Trans-Siberian Excerpts, Joel Sanderson; Roger Shimomura

The eight performances that make up Trans-Siberian Excerpts were
initially conceived in May 1986 during a 6,753-mile, one-week trip on
the Trans-Siberian Railway. Similar to the varied national and cultural
borders traversed during Shimomura’s train journey, the transcultural
themes explored in the performances serve to bridge understandings
between the constructed binaries of East and West. Through
melodrama and parody, Shimomura explores issues of cultural
morality, oppressive totalitarian governments, and identity.
After the Opening Sequence, the performance begins with Set Me
Free, which is set to a Japanese pop song by Korean-Japanese singer
Akiko Wada (b. 1950) and interspersed with scenes from the Chinese
American film Jade Snow Wong (1976). It features a blindfolded and
bound performer who wiggles and dances while disrobing. What
Killed Grandma opens with a Kabuki-masked performer playing Toku,
Shimomura’s grandmother, taking her blood pressure. It is a dark series
of performances and video montages about the unspoken effects of
Japanese American incarceration during WWII. The absurd parody
Moon Seen as Exiles is based on a poem written by an anonymous
internee at Minidoka that conveys feelings of isolation and tragedy
experienced during incarceration. Junko’s Song is set to “Seventeen
Summer” (Jūshichinonatsu 十七の夏, 1975), a pop song by Junko
Sakurada (b. 1958) about a teenage crush. Performed by Marsha
Paludan, who wears a plaid dress, white gloves, and a mask with large
blue eyes, the performance interrogates Japanese kawaii, or “cute,”
culture and notions of beauty. The performance ends with Three Haiku,
which reverses the order of three haiku, short form Japanese poetry,
written by an anonymous internee to symbolize the death of Japanese
culture for Japanese Americans and their subsequent rebirth as
Americans.