The Cave Mouth and the Giant Voice is our installation for the Staging Disorder exhibition at London College of Communication, curated by Esther Teichmann and Christopher Stewart and running from the 26th of January until 12th of March. Presented as a ten minute single screen and multichannel work, it explores the memory of Okinawan islander Yogi-San of his experiences sheltering from the 1945 US Naval bombardment – the ‘typhoon of steel’. The words onscreen combine Yogi-San’s testimony – a full transcript of which is available in the exhibition guide – with a pared down commentary.

The work centres on two sets of recordings: one drawn from a visit to the lagoon at night with local fishermen where planes flew overhead from the US base at Kadena to bring disaster reflief supplies for the 2013 Bohol earthquake in the Philippines; the second from inside a cave shleter in Sunabe, with Yogi’s voice drifting down from the surface through the open entrance, alongside mechanical rumblings from the base.