"Cold War" Sights and Sounds in Yamashiro Chikako’s Mud Man (2016)

In this presentation, I will discuss Mud Man (2016) and related works by Okinawan artist Yamashiro Chikako (b. 1976) whose highly innovative performance, video, and film works explore complex and still-contested historical narratives and memories in East Asia. Based in Okinawa, Yamashiro has continued to develop a uniquely poetic practice to produce works set in locations associated with the history of the Battle of Okinawa, the Cold War, and along the borders of present-day U.S. military bases, including Henoko where citizens still protest the construction of a U.S. airbase in Oura Bay. Here, I will focus on the artist’s innovative use of image and sound, her use of "mud" as a material and metaphor, and that of selected poems that can be read in the context of Cold War history. More specifically, I will explore traces of and intersections between "Cold War" sites in Okinawa, Jeju Island, and Vietnam that appear as visual and audio references in Mud Man. I will also touch on Yamashiro’s experimental use of vocal percussion, rap and movement in the related live performance, And I Go Through You (2018), and her most recent work, Chinbin Western: Representation of the Family (2019). My aim is to show how the artist’s practice of juxtaposing and linking images disrupts and deconstructs dominant Cold War narratives of Okinawa and helps elucidate ways in which the Cold War in Asia was a hotter and less binary space than previously thought.