Aloha (2022)
Initially, this project was supposed to take place in Bruyeres, France. It was a project entitled " Pechakucha Bruyeres" as part of a summer cultural program initiated and financed by the DRAC (regional office of the minister of culture). The structure was created by Scenes et territoires. The initial phase of the residency was to interview locals who had a relationship with the JA soldiers and people who had met them during the war. We interviewed six people with Anthropologist Marivi Haro Matas. We researched the town of Bruyeres and the most critical battlefield in Vosages Forests( Biffontaine.) Andrew Matthews transcribed eight songs from Japanese-American music from the 1950s to be played by the town orchestra. We Introduced the No-No boy by John Okada, the first Japanese-American literature, with Anne-Sylvie Homassel, the French translator of the book. We presented and selected extracts from the text to be read publically by the people in Bruyeres. We introduced the different generations of Hawai'is Japanese-American artists' work for students to learn about Hawai'i and Japanese-American culture and make a public presentation. (Works from Satoru Abe, John Morita, Brian Sato, Lynne Yamamoto, Edwin Ushiro & Kirk Kurokawa.) Nothing we proposed interested the local people. During the residency, we met Marion Kieffer Rys, from Granges-Aumontzey, who has been working on the project "These Hawaiians are our heroes." We began to dialog and meet each other as friends. In August 2022, I proposed to edit the video Aloha, their creation. We worked with Andrew Matthews based on the photographs and video sent to us, and we complimented them with our documents.

photo_bruyeres_web.pdf |