Interview with Aki Onda

Aki Onda performance Cassette Memories in Sokolowsko, 2018 | Photo: Kazimierz Ździebło, Courtesy of Festival Sanatorium Dzwieku

By Kristan Kennedy

KK: You began working as a professional photographer at a very young age, can you tell us about the kinds of things you were shooting and how and why you got started?

AO: I was really into French literature and particularly attracted to Surrealism, and while reading those books I encountered photos of May Ray. That’s how I got interested in photography. Since I was little, I couldn’t get along with the hyper-conservative Japanese education system and refused to obey its rules. I was an enfant terrible and instead of going to school, I spent time reading books at libraries and wandering in Osaka and Kyoto at night with a camera in my hand. Then, I met the music critic and editor Yuzuru Agi (founder of Rock Magazine and Vanity Records) who recognized something in my photos, published them in his magazine, and asked me to take photos of musicians. Then, other magazines started giving me assignments. That’s how I got involved in music as a photographer and met musicians such as Arto Lindsay, John Zorn, Blixa Bargeld, and many others through photo sessions. I also documented dance performances and once spent three days with Min Tanaka and Milford Graves in a theater in Osaka. That was wild. One of the shows was disrupted as a male dancer of Tanaka’s troupe set fire on stage and everybody had to evacuate. I was fifteen years old and that lasted for three years until mental depression took over all my energy.

KK: Let’s talk about memory, or lack of, how you record or keep it, how you try to preserve it, how forgetting can be a kind of safety net or relief from trauma, how the gap in memory — one you can’t control — is something menacing and what you do to fill that gap.

AO: Yeah, I recorded any sounds around me whenever they caught my attention, and I consider those as memories of my personal life. The reason I started this practice and it lasted for years was related to my psychological struggles. I had a traumatized childhood in Japanese society. My sexuality was ambiguous and I identified myself as a girl. “Aki” was a female name which I chose myself around that time and I loved wearing girls’ clothes. People thought I was crazy, but I had the strength to fight against their projections. Also, my family had a Korean background, which was ripe for discrimination in Japan. At some point, I start blocking my memories to avoid looking back at the past. I suffered from memory loss, depression, and a series of panic attacks for some years. In a sense, my cassette recording practice was a therapeutic process — I was curving my memories on magnetic tapes instead of burning into my brain cells, and that gave me the space to “forget” as well as granted me a sort of recorded memory bank so that I might access it later. It took a few decades, but somehow saved me, and this obsession became my art practice. I wasn’t conscious about it when I was young but after some time I knew what was happening and roughly how it worked.

KK: When did you trade your camera for a cassette recorder and do you think of the sound you capture with tape as a different kind of image capture?

AO: When I turned twenty, I escaped to London. In 1988, I bought a Sony portable tape recorder from a man selling junk on the street in Brixton in a Southern district of the city. It was just before I was leaving for Morocco and I thought it might be a good way to somehow record my trip. The camera that I had been using had broken and I didn’t have enough money for a new one. So I settled for a cheap recorder, which was a substitute. I think that affected the way I captured my field recordings as I was using a tape recorder as if a camera. It might sound strange but it made sense to me since the field recordings contain visual memory, which enables you to imagine visuals if you listen along. Because of the environment I grew up in, I was surrounded by artists and scholars and familiar with painting, textile design, film, and photography from an early age. In fact, the visual arts had been my main concern until I really got into music. Those are somehow raised together like a twin inside me. AO: I have had a habit of collecting found and discarded objects over the years. Though it was a slow process, they started to form some natural groupings. It’s an extension of my cassette practice to expand the realm of reminiscence beyond my territory and consciousness — a sort of collective consciousness in order to reach out to something universal. Yeah, those are “dead” as they are no longer in use. But “death” is an ambiguous notion that allows us various interpretations. If we die, that terminates all biological functions which sustain a living organism, and the body will be gone. In the case of the materials, the form itself remains, but something will be lost. In both cases, I believe spirits remain, or memories or the stream of consciousness is preserved afterlife, though those are invisible. For this show I have employed some old-fashioned technologies and there is a focus on analogue media. It’s because of my generation. When I started experimenting and making work the internet wasn’t part of our lives yet. As mentioned, I moved from photography to cassette tape recorder, to radio, performance, and assemblage. I used to make slide projection pieces and am planning to do so more in the future.

