Notes on Isolation

Published by JUNGE AKADEMIE, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 2020




“The day Gifu prefecture announces its state of emergency, my partner’s mom teaches me how to make gyoza. She tells me she learned it from her mom, who learned it from a German woman who was married to a Japanese man. She only wore kimonos. Every day? I ask. Every day, she says. What a strange image: a German woman, dressed in a kimono, teaching her Japanese neighbour how to make gyoza. I wash my hands three times before I begin. I feel a circle – a round sheet of dough in my hand, so thin, my palm shines through – a human connection.”

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