The Department of Music will host multimedia artist and researcher Alan Nakagawa for two related events titled “Thinking Sound, Archives, and Identities: Close Listening” Oct. 9–10.
A first-generation Japanese-American artist Nakagawa will bring his work “Peace Resonance: Hiroshima/ Wendover” to the Cleveland Museum of Art Wednesday, Oct. 9, from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Ames Family Atrium of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Having previously presented this work at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum of Art, Orange County Museum of Art, and the Japanese American National Museum, this free and open-to-the public experience invites the listener to sonically inhabit several places at once, simultaneously presencing the recorded “silent” room-tone of both the Hiroshima Atomic Dome and the Wendover Hangar that housed the B-29 bomber that delivered the devastating atomic bomb to that city. This piece is a unique opportunity to imaginatively be-with the past, dream a future—and consider one’s place in it.
Register for the Oct. 9 event.
Nakagawa will offer “The Haven,” a free sound walk and open-to-the-public lecture demonstration related to his research and sound art activities on Thursday, Oct. 10, from 2:15 to 4:30 p.m. in Hadyn Hall. In conversation with AJ Kluth, lecturer in the Department of Music at CWRU, Nakagawa will map connections of his multiple oral history and archival projects to his artistic output. The talk will detail how thoughtful and speculative engagements with our individual and collective pasts might help us better understand our identities in the present, recommending vision and action for more just futures.