I like the tangible and physical relationship with all of these things. There is more room for errors to happen — an unpredictable factor you can’t control.

I feel that it accommodates and welcomes spirits sneaking in easily because of that fuzziness. It also fits the subjects of each work — it’s like presenting the rubble and ruin of old technologies, and that suits my sensibility. Somehow, I like objects that are damaged, scratched, ruined, wrecked, and not perfect. Having said that, I’m not against digital technologies. In the production for making these works, I benefited from digital printmaking, audio editing, etc. I think I’m just against the cleanliness of high technology.

KK: It is interesting to think about damage, wear and how that is related to your multi-part piece entitled Collage on Cassettes. I love thinking about your practice of collaging as a way of bringing together fragments of memory.

AO: Yes, this work is based on my long time practice of making collage on the surface of cassettes. I didn’t start this intentionally but over a few decades I kept taking memos, attached

magazine scraps, drawing doodles, and those layers naturally appeared. It’s mimicking how we manipulate our memories over time as we juxtapose and modify those as we like. So, instead of showing the “original”, I scanned them and enlarged them as the cassette-shaped prints on a plastic sheet. Then, re-collaged those images and made other collages printed on a large scale curtain hung from the ceiling. This time, I wanted to expand the idea sonically and see how it works. So, I asked Zach Rowden, who has his own unique cassette practice, to make loops from my original recordings and Charmaine Lee, whose practice is diverse but whose voice has such a distinctive character, to respond to those.

KK: A Letter from Souls of The Dead contains a few different collections. Can you speak to these objects’ symbolism and why you are gathering them in multiples?

AO: Yes, these collections have become individual works in the exhibition. They each take up their own space but are of course in conversation with each other. Bells are a mysterious object. It is said that they were born when primitive people banged on resonant surfaces to frighten away evil. It had was interested in the enigmatic kinship between the living and the dead, the functional and the broken et cetera. Those relics spark memories of old gritty NYC through a quasi-urban archaeology. Now David would like to sell the store for seven million dollars. I imagine his place will go up in smoke eventually or fade away, this work is one way of archiving its value, especially to artists. The last work Tape Drawing is a series of photographs of pre-recorded analogue 1/4” reel-to-reel and cassette tapes, which will be shown as old-fashioned slide projections. I sacrificed a few hundred of those tapes, pulled out the magnetized plastic tapes, and made drawings with the medium. I wanted to see if it’s possible to visualize those memories recorded by anonymous people. Of course, it’s not in a literal sense, but maybe it conveys something. This work is also an homage to Lodewijk (Lou) Ottens, the inventor of Compact Cassette Tape, who passed away recently at 94. He thought a reel-toreel tape is too big and too fragile as it unraveled from its reel at times. Then, with his team at the Dutch electronics company Philips, he invented Compact Cassette which was accident-proof with the plastic shell and fits in his jacket pocket. It is said that 100 billion cassettes have been produced and sold worldwide since then, and innumerous people have used the medium until CDs became popular. It represents a certain kind of era with the music and sound they were listening to and they lived through. I’m thinking of David Hammons’ hair pieces or Noah Purifoy’s works that were made from charred wreckage. Those works have symbolic significance and evoke Black

the purpose of calling spirits in different cultures. Especially some glass bells, which have a gonglike sustained note. They offer specific frequency spectrums and particular overtones while inducing a meditative and contemplative feeling, and that fascinates me. Almost all bells I’ve included in this installation were made in the second half of the last century. Some have obvious purposes -- like calling people to gather, or as souvenirs for tourists, but for many others, it’s hard to say why those were made and how they were used. It seems like nobody produces bells anymore, I am curious to know the reason. Another work Shopping at Argo is about a junk store Argo Electronics on 391 Canal Street in NYC. The owner Zdislav “David” Lasevski bought the store for $4,000 in the late ‘70s. At that time, the street was full of army surplus and electronic stores, and he had been selling all kinds of electronics, parts, and miscellaneous goods. It closed several years ago.It was one of the last vestiges of those types of stores. This work was initiated when Brooklyn-based artist and videographer Moko Fukuyama invited me to perform in her project You Never Know What Idea You Might Have in 2017. I collected objects at the store and made an assemblage. A few of those were still working but most of those were not — I cultural associations and contexts. I am sure my work suggests something else. That said, there is a common thread through these collections beyond that these objects are a tiny part of a bigger picture, like a drop in the ocean. All of these pieces evoke different kinds of collective memories. But it’s a bit hard to articulate. Maybe you can tell me something more?

