Community Event: Sayonara Hashima at the Japan Foundation

SAYONARA HASHIMA

The Japan Foundation Toronto, along with the Goethe Institut, Toronto and OCAD University present a screening of Sayonara Hashima, along with a discussion with artists Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani on Friday, October 1st.

Sayonara Hashima takes as its subject Hashima, an island off the coast of Japan with a fascinating history. Entirely manmade, the concrete island served as a coal-mining operation that, at its peak of operation, housed some 5000 inhabitants, at that time the most densely populated place on earth.

Abandoned in 1974, when its mineral resources had been exhausted, the island has since taken on a ghostly, mythic status in the national imagination, aided by its appearance in a Battle Royale II, a recent Japanese adventure/science fiction film. Nina Fischer & Maroan El Sani explore the changing roles of the island throughout its history, capturing the accounts not only of former inhabitants but also the current impressions of high school students of a place they know only indirectly through representations. As with many of Fischer & El Sani’s previous projects, Sayonara Hashima asks how memory operates, how a site wears its history, both physically and metaphorically.

Date: Friday, October 1
Time: 7:00 - 9:00 pm (doors open at 6:30)
Location: The Japan Foundation, Toronto
Address: 131 Bloor St. W., 2nd floor of the Colonnade Building
Admission: Free
Reservation required: www.jftor.org/whatson/rsvp.php or (416) 966-1600 x102