MANZANAR, BERLIN, VENICE: TRANSNATIONAL VIRTU AL REALITY ART INSTALLATIONS
Keywords:
Tamiko Thiel, Japanese American Internment, VR Art (Virtual Reality Art), Berlin Wall, Orientalism, TransnationalismAbstract
Manzanar, Berlin, and Venice are major tourist destinations, and visitors want to learn and experience the places’ history. Especially Manzanar and the Berlin Wall emanate the ephemerality of man-made structures and of a past that does not easily lend itself to create a unifying narrative, but rather one of complications and tensions. Due to their destruction, removal, and—in the case of the Venice lagoon—threat of flood tides and erosion their translatability into visual art become all the more important. The article examines the contemporary artworks of Tamiko Thiel who not only reconstructed the places in her 3D virtual reality installations Beyond Manzanar and Virtuelle Mauer: Re-Constructing the Wall but also put them in a transnational perspective. Beyond Manzanar manages to convey a feeling of imprisonment that is not only connected to Japanese American experiences; the Virtuelle Mauer provides an immersive experience of living ‘in the shadow of the Wall’ that can be applied to other such contexts. Lastly, Thiel’s installation The Travels of Mariko Hōrō moves the question of potential agency of the Other to the forefront. The article traces how Thiel has created socially engaged artworks of cultural translation and negotiation that have the potential to be translated into social practice.
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