2. My autobiographical text: “Fragments of an Autobiography or Remembering in the House of Time, From London to Wisconsin, 1933-2010:
http://asjournal.zusas.uni-halle.de/190.html

3. link to my poem that gives the whole issue its title of “Women’s Voices from The House of Time”:
http://asjournal.zusas.uni-halle.de/194.html

Please click here to visit the Questioning Contemporary Art blog.

I couldn’t make it to the Poor Farm
But It I know what it’s like,
I’ve seen it in my dreams, always on a hill
A lawn of weeds in front, a few bent figures
Scattered here and there, postures unforgiving,
Anonymous staffage.
I know what it is like from reading
About the dispossessed in England, the misérables in France,
The Depression in the U.S. of A. I know what it’s like from
Jacob Riis’s clever photos
That dull the glance, reveal the glare
Of poor folk’s pots, the
Messiness of their bedding, I know
from Daumier, Courbet and the London Illustrated News.
I know what the Poor Farm is like and what it’s not
It’s not nice.

Starting in England in 1834 or thereabouts, with the new
Poor Laws and “scientific” social planning,
They—those in the know, with the power, with the reasons—purposely
Made the Poor Houses as off-putting as possible
So the conniving poor wouldn’t choose to go
Unless absolutely desperate, out of work; the old, the children, those
With nothing to eat and nowhere to go: they made it to the Poor House.

If you were decrepit, had no work, no family and couldn’t afford
The price of a loaf or even a slice of bread, you went.
The Poor Farm was cold;
The Poor Farm was mean;
The Poor Farm licked your old bones clean.
And you worked, you bent, you stitched, you dug, relentlessly
Pleasure? Leisure? Respect?
Not for a moment.
The idea was to make it so bad that you’d rather
Lie on the pavement and hold out a cup, but you weren’t allowed
Because you would then be a Public Nuisance, a shame to the
Good name
Of the Community.
So you went off to the Poor Farm, the last resort, too sick, too sore,
Too tired, to poor for anything, anywhere else
But the Poor Farm on the Hill.

What a spirit of generosity; what a sense of charity what public spirit!
Those Poor Farm taxes made every fat farmer, every portly banker,
Every solid, tax-paying citizen into a complacent donor, though over my dead body
Said some.
But when all was said and all was done,
Some old woman, some old man
Couldn’t fall back on anything; to tell the truth,
Nothing was left, so down
Into the pit of dispossession, wretchedly clinging to
Some last shred of self-respect, some fading memory of self
Crept the derelict into not-quite-prison
The derision of their betters ringing in their ears
(Though they were mostly deaf, poor dears,
And couldn’t hear so it’s just a figure of speech.
Nevertheless, they felt it.)

I never made it to the Poor Farm on the hill—
But I might still.
Count no man happy til the day he dies, said
The Greek writer.
Maybe it’s better to die than to go to the Poor Farm,
But still it’s probably better to be alive, to be kept alive
If not to thrive.
What is it all about, this way of treating poor folks?
It’s about Capitalism, about Free Enterprise, about old
Malthus with his logical lies.
Too many people, not enough stuff?
Prune them down, make life tough
For those who can’t produce, those surplus beings
Who reduce the chance of plenty for the rest of us.
Its law—capitalism’s—ruled the world and rules it now.
Keep working til you drop: work, work and never stop,
And if you stop you’re doomed, even if you’re laid off.
Work even if you’re old and sick, even if you can’t stand up.
Minimize the rations;
Keep the hovel cold;
Clothe their bones in rags,
Drape them in contempt
Nobody’s exempt
from the laws of supply and demand.
Utilitarianism drives the heart of charity
So whip the slackers into shape,
The poor, the old, the helpless are Other, like the blacks,
The dim provincials overseas on obscure continents
Grouped in tin-rooved shacks or ragged tents;
All richly deserve to shiver in the cold.

Yet surely all these terms are shifters: “poor”,” old”
“Other”. Even we could easily be here,
Be knocking at the Poor Farm door.
These are not permanent conditions
Inscribed in DNA at birth, au contraire
They lurk in potens for us all. Any one of
Us could crawl or could have crawled up to
The hateful Poor Farm door.

I never made it to the Poor Farm
But I might. In the middle of the night, in the
Twinkling of an eye lose my money
And my reason and my friends and my position
And my pride, take a ride, slip and slide
Fall
Like them all
Who had nothing left
Who were bereft.
There is no God
There are no angels
Only judges, beasts and strangers
To drag you to the Poor Farm door
And then there is no more.

