This is a story of friendship between two independent female artists and the body memories they each carry with intention. In January 2020, New York-based interdisciplinary artist Eiko Otake traveled to Beijing to visit Wen Hui, a Chinese choreographer and filmmaker. Though born eight years apart, their lives were shaped by distinct histories: Eiko in postwar japan, Wen during the Cultural Revolution. Their month-long visit became a space for deep conversation, reflection, and artistic collaboration, eventually leading to the documentary No Rule Is Our Rule (2022).

Marking another year of inspiring friendship and collaboration, Eiko and Wenhui come to USC to share their work. They invite the community to a full-day experimental workshop featuring a guided movement session (1:30-3:30 at SCA Gallery) and a screening of their collaborative documentary No Rule is Our Rule (4:00-6:00 at SCA 112).

Together, they ask:
What does it mean to forget, to remember, to mourn, or to pray? How do we move through violence and loss? What shifts when we become movers, dancers, witnesses of our own bodies?

This immersive workshop day invites participants of all backgrounds to explore movement as a way of knowing —a method for accessing human experience, processing emotion, and engaging with space, memory, and creativity.

This program is sponsored by the Levan Institute for the Humanities, the USC East Asian Studies Center, the USC Dornsife Department of Comparative Literature, and the SCA Community Impact Council.