Join us on Friday, June 26th for a screening of NO RULE IS OUR RULE (Eiko Otake and Wen Hui, 2023, run time: 1 hr 15 min), followed by a talkback with Otake at the Bushel Collective.
Doors at 6:30, screening at 7:30.
No Rule Is Our Rule (2023) is a deeply personal video diary of friendship and collaboration between two independent female artists. Eiko Otake grew up in postwar Japan; Wen Hui came of age during China's Cultural Revolution. Together, they explore the political histories, personal memories, and body memories each willingly carries.
The film was shot without a script, its shape determined by circumstance — as a planned monthlong visit between the two artists was cut short by COVID-19, the collaboration continued instead through video diaries, archival footage, and Zoom conversations. Chinese filmmaker Yiru Chen, once Eiko's student, joined as co-editor.
The screening will be followed by a conversation with Eiko Otake — a rare opportunity to hear directly from one of the film's makers about her practice and her life's work.
No Rule Is Our Rule won Best Feature Documentary at the Japan International Film Festival and has screened at Asia Society New York, Asian Arts Initiative, Yale, Duke, Cornell, and Wesleyan.
Born and raised in Japan and a resident of New York since 1976, Eiko Otake is a movement-based, interdisciplinary artist. She worked for more than 40 years as Eiko & Koma performing their own choreography which earned them Guggenheim, MacArthur, and United States Artists Fellowships, as well as the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival and the Dance Magazine Awards.
Since 2014, Eiko has been directing her own projects. She has performed a series of site-specific solo work, A Body in Places at over 76 sites. In 2016, Eiko was the subject of the 10th annual Danspace Platform, a month-long curated program that brought her a Special Bessies Citation, an Art Matters Grant, and the Anonymous Was a Woman Award. A Body in Fukushima records Eiko‘s solo performances in post-nuclear disaster Fukushima, Japan. The project has produced a book publication, a feature-length film as well as numerous photo exhibitions, lectures, and performances. In 2017, Eiko launched her multi-year Duet Project, a mutable and evolving series of experiments in collaborations. She has worked with artists David Harrington, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Wen Hui, Joan Jonas, DonChristian Jones, Iris McCloughan, Beverly McIver, Mérian Soto, Wen Hui, and her late grandfather, Chikuha Otake. Her 10-year project, I Invited Myself, is a series of exhibitions and screenings of her media works. Her short and feature-length films have been screened in many film festivals internationally. www.eikootake.org