KK: Well, I have been thinking of the assemblages and arrangements you are making as a kind of painting process. So many of the objects you have gathered have interesting colors, textures, and wear. I have watched you place them on the ground before one by one as if you were making a series of marks and then eventually a complete “picture.” I am also interested in the distance you are putting between things… in the case of the bells, they are laid out on these large

oval plinths, with clean white tops, the bells stand up straight like a little army dotting the landscape with all of these similar but slightly different forms. The space in between them makes me think about an action that is yet to come or which has just passed… that being an implied potential for ringing/ sound and the echo that follows. I think of how you told me once that for many years you barely spoke and I think of these objects — the bells, tapes pulled apart, electronic bits – having a voice that speaks for you. We have also talked about spirits and how this material carries with it a kind of feeling or personality. Can you speak more to that?

AO: I think all materials I used for this exhibition are related to the title A Letter from Souls of The Dead. And, that’s from my interest in Spiritualism. Some people believe death is the pure end but I believe something goes on. I’m fascinated by the idea of communicating with the spirits of the dead, the relationship of matter and spirit, and a form of séance to demonstrate the mediumship. Having said that, let me be clear, my belief is not from the religious movement of Spiritualism, which originated from the supernatural events at a farmhouse in Hydesville, N.Y., in the mid 19th century then spread out to mainly in the English speaking countries. It’s more related to animism and shamanism. These sorts of practices and beliefs were common throughout human history and in various cultures. And, my upbringing definitely helped to nurture my interest. I grew up in the ancient capital of Japan, Nara, and if you walk around in the neighborhood, you run into a sacred place (Japanese people call them “power spot”) and the excavation site of ancient ruins every five minutes, and I liked collecting relics such as arrowhead or fragments of clay pottery. I was there in the cradle of animism surrounded by myriads of gods. When I was 11 or 12, I had an epiphany of encountering Shuji Terayama’s works. He was an iconic figure of the ‘60s and ‘70s Japanese underground culture, and his book Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the

Streets became my bible of sorts. It was a perfect playbook for someone like me who threw out conventional means of schooling. He died in

‘83 but I remember going every day to see the

Terayama tribute production of Lemming put on by his theater troupe Tenjo Sajiki in Osaka.

He was born and grew up in Aomori, a northern prefecture of Japan, and had a tie to the local

“itako” culture of blind female mediums known to summon the souls of the dead. He was a certain kind of spiritualist and quoted that practice in various kinds of his film, theater, and radio drama productions. Probably the candomblé

Aki Onda, Collage on Cassettes,1990–ongoing | Photo: Aki Onda

ceremonies I experienced in Salvador, Brazil around 2005 gave me the strongest impact on this, and I had attended the same type of ceremony, which they called macumba, in Rio de Janeiro ten years later. In those ceremonies, participants were dressed mainly in white costumes, danced by following each other in a circle with a rhythmic accompaniment of percussion instruments and chanted songs. The place was set as a shrine and decorated beautifully with offerings such as fruits, food, bottles of liqueur for statues of the orixás. Then, through repetitive movement, they experienced the axé power through spirit possession of the orixás and got into a strong trance state. It’s just mind-blowing. It is very interesting that the AfroBrazilian religions are well known to everybody in Brazil. Whether they practice or not, in a sense it is a part of their life in a symbolic way.

