ICP Museum, Then They Came for Me, incarceration, WWII, Japanese Americans, internment, poetry, performance, Poetry Society of America, Kimiko Hahn, Christine Kitano, Kevin Miyazaki, Tom Ikeda, Densho, Julian Saporiti, Erin Aoyama, No-No Boy Project, Brandon Shimoda, Paul Kitagaki, Bob Lee
Arts & Entertainment, Community, Events

ICP Museum Presents Poetry Performances Based on Japanese Incarceration

Japanese Incarceration: Public Memory and Cultural Production, Part I

Tuesday, March 27 from 6:30 p.m. until 8:00 p.m.

ICP Museum – 250 Bowery (between Stanton and E. Houston Streets)

Admission: Free

Presented in collaboration with the Poetry Society of America and the Poetry Coalition’s “Poetry and the Body” theme, this two-part event brings together artists, scholars, poets, and photographers who draw on the history of Japanese incarceration during World War II and its archival, material evidence in their innovative practices. During Part I, poet Kimiko Hahn introduces an in-gallery reading prior to a conversation between poet Christine Kitano and photographer Kevin Miyazaki, moderated by Tom Ikeda, Executive Director of Densho, an organization dedicated to acquiring, preserving, and disseminating oral histories and other artifactual materials around the unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

ICP Museum, Then They Came for Me, incarceration, WWII, Japanese Americans, internment, poetry, performance, Poetry Society of America, Kimiko Hahn, Christine Kitano, Kevin Miyazaki, Tom Ikeda, Densho, Julian Saporiti, Erin Aoyama, No-No Boy Project, Brandon Shimoda, Paul Kitagaki, Bob Lee

Japanese Incarceration: Public Memory and Cultural Production, Part II

Wednesday, March 28 from 6:30 p.m. until 8:00 p.m.

ICP Museum – 250 Bowery (between Stanton and E. Houston Streets)

Admission: Free

During Part II, Julian Saporiti with Erin Aoyama present the immersive musical experience No-No Boy, followed by a discussion with poet Brandon Shimoda, photographer Paul Kitagaki, and scholar Bob Lee.

The No-No Boy project is a multimedia concert featuring the music of singer/songwriter Julian Saporiti. Inspired by his doctoral research at Brown University, as well as his experiences growing up as the son of a Vietnamese refugee in Tennessee, Saporiti’s original songs, interwoven among stories he has collected through the years, are performed against a backdrop of projections displaying archival photographs and films. No-No Boy creates an immersive experience that shines a light on diverse but interconnected histories: World War II Japanese incarceration, Southeast Asian refugees, and kids in middle-America making sense of hyphenated identities. Saporiti is joined on stage by singer Erin Aoyama, a fellow Brown PhD student whose participation in the project is deeply personal, as her grandmother was incarcerated at Heart Mountain, one of the ten Japanese American concentration camps. Through music, storytelling, and visuals, the No-No Boy concert brings often-obscured American histories to audiences in a unique and captivating way. At the core of this project, is a message which dozens of camp survivors have asked Saporiti to relay to his audiences: Do not let this happen again.

Both events are free, but ICP asks that all guests register in advance. When you register online, you have the option of purchasing museum entry after 4:30 p.m. for $10 to see ICP’s current exhibition Then They Came for Me, which documents the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.

For more information and to register, please visit ICP Museum’s website.