The Poor Farm Press website (under construction):
http://poorfarmexperiment.org/index.html

Please click here for the PDF. *Note: (86.29 mb – heavy file – will take time to load on slower connections)

Gakugeki Festival, August 6, 2004

Kyoto Concert Hall, Kyoto, Japan

Co-Directors and Producers: Moira Roth and Mary Sano

Assistant Director: Rebecca Jennison

English Text by Moira Roth (Japanese translation by Naoko Matsushiro)

Performers:

The Dancer/Blind Woman/Amaterasu: Mary Sano
The Blind Koto Player: Shoko Hikage
The Noh Actor/Monk/ Semimaru: Tadaki Hashimoto
Offstage Voice of Sakagami: Koji Hashimoto
Mirror Holder #1: Keita Yoshida
Mirror Holder #2: Izawa Haruhi

Kuroko: Akahoshi Masanori

Special Guests: Mari Uehara (biwa) and Tetsuhiko Fukuhara (flute)
Parts:
#1. Of Legends
#2. Amaterasu
#3. The Rehearsal

#4. Hiroshima, August 6, 1945

#5. Itsukushima Shrine, The Island of Miyajima
(The Dance of the Four Senses & The Dream of Amaterasu)
#6. The Actor-Monk’s Story

#7. Time Past and Present

#8. August 6, 2004

Video Segments:

Mary Sano on Stinson Beach, California

August 6, 1945, Hiroshima

Night Shrine, Itsukushima Shrine, The Island of Miyajima

Day Shrine, Itsukushima Shrine, The Island of Miyajima

Amaterasu with Letter, Itsukushima Shrine, and Shrine’s Noh Theater, The Island of Miyajima

Credits:
Dance Choreography: Mary Sano
Lighting Design and Director: Masaaki Aikawa
Video Editor: Claudia Leger

Video Footage: Moira Roth and Mary Sano

Stage Director: Hideo Sekino

Stage Manager, Kyoto Concert Hall: Hiroshi Hatano

Kyoto Concert Hall Technicians

Music: Original Compositions:
Shoko Hikage (koto)
Mari Uehara (biwa)
Tony Chapman (piano music and text)

Thanks to the Hiroshima newspaper Chugoku Shinbun, and to Umbo and Yaeko Yamashita for costume assistance

Amaterasu, the Blind Woman and Hiroshima is divided into eight parts, and tells the story of the Dancer (Mary Sano) and the Noh Actor (Tadaki Hashimoto), a brother and sister involved in pre-war Noh theater, who have lost touch with one another after the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 (later they reenact their experiences of that day). The performance contains two sections relating directly to the bombing: in Part 4 the Koto Player performs a discordant dirge-like piece, and in Part 7, the Dancer and Noh Actor enact the emotions and events of that day, accompanied by biwa and flute music. Woven into the narrative is a pre-war rehearsal of a famous “trio” (the Dancer, Noh Actor and Koto Player) of the 15^th century Noh play, Semimaru, which is a tale of a blind biwa player, exiled from the imperial court to Mt. Osaka, and his meeting there with Sakagami, his demented dancer-sister. After the bombing of Hiroshima, accompanied by the Koto Player (her childhood friend), the Dancer–who was blinded during the bombing–goes to the Island of Miyajima. Now known as the Blind Woman, she learns to dance again through experimenting with her four remaining senses (touch, taste, smell and sound) and, in a dream, encounters Amaterasu, the sun goddess, at the Itsukushima Shrine. The Noh Actor, now mute, goes to live in Kyoto, and becomes a restless monk. There–while playing the biwa, writing poetry and reciting, “like a mantra,” a text by Dogen, the 13^th century Zen monk-poet–he experiences “slippages of time,” sometimes believing he is back either in pre-war Japan, or his childhood, and at other times believing that he is Semimaru, the 15^th century blind biwa player.

The performance ends with Part 8 in the present with readings from the Hiroshima newspaper (Chugoku Shinbun) of that day, and references to events in Iraq, etc. by the Kuroko and the Mirror Holders. On the two balconies, the Koto Player (now dressed in regular clothing) and Amaterasu (now without a mask) address one another briefly.
After this, they and the three other actors move through the audience, improvising with half-sentences about “. . . present . . . mirrors . . .mind’s eye.” Finally, they stand on the stage in front of the video screen which reads “August 6, 2004.”

