Chiemi Shimada & Susie Cunningham | Oneiric Kitchen
Oneiric Kitchen Workshop with Chiemi Shimada & Susie Cunningham, Primary (2023). Still from filming by Chiemi Shimada.
Oneiric Kitchen is a collaborative project by Japanese artist-filmmaker Chiemi Shimada and London-based wellbeing practitioner Susie Cunningham. The work explores our relationship with sleep and addresses issues surrounding it. Developed through therapeutic cooking workshops in the UK and Japan and facilitated by partners Primary (Nottingham) and Documentary Dream Center (Tokyo) the project aims to create a safe space for participants to reflect on their sleep experiences.
The project expands on a 2023 pilot workshop delivered by Chiemi and Susie with a small group of participants with sleep conditions. The workshop took place during Chiemi’s two-week residency at Primary as part of our Work in Common series.
Oneiric Kitchen will culminate in a video installation and single-channel film of the same name. A work-in-progress screening will take place this Summer at Broadway, Nottingham, delivered in partnership with Near Now. Oneiric Kitchen will also be screened online.
Oneiric Kitchen is supported by the British Council's Connections Through Culture grant programme. The British Council's Connections Through Culture grants support new cultural collaborations between the UK and East Asia. This support assists artists and cultural organisations working across all art forms to create new connections and collaborative projects.
Artist Bios:
Chiemi Shimada is an artist-filmmaker currently based in London. Working with both analogue (8, 16mm film) and digital materials, her films and installations explore memory, in-between states, and filmic spaces. Her work has been exhibited and screened at the ICA London, New Art Exchange, Nunnery Gallery, Museum of Modern Art Gunma, LUX, Typography Center for Contemporary Art, and Image Forum, among others.
Susie Cunningham is a creative integrative arts counsellor and has a long history of working with children and young people with complex needs and challenging behaviour through trauma-informed care. She has many years of experience working within the educational and charity sectors to ensure that every young person has an opportunity to participate and flourish. She has worked within community settings and in one-to-one work. She is also a trained retreat chef and has integrated this into her therapeutic practice.
Partner Bios:
Documentary Dream Center (DD Center) is a non-profit organization supporting international documentary filmmaking culture. Established in Tokyo, Japan in 2008, DD Center fosters documentary, its makers and audiences through presenting, producing, collaborating, and educating and international exchange. It is headed by Fujioka Asako.
In recent years, DD Center has focused its activities on Yamagata Documentary Dojo, a residency for Asian documentary filmmakers to spend quality time on their works-in-progress. It also hosts workshops and lectures on essential issues like funding, festivals, distribution, copyright, and other considerations. The events allow independent filmmakers from different countries to come together and widen their perspectives while discovering their own selves from outside perspectives.
