Multi-channel Video Installation
Director: Sarasa Kikuchi
Starring: Junko Cheng, Kazue
13 Hours Ahead is a six-channel video installation that traces the invisible geography between an immigrant single mother in the United States and her aging mother in Japan. Through a quiet observational style, immersive soundscapes, and a spatially fragmented design, the work transforms ordinary domestic rituals into sites of memory, duty, sacrifice, and longing. The viewer is positioned inside the disjointed rhythms of two lives that unfold together yet never align. It’s an intimate meditation on maternal bonds, immigrant guilt, and the paradox of loving across borders.
At its core, 13 Hours Ahead asks what it means to care for someone you cannot reach. The project reframes migration not as a solitary journey but as a generational condition that reverberates across families and decades. It foregrounds the often-erased perspective of those left behind - parents who wait, who age in silence, who sustain bonds through calls and gestures that bridge oceans but cannot erase them. It also speaks to the adult children navigating impossible choices: sacrificing ambitions to return home or enduring the guilt of absence.
