Aaron Stewart-Ahn, director of several Chris Walla videos, wrote the following on japanese multimedia artist Nagi Noda who passed away last week:
I was lucky enough to have met Nagi. It was one of the more interesting evenings in my life. What was supposed to be a short chat over coffee turned into an up til 3am ramble on just about everything. One time meeting a person is never enough, but she was extremely endearing.
Nagi exuded and lived art, as it was something to be lived. It made me feel like an amateur - so connected was her feeling about life invested in what she wanted to do. She had no barriers, pretty much laid as much of her life story in our awkward English (littered with impressive words) as she could. She talked about the unfairness of being a female director, how she felt she had to act twenty times as tough as she was just to get the modicum of respect necessary to do her job. She told me about the start of her artistic life lived with her parents - both artists themselves who had given her a sense of how difficult it can be to navigate the world of art. She also talked about the need for artists to not be divorced from the divine, past lives, a recent trip to Angkor Wat so full of meaning - which planted the seed in my head which led to me shooting there in my last video.
The drawing above was something she put down on the napkin in front of me - she told me it was the secret to the universe, but I shouldn't tell anyone. I think it's ok now. She said most of us look out at the world, but if you close your eyes and look up, you're looking at the universe through your mind, looking at the universe.
She struck me as free spirited, eccentric, and beneath it all incredibly strong. In one evening in her company she affected me greatly. I miss her.
from antville.org
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