1,500 prison inmates dancing in absolute harmony to Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’. The video filmed at Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) in the Philippines has become an internet sensation with more than 50 million views on Youtube. What makes the video so popular? In the original music video to ‘Thriller’ – a classic artifact…
Yurie Nagashima, Kazoku, 1993 In a previous blog post, I wrote about the photographer Yurie Nagashima whose photographs of herself and her family in the nude instigated a dramatic shift in Japanese visual culture. After exhibiting her phenomenally successful Kazoku series in 1993, Nagashima continued to interrogate photographic subjects related to gender, sexuality, representation and…
Shortly after the devastating earthquake and ensuing Tsunami hit the north-eastern coast of Japan, the Japanese Prime Minister Kaoto Kan addressed the assembled press in Tokyo with a brief statement expressing his sympathies to those affected by the disaster. In his short statement, Kan alludes to a deeply harbored anxiety in Japanese culture as he…