While evacuation drills for natural disasters are widely practiced in Japan, are there any drills that prepare us not only for physical threats but also for psychological ones? Such training might involve gradually acclimating oneself to stress through low-stress experiences, devising scenarios that range from the best-case to the worst outcome, or envisioning and creating a safe environment in which such training is unnecessary.

The video shows an actor performing an earthquake evacuation drill at the OAG Art Center Kobe. It is not a performance of an actual emergency but a performance of a drill. While the actor repeats the same movements, the video shows different takes of the same scenes. Just as the term “evacuation scenario” is used in disaster-prevention strategies, the parallel screens can be interpreted as branching scenarios. On another screen, texts for “drills for the mind,” appears emerges one another as a series of poetic instructions. Developed through dialogue with a clinical psychologist, these instructions serve as a draft for imagining ways to protect the mind that have not yet been established.

CAST: Nanami SUWA

PRODUCTION SUPPORT: square4

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