Tomoko Sato is an artist reorganizing vast amounts of research on land and history into new narratives, and pioneering techniques of reimagining their telling in lecture performances. Confluences of multiple (hi)stories, her lectures act as the materialization of potential alternative fictions via the artist’s voice and body.
For Index for a Ghost Tokyo: Introduction, Sato was commissioned by Theater Commons Tokyo to develop her research on the Minato ward area. Tokyo’s city center, Minato ward remains at the front stage of Japan’s modern history, with redevelopments drastically changing its landscape even today. To confront this excess, Sato will use Taro Okamoto’s 1957 urban treatise Ghost Tokyo as a starting point, tracing her research outcomes over the next several years on her own body. How will the resulting lecture performance invite in the vicissitudes of this region, and what kind of story will be told anew?