Memories from the Department of Amnesia

Tanaka passionately evokes the loss of her mother by visually recreating the ominous and disempowering feeling of isolation that accompanies mourning. The tape enunciates the painful phases of grieving: the claustrophobic results of dealing with the inevitability of death, the transitional void where one is lost between the comfortable orientation of one’s world and Nothing, and the new sense of clarity where images from the past resurface from the abyss of forgetfulness. The piece is an elegy to Tanaka’s mother, whose attempts at balance and security were constantly disrupted by social, cultural, political, and personal forces beyond her control.