers are sometimes perceived as ancestor spirits, and as such, they might even be regarded as enforcers of ancestral rules, punishing offenders, but also guarding their descendants' property.

this symbolic web between tigers, ancestors and shamans should be differentiated from that of magicians who magically transform into were-tigers for their own, usually nefarious purposes. the magician's purpose for transforming into a tiger can range from a taste for raw flesh to murderous intent. these transformational processes sometimes require the magician to go some distance from the village, where he will shed civilisation by the removal of his clothes, followed by the recitation of a magical formula. this process can sometimes be facilitated by the use of a piece of tiger skin or a yellow and black striped piece of cloth. sometimes, it is said that the transformation requires one to somersault - occasionally through one's own urine, creating the sign of the spiral, which in turn evokes water, traditionally understood as a passage to the underworld.

the tiger is an inhabitant of the liminal zone between the civilised and the wild, and as such, the relationship between the human and the tiger is one of deep ambiguity. as manifestations of protective ancestral spirits they can be considered a force for good, but when a man takes the form of a tiger outside the community, such actions are considered to be beyond the pale. he is thought to have forsaken humanity, to be out of touch with "god" or the creative power of the universe.

w for weretigers

it has been said that the javanese people do not, after sundown, utter the word macan (tiger) for fear of invoking its presence. instead, they refer to him as guda, from the sanskrit word gudha, which means hidden, or secret.

what one cannot know, or does not wish to know, one passes in silence. this is why certain tribal groups in malaya refer to the tiger only by stretching out their right hands in the shape of a claw. the gayo of sumatra call him mpu uton (grandfather of the forest) or mpu tempat (grandfather of the place), while the acehnese refer to him as datok (grandfather or ancestor) or gop (other person, someone; used also for people from another village or place). yet these aliases tell us something of the tiger's secret: it is a creature of the forest, it is a being of nature, and it is other to humans - though never completely or radically so. for it is also kin, bound by blood to humans in the distant horizon of an ancestral time, for tigers dispersed across southeast asia more than a million years ago, long before the emergence of homo sapiens. tigers have always been here, at the origin of our histories.

when early human settlers arrived in the region, they favoured as their habitat the transitory zones between the forest and the waters, an ecotone already occupied by other large, ground-dwelling mammals like the deer and the boar - and the tiger that preyed on them. humans did not yet have the capacity to dominate this savannah-like landscape, for which the tiger was so perfectly adapted. with its paws masterfully designed for stealth, and its eyes attuned to darkness, the tiger, with its striped coat of yellow and black, dissolved into the golden brown fields of the tall lalang grasses, silently stalking its prey from behind, awaiting the perfect moment at which it would bound up and seize the throat. to live in such a terrain, humans had to attune themselves to the ways of the tiger, a process that brings about fusion between the two species.

this traversing of the boundary between nature and culture is especially apparent in the healing rituals of some village shamans: their hands seem to take on the form of tiger claws, or their behavior takes on aspects of a tiger. this is why across southeast asia, the tiger was widely believed to live in villages, where the houses have walls of human skin, and the roofs are thatched with human hair. and when crossing lakes and rivers, the tiger can dissolve into the shape of a human. should a body of water not be close at hand, the would-be weretiger performs three somersaults, drawing in the air the sign of the swastika - the symbol of water and of cyclical return.

the first written record of the malayan "weretiger" comes from an early fifteenth-century chinese source, the triumphant visions of the shores of the ocean, by ma huan, who served as an interpreter to admiral zheng he, the great navigator-eunuch of ming dynasty china. of his visit to malacca, he wrote: "in the town there are tigers which can assume human form; they enter the markets, and walk about, mixing with the populace. if anyone recognized one of these creatures, he would seize it and kill it." there were ways by which one could discern a weretiger. in its human form, it is believed to lack the philtrum, the cleft on the upper lip, and is a being without a fixed abode: a vagrant, a beggar, or a shaman who traverses the liminal space between nature and civilization.

the british colonial rule of malaya brought about an unprecedented disruption that was at once ecological and cosmological. tigers were massacred, and weretigers exiled to the realm of folklore. but like a leibnizian divine machine, where animal being is a deathless monadic composition that knows only ceaseless reconfiguration, the tiger keeps returning to haunt the region in reconfigured forms. in 1942, the japanese 25th army led by japanese general tomoyuki yamashita - known also as the "tiger of malaya", exacted revenge upon the british forces in malaya. moving swiftly through the forest - savage, amphibious and full of guile in a battle - the japanese forces seem to embody the very qualities that had made the tiger such a feared adversary of the early british settlers.

