Rewinding the Time of Life is a collaborative project by three single women – Keiko Miyamori, dancer/choreographer Odoru Natsuko and artist/dancer Lyn Remick Churchill, that took place in 2019 as part of the BankART1929 Winter Residency in Yokohama, Japan. 

The word “memory” was chosen as a starting point for the performance, and it soon emerged through conversation that each woman had a painful memory attached to a child. Keiko had always wanted a child but didn’t have one. Odoru Natsuko’s friend lost her daughter, while Natsuko had recently given birth, causing her to feel guilt about why some lose their children while others don’t. Lyn’s eight year old son came close to death in a vehicle related accident, for which she was blamed by her husband. She found herself unable to talk about the incident for years.

The residency performance was chosen as an outlet to express and release these memories which were fragments of universal experience of loss. Recorded conversations were replayed by Miyamori and interpreted as drawings on canvas. They were then layered with tree rubbings on Washi from Inokashira - koen and other locations in Japan, from fieldwork revisiting relevant places from each person’s life.

The performance began with all three artists in a state of death. The three women then went about rewinding the experience of their lives, reliving their memories one last time, before releasing them. The performance culminated by metaphorically returning to the moment of genesis - when one is born into the world.

And so, these three separate and unique lives merged into one singular moment of birth; where one’s memories are wiped away, allowing them to re-enter the world as pure existence, to an unknown fate.