Eiko Otake and Wen Hui on What is War
In this final installment of a trio of interviews with Wen Hui and Eiko Otake, the artists sat down with Rachel Cooper, Director Global Cultural Diplomacy at Asia Society, to discuss how their differing backgrounds came together through collaboration to create their newest work What is War.
Eiko Otake
I do not regret but we anchored ourselves with a very serious title. For me, the war could be personal, but it often does not stop there.
Rachel Cooper
It feels like there are so many wars now.
EO
Right, this period in history is a serious situation. And it happens to be 80 years from the end of the Second World War and 50 years from the end of the Vietnam war. Both affected me deeply and so have the current wars.
I’m 73 years old. When Koma and I started our career, we were very young. Most of the audience was older than us. As we kept going, the people of our age began to come, and now my audience includes people generations younger than me. With such a range of people of many ages and geographic backgrounds, there are multiple historical relationships to the subject of war. So, when we talk about war, what kind of war does each audience member think about?
I also wonder,” How do our bodies and ages affect the people who are looking at our performance?”
RC
There is an empathy created with your body that communicates in a different way than in drama or film. What is it about the body moving in space that makes it different? Since this work has the two of you moving together, is there something specific you want to communicate to the audience?
EO
If I tear this paper into two, it creates two pieces of paper. But if you split a person’s body, then that body dies or becomes wounded and perhaps compromised. When people talk about war, they often talk about nations and borders. People. People are many persons. I also think a country is a landscape before it is a bordered nation. Animals and plants do not, or used to not, recognize borders.
Our body is also a landscape and there is no border between a shoulder and a back. The voice comes from a body before it forms a particular language. So, Wen Hui and I share this precious space with audiences and try to imagine time/space with war and without war.
RC
Wen Hui has called this a very personal piece because war is personal. War is not about someone else; it is about you. The work tries to communicate how you own war in your body and how you share that.
Wen Hui
The story is personal. But when we are engaging over five generations of people who have experienced war, they all understand and experience war in a variety of personal ways.
RC
The work is not just about the two of you, but it’s also about your audience.
EO
Yes, we started this work from a very personal family memory.
WH
We carry this history in our body, and that is why we can use our bodies as a vehicle.
EO
We create the piece and share it with the audience. We hope each person finds and digs into what they can relate to in their own history and that of their families.
The cost of war isn’t only killing. War changes bodies, minds, and the environment. It wounds them and makes them not function like they did before. Many people have to live with that result.
RC
How did you come to the form you have decided to use in creating the piece? It is movement and body based, but it may not be dance in the way that some people think of dance.
EO
I’m not a dancer or choreographer, though the dance community is my community. Wen Hui is an experienced choreographer and is a really great dancer. But together we use the body as our place of memory and imagination. As I task my body and mind to think about war, I think of other people’s bodies and lives changed by war.
We become naked in this work. But my nakedness is that of 73 years old. What does that mean?
Our naked bodies are not those who are portrayed in the subject of war, but we are also the same, human.
RC
Being naked does something to us and to viewers.
What is your hope for what the audience will take with them from the work? Is it history? Is it empathy? A sense of community?
EO
I always want to perform a work that makes audience members feel they are glad they came, even if they were not sure if they liked it or not. And if we and they can individually and collectively think and talk about what is war, what do I see, what do I feel, and what do I know about war.▪︎
Experience What is War at the Walker April 11–12, 2025 at the Walker. Learn more and get tickets here.
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