the principal resistance in malaya against the japanese occupation was the malayan peoples' anti-japanese army, a guerilla organization under the leadership of the malayan communist party. when the japanese forces surrendered in 1945, the epithet of "tiger" gradually transferred to the communists, who now constituted a very real threat to the returning british forces which were deflated and weakened by the war. the british eventually responded by intensifying their regulation of forested zones, offering cash bounties, organizing hunts and ambushes - similar strategies previously employed to annihilate the malayan tigers. and in the shadows of the dense tropical forest, the british hunters of communist guerillas sometimes found themselves coming face to face with tigers instead.

to embark upon the trail of the weretiger is to follow through with its line of perpetual metamorphosis - an anthropomorphic, yet non-anthropocentric line that is at once materialist and metaphorical. and in the myriad entanglements of this metamorphic line, one senses the contours of a shape-shifting region.

* * *

(1) robert wessing, the soul of ambiguity: the tiger in southeast asia (dekalb: center for southeast asian studies, northern illinois university, 1986).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
the critical dictionary of south-east asia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
g for gene z. hanrahan the communist struggle in malaya, first published in 1954 by the institute of pacific relations and subsequently republished by the university of malaya press in 1979 was one of the earliest general historical accounts of the malayan communist party. this short and concise text by gene z.

# data[].attributes.headline
This Japanese Shop Is 1,020 Years Old. It Knows a Bit About Surviving Crises.

# data[].attributes.subject
This Japanese Shop Is 1,020 Years Old. It Knows a Bit About Surviving Crises.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Ichiwa has been selling grilled rice flour cakes to travelers in Kyoto, Japan, for a thousand years. Credit... Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

A mochi seller in Kyoto, and many of Japan's other centuries-old businesses, have endured by putting tradition and stability over profit and growth.

Ichiwa has been selling grilled rice flour cakes to travelers in Kyoto, Japan, for a thousand years. Credit... Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

KYOTO, Japan - Naomi Hasegawa's family sells toasted mochi out of a small, cedar-timbered shop next to a rambling old shrine in Kyoto. The family started the business to provide refreshments to weary travelers coming from across Japan to pray for pandemic relief - in the year 1000.

Now, more than a millennium later, a new disease has devastated the economy in the ancient capital, as its once reliable stream of tourists has evaporated. But Ms. Hasegawa is not concerned about her enterprise's finances.

Like many businesses in Japan, her family's shop, Ichiwa, takes the long view - albeit longer than most. By putting tradition and stability over profit and growth, Ichiwa has weathered wars, plagues, natural disasters, and the rise and fall of empires. Through it all, its rice flour cakes have remained the same.

Image

Such enterprises may be less dynamic than those in other countries. But their resilience offers lessons for businesses in places like the United States, where the coronavirus has forced tens of thousands into bankruptcy.

(Some of the oldest companies, including Ichiwa, cannot definitively trace their history back to their founding, but their timelines are accepted by the government, scholars and - in Ichiwa's case - the competing mochi shop across the street.)

The businesses, known as "shinise," are a source of both pride and fascination. Regional governments promote their products. Business management books explain the secrets of their success. And entire travel guides are devoted to them.

Most of these old businesses are, like Ichiwa, small, family-run enterprises that deal in traditional goods and services. But some are among Japan's most famous companies, including Nintendo, which got its start making playing cards 131 years ago, and the soy sauce brand Kikkoman, which has been around since 1917.

To survive for a millennium, Ms. Hasegawa said, a business cannot just chase profits. It has to have a higher purpose. In the case of Ichiwa, that was a religious calling: serving the shrine's pilgrims.

For most of Ichiwa's history, the women of the Hasegawa family made the sweet snack in more or less the same way. They boiled the rice in the water from a small spring that burbles into the shop's cellar, pounded it into a paste and then shaped it into balls that they gently toasted on wooden skewers over a small cast-iron hibachi.

The rice's caramelized skin is brushed with sweet miso paste and served to the shrine's visitors hot, before the delicate treat cools and turns tough and chewy.

Large enterprises in particular keep substantial reserves to ensure that they can continue issuing paychecks and meet their other financial obligations in the event of an economic downturn or a crisis. But even smaller businesses tend to have low debt levels and an average of one to two months of operating expenses on hand, Mr. Ota said.

