Hikaru Fujii

The Anatomy Classroom

The film The Anatomy Classroom is part of a research project developed by Hikaru Fujii around objects and artifacts evacuated from the Futaba Town Museum of History and Folklore, which is located in the “difficult-to-return zone” since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. In order to avoid radioactive contamination and biological damage, the objects have been removed from the museum, where they were once part of a collection that the curator had developed over twenty years to represent the local community and its long history on the land. Fujii has been closely following the movements of these historical objects, while organizing visits to the site and hosting discursive events on the crisis of memory and culture. 

The film captures one such dialogue, held in the anatomy classroom of the National School of Fine Arts in Paris. The speakers ruminate on the experience of visiting the empty museum, sharing reflections on what they saw and questioning one another regarding how a catastrophe can be represented, and by who. More importantly, they discuss the significance of cultural and philosophical practices—including the preservation of objects—in engaging with catastrophes in the past and the future while uncertainties continue to haunt the present. The work is at once a documentation of activities organized and filmed by Fujii and an extended platform to share the discourses and perspectives that emerged in the process, all intended to prompt the present audience to question how they perceive objects of catastrophe.