Add Architecture, Stir Memory

By Shay Youngblood

What is the effect of architecture on memory? How does memory affect architecture? In what ways do we carry home with us?

In Add Architecture, Stir Memory: Japan Shay Youngblood
explores, early memories of home, enduring friendship, loss
and survival as seen through the lens of her visit to Japan and experience of 3/11, the 9.0 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear tragedy, ten days after her arrival in Tokyo from Texas. Fact and fiction, poetry and music, mix and mingle in interviews and narrative stories. The live performance work incorporates soundscapes, architectural drawings, animation and video.

"As a teenager living in Hawaii I was introduced to Japanese culture, language and food as a volunteer in a hospital working with Japanese patients who had not been home in many years. In 2011 I was selected as Japan U.S Friendship Commission Artist Fellow. During a residency in Japan, I interviewed architects (Kengo Kuma, Fumihiko Maki, Itsuko Hasegawa), designers (Kashiwa Sato, Kazuko Koike), curators and other Japanese creatives about their early memories of home. I was inspired by my conversations and deeply affected by the aftershocks of the earthquake, which resulted in an unexpected, new direction in my work."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shay Youngblood
• Release date: Oct 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781370576685

Shay Youngblood

Shay Youngblood is author of the novels Black Girl in Paris, Winter Prophet, a graphic novel, Black Power Barbie and a collection of short fiction, The Big Mama Stories. Her plays, Amazing Grace, Shakin' the Mess Outta Misery, and Talking Bones (Dramatic Publishing Company), have been widely produced. Her other plays include Flying Blind, Square Blues and Communism Killed My Dog. An Edward Albee honoree, and the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a Pushcart Prize for fiction, a Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, several NAACP Theater Awards, and an Astraea Writers' Award for fiction, Ms. Youngblood graduated from Clark-Atlanta University and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Brown University. She has worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in the eastern Caribbean, as an au pair, artist's model, and poet's helper in Paris, and as a creative writing instructor in a Rhode Island women's prison. She was a 2011 Japan U.S. Friendship Commission, Creative Artist Fellow. Currently she is a writer in residence at the Dallas Museum of Art. "My interest in architecture has been fueled by my travels. I have lived on the East Coast, in the Deep South, Japan, Hawaii, France, Spain and the Caribbean, traveled to Australia, Canada, Mexico, Sweden and Denmark and once took a three month road trip across the United States. I have a particular weakness for shoes and my guilty pleasures are spa vacations and 72 hour reading orgies. I will try almost any cuisine or any activity once, more if I like it. My art practice includes writing and painting, sometimes I combine the two. Among my creative goals are collaborations with a composer on an opera, an illustrator on a graphic novel and to develop an interdisciplinary work for the theater that integrates video animation."

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