This video was inspired by my time spent in Japan, researching and developing the live performance piece, Yokomeshi: A Meal Eaten Sideways. Empty Orchestra takes the themes and some of the content from the live show and re-imagines it as a karaoke backing video. Empty Orchestra and Yokomeshi are companion pieces, each exploring a broad and complicated set of topics from different perspectives and using different artistic means.
Empty Orchestra examines the perceptions that different cultures have of one another through the means of popular music. The idea of being Japanese or being from the west is explored from different perspectives in the songs “Turing Japanese” by The Vapors (1980) and “U.S.A.” by Da Pump (2018). While The Vapors were a British group, the song fits a general Anglo-American ideology, and was very popular in the United States.