This experimental dance-drama draws upon many diverse sources, influences and media, e.g. Japanese mythology, religion, poetry and history, traditional and experimental dance and theater traditions, and video footage shot in California and Japan (in which Sano appears in her Amaterasu kimono and mask). Costume plays a major role in Amaterasu, the Blind Woman and Hiroshima, witness the several changes in the appearance of the Dancer/Blind Woman/Amaterasu, and of the Noh Actor-Monk to indicate their character/role shifts. The Kuroko (Akahoshi Masanori), a silent black-clothed presence, appears occasionally during the performance —this figure is a reference to both Noh and Kabuki stage traditions. In their search for solace and peace and for one another, the brother and sister are accompanied by three musicians—the Koto Player (Shoko Hikage), the Biwa Player (Mari Uehara), and the Flute Player (Tetsuhiko Fukuhara). There is also a recurring musical piano motif (on a CD), “Of Legends,” by Tony Chapman. Two further characters, who appear on the side balconies, holding large silver-painted fans, are the Mirror Holders #1 and #2 (Keita Yoshida and Izawa Haruhi). They periodically speak as they explain to one another and to the audience the actions of the other performers.

Text and Production: Dinh Q. Lê and Moira Roth

The Artist: Dinh Q. Lê

Kieu: Thuy Tran

Narrator: Ellen Sebastian Chang

Technical Production: Julia Page and Corinne Sklar

Documentation: Claudia Leger (video) and Dianne Jones (digital photography)

The play, which uses still photo and film projections, is an exchange between three characters. It has only been produced once so far, at the SF Camerawork gallery, November 4, 2003. There is an edited 15-minute video of this production by Claudia Leger.

In the front of the audience, sitting and standing as they talk to one another in English and Vietnamese, are the Artist (played by Dinh Q. Lê) and ) and Kieu (Thuy Tran).

Kieu—based on the heroine of the famous early 19th century Vietnamese poetic novel, Nguyen Du’s The Tale of Kiêu—is a figure often viewed by Vietnamese as standing for their country and its history.

Toward the beginning of the play, the Artist and Kieu read short selections from this text (Kieu reads in English and the Artist in Vietnamese). In the audience sits the Narrator (Ellen Sebastian Chang), who explains periodically to the audience about Vietnamese history and the Kieu novel.

During much of the play, the two figures are engulfed in large projections of Lê’s 2002-2003 photo-weavings and the raw Photo Shop images from which these were made— plus his 2000 huge installation of photos and texts, Mot Coi Di Vi [“spending one’s life trying to find one’s way home”]. A recording of the popular Vietnamese song, “Mot Coi Di Vi,” is a recurring motif. At one point, a clip from Coppola’s Apocalypse Now is played in which three female performers (including Playboy Bunny) arrive on a helicopter to perform before the troops.

The play draws on the fact that Lê has begun to focus increasingly on how to represent the Vietnamese voice in the “tug of war” for the memory of the Vietnam War, how to represent the Vietnamese people having, so to speak, the last word.

Hence in Shootout ( a subsection of the “From Vietnam to Hollywood” photo-weavings series, which Lê exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2003), he consciously began to work with six “characters”:

1-2. Two Vietnamese: Hao, a friend of Lê’s and “Kieu,” represented by a 1960′s studio photo of a woman Lê had found in a Saigon secondhand store

3-4. Two figures from the famous 1968 Eddie Adams photograph of the Saigon execution of a Viet Cong suspect by the Saigon head of police

5-6. Two figures, Willard and Playboy Bunny, from the movie, Apocalypse Now

At the end of the performance, the Artist and Kieu take masses of silk ribbons (which Lê had brought back from Vietnam for this purpose) and weave them together. They then exit with Thuy Tran (Kieu) singing the song, “Mot Coi Di Vi.”

Published texts about Rachel Marker:

“Rachel Marker and the City of Maps, Berlin, Summer 2001,” X-tra, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2001

“Rachel Marker and Her Book of Shadows,” Art Journal, Fall 2003

“Rachel Marker, Franz Kafka and Alice Sommer, adapted from a theater piece in three acts,” n.paradoxa, Volume 17, 2006
http://magazines.documenta.de/attachment/000000262.pdf

“Through the Eyes of Rachel Marker,” Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts, Vol. 33, No. 1, Spring/Summer 2006

Plays about Rachel Marker:

“Rachel Marker, Franz Kafka and Alice Sommer,” University of Hawaii, Manoa, 2005

“Through the Eyes of Rachel Marker, a piece for two voices,” Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley, CA, and Teachers Training Conference, Potsdam, Germany, 2005-2006

“Through the Eyes of Rachel Marker: a three-part presentation,” Right Window Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2008

Click here to view the “Introduction to Rachel Marker” PDF

Click here to view the “Rachel Marker, Zurich and Verdun” PDF

Click here to view the “Rachel Marker, Letters to Franz Kafka, Prague” PDF

Click here to view the “Through the Eyes of Rachel Marker” PDF