The ANU campus – particularly the HC Coombs building – is alive with the sounds of neighbour-cultures this month in an extraordinary event, Immersia: Engaging with Asia and the Pacific.

Running until next week, the immersive (as the name suggests) festival has, among many others, Movies at Menzies, a  K-pop dance class, Rhythms of Mongolia, the Chinese Games Fair, Zen Meditation, the Tok Pisin Lunch, a Filipino food-making workshop, the  ZA Kabuki Open Rehearsal and many talk sessions like one tracing the evolution of the US-China policy.

A keynote event is the unusual exhibition When You Call My Name, opening on Thursday evening, which also involves two immersive workshops.

Guests at the opening will include  Yuriko Nagata, author of the book, Unwanted aliens: Japanese internment in Australia, ANU researcher  Keiko Tamura and Sophie Constable, who uses digital and textile art to weave together research, nature, and the past.

The background to the exhibition is that over the past year, artworks have been created for each of 209 people who died as civilian internees in Australia or on their way to Australia during World War II.

Mostly born in Japan, they also include Taiwanese, Thai, and Korean people who settled in the Dutch East Indies, Kanaky New Caledonia, Australia, Tonga, Aotearoa New Zealand, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.

Guided by Sydney artist and storyteller Mayu Kanamori, a collage of all the artworks has been created with the purpose of remembrance and to console the spirits of the dead,  ordinary people who have been all but erased from history.

Each name has been called through a sound installation played as they work.

When You Call My Name Exhibition, HC Coombs Building, ANU, September 11-12, part of 2025 Immersia: until September 20, all details here