出発までの残り時間： 2 months
Haven't researched anything yet. Nothing. I think I'm afraid of taking this all (and myself) too seriously. I better get on the ball soon, though. It's just so easy to get distracted...
Anyway, for that reason, I haven't made my practice run out to my friend's yet. I've considered postponing that trip until I'm on my way out... But in the past month, I have given much more thought to the purposes of this journey. I realize now that one thing more important than most anything to me right now is the subdued, unheard voices of the minoritarian. The Untouchables, the Unheard, the Forgotten. What an amazing experience it would be, an awesome power to share by accompanything those who can bring attention to the Unvoiced!
My mother is sending a video camera as I write this. She had one she wasn't using already, and I couldn't afford to buy a new one. For now, I must focus on narrowing the list (this dauthing mile-length list) of those places I will try to inculde in this documentary adventure of mine. Here's what I have so far:
- 被差別部落民（日本）
- アイヌ（日本：北海道）
- 琉球民族（日本：沖縄）
- 백정 [白丁]（韓国）
- 臺灣原住民[台湾原住族]（台湾）
- dalits (India, Nepal)
There's an obvious orientation toward Asia in this list, but that's where I'll be moving around first anyway, so I figure I can get to many others (like the Cagots in France and such) at a later point in the trip.
This project's main consideration, though, is the consolidation (violent reductions) of spaces, peoples, cultures, vast tracks of earth and nature, that follows systematic unification movements, abridgement. The now universal song line that "it's a small world after all" should no longer be interpreted as a realization or reflection of what was always true, but as a statement equivalent to saying 'in the end it will be true': 'It's a small world after all is said and done.' This is the mostly covert violence of contraction (of space), of abbreviation (of record and publicity), of omission (from the media of world affairs). Omission of the Unvoiced. In the rushes and flows of extension (i.e. going from A to B where A and B are predetermined, or pre-acknowledged, ordinates), intensive movements -- of reflection, of regard for those things not immediately obvious, of meditation, and yes, of thanksgiving -- go mostly unheeded (unheard). Studies like psychoanalysis concern themselves with these movements of intension as they regard the human mind; but what of interrelational subjects? What of all that is present around the couched shrink visitor that feeds him, breeds him, moves through him?
Food, another major thematic point I will try to make, does exactly this. We put it into our mouths, chew, swallow, perhaps without a second thought. Where does it come from? How was it made? How did it get here? (Who made it?!) What is being omitted in the story of this everyday phenomenon of eating? Everything from the clothes we wear, the pencils we write with, the journals we write in,... What if we could hear some of that story, the abbreviated, abridged portion of the story, straight from the source(s)? What if I could be one of those to help make that happen?
Wherever I choose to go in the countries I actually visit on this trip, I must be sure not to wander astray -- into the metropolis zones, cities or tourist attractions, that are already well over-(re)presented to the world (unless of course it somehow serves my project to do so). That will be a major determining (limiting) criterion for this journey.
