Tactical Museum can be accessed here as an archive. You can use the search function on the left to look for keywords. Terms like Japan, Tokyo, Curating, Exhibition, Display and AIT have a heavy presence.
Tactical Museum started in 2004 and became a free account in July 2011. This weblog has ended.
There is, though, something happening at Dr. Fenberger
During Ellen's birthday dinner tonight I was speaking with my brother Peter and the following title for an exhibition came to my mind:
MEGA-BELLIES: ARTISTS FROM MIDDLE EUROPE WITH METABOLIC SYMPTOMS.
This morning I asked students at my weekly Joshibi seminar to select one branded itme in their bags and put it on a table. We then had a discussion about the ways in which these things could be categorized, interpreted and 'read'. This is what came out:
A Louis Vuitton bag
A Kitson purse
A Kitamura leather commuter pass holder
New Balance shoe
Outdoor bag
Dolce & Gabbana watch
Apple ipod
Apple iphone
Comme ca du mode purse
"Life Through Vegetable, Flour and Sand'
Ingredients: Vegetables, Flour, Sand.
Mix thoroughly, dry and form into patties.
List of Works upper wall:
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Vertumne (portrait de Rodolphe II), vers 1590 painting, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Nature morte : L'Homme-potager, (tableau réversible), vers 1590 painting, Edvard Munch, The Lumberjack 1913, Liang Kai Sixth Patriarch Cutting Bamboo.
List of Works middle wall:
Guy Mayman collage 2010, Guy Mayman collage 2010, Craigie Horsfield, Krakow, 1970s, Kai Althoff Painting.
List of Works lower wall:
William Blake drawing, Clare Rojas, Untitled 2007, Wolfgang Tillmans, Haircut, 2007.
Toyota Art Management website has been running a relay essay section.
I was asked to write for June and my text is up.
Its about Holes, which is something I have been thinking about for some time.
I helped curate a rather unique exhibition of contemporary Japanese artists in the Residence of the US Ambassador in Tokyo, titled 'Ties over Time'. There was a reception last night at the residence preceded by a press briefing to which nearly twenty media organisations came, including NHK TV News. They broadcast this on tonight's news: NHK News US Embassy Tokyo April 3 (I notice that the link is dead due to violation. 22 April. RM)
You can sort of see me in the opening shot standing in the background.
I now live in Nagano, near the town of Mochizuki.
Hiroshige depicted it in the print above, one of the 69 stations of the Kiso-Kaido, or inland road which connected Edo and Kyoto. As its name suggests, the moon shines brilliantly around here - the area being nearly 800m above sea level and near the large Saku plain. Like the travellers depicted by Hiroshige I too commute into Tokyo two days a week, but with a considerably lighter load.
Although there is now a fair distance between my home and Tokyo, I consider myself very much plugged into the big city - not only the fact that I rely on the bullet train to travel into it to teach but also that the web has enabled me to teach from home online. Although I admire Thoreau's writings about wilderness withdrawal, this is not that. Even though our nearest neighbors live over 100m away, beyond the trees, and it is dark and silent at night, the city is there somehow.
Having said this, there is an amazing sense of space and time here, which I did not feel in Tokyo. My eyes adjust to seeing far away or into distant trees, and the quiet somehow focuses the mind. TV looks and sounds more stupid, music sounds more important as does the radio. Its early days yet, and I am sure that with settling, will come all kinds of challenges. And insects.
What is the distance that now exists between me and Tokyo? And what of the name of this blog - I think I add a few spaces between Tactical Museum and Tokyo.
Utrecht became Trattoria today. The chefs were Abake, Martino Gamper, Francis Upritchard and friends. I have the pleasure to be working with Francis now on an unusual art project that will be revealed soon, and she also shows at Kate MacGarry gallery in London (where Peter also is). Trattoria is an irregular dining event that has been organised by the above for almost ten years. See also Dent-De-Leone.
While a tsunami warning sounded on the city public address system and the sun shone after the morning rain the little back room and balcony of Utrecht was a hive of cooking and eating. Fashion designer Semble who I met a couple of years ago at Kandada was there, and I got to speak to several graphic and interior designers and a writer. Ellen was the center of attention on arrival.
Hiroshi Eguchi of Utrecht conducting.
Martino at the steam barbecue machine.
A closer look at the home-made steam barbecue machine.
What came out of the steam barbecue machine was delicious.
For an article about Trattoria I found, see Here.
Thank you to all of the chefs, Hiroshi san and the company.
