Modern way to preserve history
Wed, April 02 2008
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Ito awardee, Cindy Mochizuki |
An innovative project combining arts with modern technology will serve as a multidisciplinary platform for critical thinking and dialogue around online museums and archives.
Vancouver-based artist and curator Cindy Mochizuki will lead a four-man team to preserve the Japanese Canadian heritage and history using modern technology.
The Japanese Canadian National Museum (JCNM) announced that Mochizuki has been selected as the recipient of the Roy Ito Award. Mochizuki has a Masters of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies from the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University.
Mochizuki proposes to bring together three Japanese Canadian artists to spend time with the Roy Ito Collection and to create three new works in response to the historical materials in the collection.
With the historical materials in the Roy Ito Collection as an inspiration and a starting point, Mochizuki and the participating artists will explore the tension and ease between the imaginary and the documentary, rethinking our relationship to history and memory. The project will be realized as an interactive website which is expected to be completed in December 2008, and will be made available to the public in 2009.
Given by Mitsy Ito in memory of her late husband Roy Ito, the one-time award aims to carry on the spirit of Roy Ito by supporting research and publication about the Japanese Canadian experience.
The expected outcome is a scholarly research project working with the Roy Ito Collection as a main resource to produce a publishable result.
The museum expressed gratitude to Mitsy Ito and the Ito family for their generosity and vision. The museum also acknowledged the members of the selection committee for their volunteer work, reviewing and discussing all of the applications.
Roy Ito’s collection was transferred to the Japanese Canadian National Museum after Ito’s death in two groups of material, the first by his wife, Mitsy Ito, and the second by his daughter, Carole Ito. The collection consists of five series of material assembled by Roy Ito over the course of his life.
The first series, including a diary, a flag, correspondence, maps, government reports, and newspaper clippings relates to his experience as a Japanese Canadian sergeant at the close of The Second World War.
The second series relates to the Japanese Canadian experience on the Pacific coast of Canada, and includes books, a map, reports, and historical texts and translations.
The third series, comprised of correspondence, newspaper articles and photographs relates to Ito’s involvement in the Redress movement during the 1980s, and the fourth series, comprised of manuscripts, interview transcripts, floppy disks, notebooks, and photographs, relates to Ito’s research and writing. The fifth series is comprised of Ito’s family’s personal and travel photographs.
JCNM’s mission is to collect, preserve, interpret and exhibit artifacts and archives relating to the history of Japanese Canadians from the 1870s through the present, and to communicate to all the Japanese Canadian experience and contribution as an integral part of Canada’s heritage and multicultural society.
For more information, visit http://www.jcnm.ca.
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