Performed as part of Responding 7 at Dais Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture
August 2025
A ritual performance in dialogue with land, spirit, and collective memory.
R7 non-capital letters Curated by Daisuke Takeya
18 July - 27 July 2025
Photo courtesy - Daisuke Takeya
This performance was part of Responding 7 at Dais Ishinomaki, a multidisciplinary platform that invites artists to enter into dialogue with place — not as a site for intervention, but as a living body carrying memory, grief, resilience, and transformation. Ishinomaki, once a quiet coastal city in Miyagi Prefecture, became internationally known in the wake of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami - a catastrophe that claimed over 4,000 lives in the city alone, including 87 schoolchildren. The trauma of that moment is not a historical footnote; it is imprinted on the land itself. Buildings remain partially standing with visible waterlines more than 30 meters high, and preserved ruins function as quiet but potent witnesses to loss. These sites are not just memorials — they are sentient environments that hold pain in their very structure. As I prepared to enter this space as an artist, I grappled with profound questions: How does one create in a place where absence is so present?
What does it mean to respond — ethically, spiritually, artistically — to a landscape saturated with grief? Among the most haunting and humbling experiences was our visit to Ōkawa Elementary School, where 74 of 108 children lost their lives. We also walked through the preserved ruins of Kadonowaki Elementary, where all students and teachers survived. The contrast between the two sites deepened the emotional terrain. In another part of the city, we visited a home left untouched since the tsunami — a frozen tableau of disruption. These spaces insist on stillness. They resist interpretation. They ask not to be aestheticised, but acknowledged.
Rather than reenact trauma or attempt to translate it into symbolic form, I chose a different register: to channel a gesture of attunement, of reverence, of energetic repair. My work turned toward the natural world — not in avoidance of the past, but as a mode of listening and co-existence.
The surrounding Miyagi mountains — ancient, sheltering, unbroken — became both witness and collaborator. Deer appeared daily during our stay, quietly crossing our paths like envoys of another realm. Their presence felt less like a coincidence and more like an invocation. In response, I created a sculptural deer figure as a central element in my performance — a symbolic guardian and vessel of the land’s spirit. I also drew upon the iconography of Benzaiten (Saraswati), the goddess of knowledge, music, and flow, whose shrines are often situated near water and mountains. These archetypes — the deer and the goddess — were not imposed symbols, but emerged organically through observation and silence. The performance itself was conceived as a ritual of resonance — a convergence of my body, the sculptural deer, and the landscape. We stood together, not as isolated forms, but as interconnected presences in contemplation of the mountain spirit.
The performance was slow, meditative, elemental. Through deep vocal projection — part breath, part prayer — I sent sound outward and upward, across the terrain. The voice was not simply performative; it was an offering. A call to the peaks. A vibration intended to awaken what is unseen but deeply felt. I sought to channel forces of healing, strength, and reconnection — energies often eclipsed by the dominant narrative of loss, but vital and alive.
This performance is like a therapy and an ongoing response to the site. It is about community healing and expands beyond self, nature and community. Crucially, the audience was not passive. They were invited to participate in an act of embodied response. Charcoal was placed on the platform, and participants were encouraged to draw directly onto the floor — not representational drawings, but intuitive gestures, marks of feeling and sensation, grounded in their connection to the mountains. The platform became a collective skin — layered with human response, motion, and memory. This was not a stage, but a shared surface of resonance. Each line, each mark, extended the conversation between body, spirit, and land. In that moment, the distinction between artist, audience, and environment dissolved. What emerged was a temporary community — not bound by language, but by listening, presence, and mutual acknowledgement of the mountain as a sentient, sacred entity. This work does not claim to resolve or redeem. It does not erase trauma. Rather, it attempts to listen differently — to create space for what cannot be said, only felt. It asks what art can become when it is no longer an act of expression, but a gesture of devotion. This performance project is on-going, and it is my first response and approach to it.
Dimple B Shah 5th August 2025