When they do need support, financing is cheap and readily available. Interest rates in Japan have been low for decades, and a government stimulus package introduced in response to the pandemic has effectively zeroed them out for most small enterprises.

Small shinise often own their own facilities and rely on members of the family to help keep payroll costs down, allowing them to stockpile cash. When Toshio Goto, a professor at the Japan University of Economics Graduate School and representative director of the Research Institute of Centennial Management, conducted a survey this summer of companies that are at least 100 years old, more than a quarter said they had enough funds on hand to operate for two years or longer.

Still, that does not mean they are frozen in time. Many started during the 200-year period, beginning in the 17th century, when Japan largely sealed itself off from the outside world, providing a stable business environment. But over the last century, survival has increasingly meant finding a balance between preserving traditions and adapting to quickly changing market conditions.

For some companies, that has meant updating their core business. NBK, a materials firm that started off making iron kettles in 1560, is now producing high-tech machine parts. Hosoo, a 332-year-old kimono manufacturer in Kyoto, has expanded its textile business into home furnishings and even electronics.

For others, keeping up with the times can be hard, especially those, like Tanaka Iga Butsugu, that are essentially selling tradition itself.

Tanaka Iga has been making Buddhist religious goods in Kyoto since 885. It is famous for what its 72nd-generation president, Masaichi Tanaka, jokingly refers to as the "Mercedes-Benz" of butsudan - household shrines that can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
This Japanese Shop Is 1,020 Years Old. It Knows a Bit About Surviving Crises.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A mochi seller in Kyoto, and many of Japan's other centuries-old businesses, have endured by putting tradition and stability over profit and growth. Ichiwa has been selling grilled rice flour cakes to travelers in Kyoto, Japan, for a thousand years. Credit...

# data[].attributes.headline
The Art Project of Ecological Aesthetic in Thai Rice Culture by Wijit Apichartkriengkrai

# data[].attributes.subject
The Art Project of Ecological Aesthetic in Thai Rice Culture by Wijit Apichartkriengkrai

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
THE ART PROJECT OF ECOLOGICAL AESTHETIC IN THAI RICE CULTURE - art4d

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The objective of artist Wijit Apichartkriengkrai's study and exploration of rice-related culture encompasses a search for the presence of aesthetic theories such as relative and conversational aesthetics.

# data[].attributes.body
depatriarchise design, Mayar El Bakry, and Romi Lee

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In a long, narrow, modernist kitchen, Mayar El-Bakry, a Swiss-Egyptian designer, is cooking. Using anonymously designed cooking tools and objects ubiquitous to the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region, she is preparing a variety of dishes: falafel, ma'amoul, kousa mahshi, tajine and other staples of the region. Each cooked dish highlights one protagonist tool or object, telling a different story. As we delve into these fragments of everyday home cooking, the voices and rich diasporic narratives of people from the SWANA region-who are now immigrants in Europe-unfold.

The show is an experimental visual document that intimately embraces the overlooked, invisible, marginalised design that surrounds us, drawing on personal memories, experiences and the collections of mundane kitchen tools gathered over the years and brought to Europe upon emigrating. In the film, storylines of memories, activities and sensual experiences are carefully interwoven and brought to life through a combination of sound, moving images, photographs and texts. In this way, overlooked narratives unfold and offer the view of a rich landscape, instead of the binaries that prevail in both design and cooking.

×

The production of this video was supported by Prohelvetia.

Critical Cooking Show is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and the Istanbul Design Biennial within the context of its fifth edition, Empathy Revisited: Designs for more than one.

depatriarchise design is a nonprofit design research platform based in Basel, working across different mediation formats. Their manifold investigative and activist practice is rooted in intersectional feminism. Founded in 2017 by Maya Ober and Anja Neidhardt, depatriarchise design was born out of frustration with a design discipline that is deeply interwoven with discriminating structures.

Mayar El Bakry is a Swiss-Egyptian graphic designer and design researcher based in Zurich, working in and around the peripheries of design. She uses food and cooking as a means to create spaces of discourses, exchange and dialogue and communal reflection.

Romi Lee is a Swiss-Israeli filmmaker, video artist, and documentary director. She studied fine arts at the Midrasha in Beit Berl and cinema at the Minshar School of Art in Tel Aviv.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In a long, narrow, modernist kitchen, Mayar El-Bakry, a Swiss-Egyptian designer, is cooking. Using anonymously designed cooking tools and objects ubiquitous to the SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) region, she is preparing a variety of dishes: falafel, ma'amoul, kousa mahshi, tajine and other staples of the region.