KK: Has this informed your performance practice? I personally have felt the energy in the room shift dramatically when you are performing and you are often “playing” different effuse materials, emergency blankets, lights, cloth in addition to using recorded sound, feedback and looping, and other distortion tools…

AO: As you know, I developed my career as a musician first, and those experiences helped me to shape the foundation as a performer. I was playing my cassette field recording, which I consider sounds of past memories, and a sense of communication

Aki Onda, Collage on Cassettes,1990–ongoing | Photo: Aki Onda with the dead was a perfect match. I hypnotized myself before the show, empty my mind, and stopped the stream of consciousness. Through strong meditation and concentration, I get into a strong trance state. And, if the audience joins in, it works as a communal experience. I had made my own “ritual” and I started bringing many found objects on stage as ornaments, the same as the setting for the candomblé or macumba. It’s like a spectacle-slash-performance and not really a music concert as the visual presentation is as equally important as the aural presentation. I wanted to create an animistic sort of space — everything has aesthetic and cultural value. Everything has equal eminence and there is no hierarchy. However, during the course of developing this style, I faced resistance from the music field. It reached the point of having too many conflicts with their agendas and ways of working. For example, I would need to occupy a stage, alone, for long preparations that would extend over multiple days. This was not ideal for shared stage spaces. That was the point that I thought I should shift this to an exhibition format. In this exhibition, a couple of installations namely Bells and Shopping at Argo were initiated as a performance piece first. Then, I converted them to installations. Still, those serve as the platform for performance. There is a cycle-like fluidity, and those maybe not even end products.

For me, it’s a way to learn the objects, meanings behind those, and how those are contextualized in certain circumstances at each time.

KK: On the day of the opening you will be activating the space with a series of short performances in collaboration with Marcus Fischer and a small ensemble of bell players. We just mentioned how a performance can charge and change a space, what do you hope to achieve with these live actions, what do you hope to leave behind?

AO: It’s a small ritual for activating the works and pouring energy into the space. And, I thought bells would be relevant for this moment as the resonance has the effect of calming our minds. Since the pandemic broke out, we have been through hell, and we are deeply traumatized collectively on a global scale. Also, this past year has underscored America’s long history of violence especially racial frictions and tensions. So this could be a prayer or some sort… It’s also a meditation on death. Throughout human history, people died at younger ages than we do now. There was much less medical control, and they often died at home after their final days. Death became so detached from our lives during the 20th century, and even exotic to us. However, the pandemic brought it back and has made death far more visible and impossible to forget. It is interesting that Spiritualism flourished after the American Civil War and World War I as a response to those massive battlefield casualties. There was a necessity for calling spirits as people wanted to feel their loved ones closer. Maybe the timing echoes, or maybe not. Well, you and I conceived this exhibition and set the title before the pandemic... I wanted to ask you this... You are a curator and regularly organize exhibitions. Each time you open the show, after months of preparation, how the artworks and gallery space start breathing? For me, there is a point where everything changes — the works embody meanings, a certain energy starts flowing, and this sets the right tone. The physical forms are the same, but an extra layer is added.

KK: That is a good question. One I have asked myself many times. I am perhaps an Animist like you. In fact, I made an exhibition once called End Things and in my essay I explored Animistic beliefs and pretty much outed myself in believing that “inanimate objects” are no such thing. I think they are full of life, especially artworks which go through this transfiguration process with their makers and their viewers. Each exhibition I have made has its own resonant energy. Some objects, installations, videos, performances require an audience to come alive or to be complete, so there is also something that happens the moment before we open the doors… you can almost feel the show have a sort of anticipation of what is to come. That is a particularly alive moment… and then once eyes or hands are on the works there is another shift and change. Just as you mentioned, there are all of these layers added to the work as people come to see it. I think the power in exhibitions is allowing things to simply exist! There are so many forces working against us, so many human challenges, that to come to a kind of art church where you can just contemplate and exchange energy and just be is almost a radical act.

AO: Yeah, all artworks have that sort of extra layers and phenomena, and it would be the best if it turns to work as the whole in a holistic way. I’m thinking about Milford Graves again who has a full-body approach to his practice including his study of the human heartbeat, his own combat creation Yara, acupuncture, and herbalism. He wasn’t really a jazz drummer type, and in a sense, he was rejected from the scene. But, he went on with his studies and created his own universe. It’s nice to have that kind of art church, shrine, terreiro, or any kind of sacred place in our mind.