Today in 1904, 2021-2023
Performative Research/Para(non)fiction
Today in 1904 is a durational performance that overlaps the year 1904 and the present time as if they were occurring simultaneously in a repeating time loop. Having been in lockdown at the former site of the Philippine Village during the pandemic, I was compelled to get to know the people who lived and died here before me and the experiences they had over the eight-month duration of the 1904 World’s Fair. Every day, I read the highly sensationalized newspaper accounts of events on the corresponding day in 1904 and renarrated them in my Instagram stories. All references are nonfictional.
In the past and present I remembered the day’s events and highlighted fleeting moments of joy, grief, love, agency, and self-determination as they intersected with my own experiences and I live and move though the same spaces in St. Louis that they did over a century ago. By 2023, I realized it was no longer a performance, but that 1904 had merged with the present day when my work and trauma was appropriated and exploited by Washington Post reporters looking to sell a story.
This was originally formatted for Instagram and intended to be viewed on the day it happened. I used the temporary, disappearing format because of the sensitive nature of the content. Videos and images below include selected moments from the ongoing narrative. Some stories were only available on the day they were posted. Selected stories are archived in my highlights on Instagram.
The moment Kinalang threw her high heels overboard, March 1904. Digital photo collage, 2022.
April 21, 1904
Necklace for Maura that I wore every day beginning on June 30, 2021. The clasp broke on August 29, 2023.
“The 1904 World’s Fair will never truly be over until all the promises that were made are fulfilled. I demand the rematriation of bodies to the Philippines and the return of our everyday and sacred objects to their rightful owners. I want monuments, memorials, grave markers, signs, plaques, and buildings in commemoration of our people and everything St. Louis took from us. I want all 1,200 of our kababayan who were here 118 years ago named and remembered. I want us, their descendants, to reclaim everything that now belongs to us. I want to have a place to put my sign. I want to be seen and embraced by my own hometown that wants to look away.”
—On the anniversary of the opening day of the 1904 World’s Fair, April 30, 2022
© 2024 Janna Añonuevo Langholz. All rights reserved.