Screenings of "Umi No Oya" and "aPrayer: Encounter with Hideo Iwasaki" at Mondes Multiples Festival
18 November 2022, Maison de la Culture, Bourges (FR)

Umi No Pya / Uto Monogatari. Screenshot. Credit: E. Chardronnet & M. Minder

aPrayer: Encounter with Hideo Iwasaki. Screenshot. Credit: E. Chardronnet & M. Minder
Umi No Oya / Uto Monogatari (14'30) by Ewen Chardronnet and Maya Minder
In the south of Japan, at the foot of the Uto Peninsula, in Sumiyoshi Park, near the shrine, there is a monument. On this monument is a profile of a middle-aged woman with glasses wearing a button-down shirt, her gaze slightly tilted upward and away, as if she were watching the sea. Below the portrait is inscribed "IN MEMORY OF MADAME KATHLEEN MARY DREW, D. Sc.", a British phycologist who died in 1957 at the age of 56, without ever having set foot in Japan.
Film produced with the support of Antre Peaux, ART2M, DDA Contemporary
Art Marseille, ProHelvetia, PALM magazine du Jeu de Paume, Biolab Tokyo,
bioart/biomedia platform metaPhorest of Waseda University in Tokyo,
More-Than-Planet, co-funded by the European Union.
aPrayer : meeting with Hideo Iwasaki (14'10) by Ewen Chardronnet and Maya Minder
In 2016, Hideo Iwasaki of metaPhorest - Laboratory for Mollecular Cell Network & Biomedia Art at Waseda University in Tokyo, created the aPrayer project, consisting of two stone monuments (one for cells and artificial life, the other for microorganisms) in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. Iwasaki takes us to the Shinto seaweed monument at Kawasaki Daishi Temple and then reflects on his experience with aPrayer and the associated ceremonies.
Film produced with the support of Antre Peaux, ART2M, DDA Contemporary
Art Marseille, ProHelvetia, Biolab Tokyo, bioart/biomedia platform
metaPhorest of Waseda University in Tokyo, More-Than-Planet, co-funded
by the European Union.