Collecting Media
On Friday, March 11, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck northern Japan. The most powerful ever recorded in Japan, the earthquake triggered a tsunami that devastated the coastal areas of Tohoku and southern Hokkaido. Quake and tsunami footage, available almost instantly, fed images to a torrent of  television reports and newspaper articles. Bringing together 200 of these articles from the year following the earthquake, the exhibition traces the arc of a media narrative that shifted from disaster headlines to stories of recovery and stability. While this narrative follows the course of events, its swing to recovery also masks many of the quake’s aftershocks and after effects. The articles here simultaneously follow this swing and cite the challenge of living securely on a highly populated, geologically active planet.

Collecting Memory
The exhibition also features photographs and video taken by Joseph Justus soon after the earthquake.

Joseph Justus with Kunio Kudo and Japan Lab. Developed with GSAPP Cloud Communications and GSAPP exhibitions.

www.disasterandrecovery.org