Rei Inoue Drawing Project ”Vote for Peace” ＠ New York University

Shinya Watanabe

I organized the event ”Vote for Peace” at New York University. The artist Rei Inoue is an illustrator who created the Nobukazu Takemura’s CD jacket “Hoshi no Koe.”

The concept of this event is that if visitors could agree to vote for peace, the artist will draw a portrait of the visitors. The process to draw a portrait will take approximately 15 minutes, and while she is drawing, she appeals to the participants such as “U.S. foreign policy changes the future of the world, so please vote for peace.”

She had drawn 250 portraits in Shibuya, Tokyo at the time of election for Japanese House of Councilors. In this event at NYU, just before the presidential election, she had drawn 25 people in two days.

The correspondence of New York University

The impressing thing is that just two days after our proposal of this event to New York University through NYU adjunct professor Hiroshi Sunairi, the university had a meeting and accepted this event as an official event of the university. This is such a liberal and speedy way of New York City, and also they allowed outsiders use the space. It was fantastic. This speediness and flexibility cannot be seen often in Japanese universities.

Also one of the reasons why they accepted this event is that recently, the professors are worried about the political apathy of the students. Now in the United States, the professors in the universities are the generation who experienced the Vietnam War while they were in their school, so the phenomenon that the professors are more liberal than the students is happening. Probably that is why they accepted this kind of active event which can stimulate the young students.

Participants

While in the event, lots of people such as employees of the university, professor and security person joined the event, and we could have a great show. The background of the participants are various from a women from military family in Atlanta, a Chinese women from Macao, the immigrant of Russia and a peace activist from Ohio. Also the class of art and activism and design visited our event. As a result, lots of people enjoyed this event.

The surprising thing is that while the event, Ms. Inoue talked about the truth that the Depleted Nuclear Weapon was used in Iraq War, but all the people include students and professors did not know this truth. The name Depleted Uranium Weapon itself is unfamiliar to them, and I felt the sloppy journalism of the United States. (The root of this problem comes from the education system of the United States which does not teach the effect of radiation including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.) This event was meaningful because we could inform one of the truths of Iraq War.

Also lots of Asian students welcomed our events. Probably it is because that the two Japanese persons had an event, and it had a welcoming atmosphere to these Asian students.

The students from Okinawa International University

On the second day of the event, two students from Okinawa who came to visit the symposium at Columbia University to appeal the dreadful situation of US Military helicopter crash on their campus in August 2004, joined the event. The students, 19 and 20 years old, had an opportunity to know the opinion of American young students what they think about the issue of US military base overseas. Only half of the students know where Okinawa is, and most of the people do not know that Okinawa was a part of the United States until 1972, and U.S. military still occupy the large part of Okinawa. However, the NYU students listened to their story very sincerely, because the people from Okinawa directly talked about their situation to them directly. Also we brought lots of visual data such as newspaper, pamphlet, letters from Okinawa and photos of manatee in Okinawa.

Reflection

This event was held at New York University and also it was at the art school, so only liberal people visited the event, and we could not catch the people who are conservative or ignorant. However, it is not easy to catch these people, on the busy street of New York City.

Since the English skill of the artist is limited, I did interpretation. However, through interpreter, the face to face communication was limited. Also the artist was not used to the American way of communication, there is a miscommunication which comes from cultural gap. I felt the difficulty of communication, which cannot be easily realized through translation.

At the end, I want to say THANK YOU to Hiroshi Suinairi who helped a lot for this event!

(C)Copyright Shinya Watanabe

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