Tactical Museum Tokyo began life in 2004 as my online research archive on alternative art practices in Japan, a place to collate information, networks and thoughts on the tactical aspects of art. Six years on, as I have hopefully indicated in various posts here, the conditions for contemporary art in Japan have changed in significant ways. One of the more pertinent has, I think, been the effects of broader privatization policies initiated by Prime Minister Koizumi which has altered the fabric and framework of public museums and funding. The past two years has seen the emergence of various art-connected initiatives and projects that move into the terrain of what in Europe and the US has variously been called art activism, intervention or socially/ politically engaged practice. Events like Creative Time Summit: Revolutions in Public Practice which happened in New York in October 2009 may indicate a summation or coming together to share experiences and futures. Whereas much of the discussion around alterity in relation to Japanese art has been conducted around a discourse of 'alternative art spaces' and non profits, I feel that there has been a shift recently, or perhaps more appropriately, a broadening out of the discussions to encompass many different approaches and kinds of practice. This is partly a question of generational shift, as pioneering 'alternative space' artists from the 1990s such as Masato Nakamura of Command N has moved into a more strategic role as Director and founder of the soon to open Chiyoda Arts Center, 3331. Non profit groups like my own AIT is in its tenth year, and thus qualifies, in Japanese terms, as an 'old' or veteran practice.
I use the term predicament in the title intentionally, because I do feel that this area remains isolated within the arts scene as well as within any broader social movement or emergence of organised radical politics. This may not be at all a negative thing. In contrast to the Euro-American emphasis on Mouffian antagonism or a Negrian sense for direct action, I do feel that very different methods may be more appropriate for the Japanese context. Those times when direct street protest or action are enacted here by art-related people, I cannot help but see something related to cosu-play, a formalised and ultimately self-circular mannerism. I do strongly feel that quite different creative avenues and means need to be enacted or excavated from the realities embedded here. Many of the practices rounded-up here may point to such avenues. I am also very interested in something which tends, by its very nature, to remain un-noticed or un-reported. This is a long tradition of quiet dissent, of largely rural withdrawal which emphasizes not so much a call to action and common movement, but something based in changing the individual life and mind, and thereby realizing different ways within this society. This is a tradition that probably encompasses the strategies of Gandhi, but also late nineteenth century English Socialist-Anarchists like Edward Carpenter and Taisho era radical thinkers like Sanshiro Ishikawa. If anything, I feel that it has been this avenue of near silent revolution which characterizes a Japanese radical potential, not simply in its 'purified' and at times highly fascistic forms as Zen Buddhism, but in the many small individual or community generated ways of doing things that don't follow dominant state or media lines of thinking. It does seem that many of the more recent practices lean on aspects of this quiet dissent, crafting voices and spaces via web, radio, zine or other means.
So here goes with a very partial and subjective round-up:
Hajime Matsumoto of Shiroto no Ran was surveyed by momus in Koenji Renaissance. Paper Sky International version interviewed Yoyo san on Vege Shokudo
The ongoing privatization of Miyashita Park and the activities of 246 Hyougen-Sha Kaigi, with Yoshitaka Mouri of Geidai supporting - UK IndyMedia reporting, and artist Hikaru Fujii's Nike related works, and NikePolitics.
Critic Noi Sawaragi gives a good contextual overview of recent art activism in his ArtIt 2009 review.
Read the curators statement for the upcoming Roppongi Crossing 2010 at The Mori Art Museum. There is a 'street' art element within the exhibition and their framing of current practice within the shadow of Dumb Type should be interesting.
IllCommons Japanese blog of artist Masanori Oda, who I worked with for the first Yokohama Triennale in 2001. He seems to be one of the key artist figures involved in many protest actions. I saw him at a Miyashita Park concert and at CREAM, Yokohama.
Korosu-Na event held at former Yamamoto Gendai gallery space in 2003, organised by critic Noi Sawaragi. See the guest line up for other names.
remo, non profit video and media space in Osaka, who have run lectures and seminars covering radical thinkers including Hardt & Negri and Maurizio Lazzarato.
remo hosted one section at CREAM, video festival held last year in Yokohama, titled 'Activism 3.0 (as-yet-untitled) - New Activist-Artists Against Capitalism in the World After The Lehman-Shock' - Information.
CREAM Lab space hosted many socially-engaged art spaces and initiatives, and their twitter page is here, and they keep a blog here. There is another blog with video etc from the Lab called activism3cream.
Tokyo Damage Report sometimes reports on protests and street demos, such as this photo filled May Day protest.
Scroll down the page to see the related events and symposium held at the Beuys in Japan exhibition just ended at Art Tower Mito.
Yesterday AIT organised a discussion as part of the Tokyo Art Point Project between artist and blogger (in Japanese) Hiroshi Fuji and environmental and community activist Hiroshi Iijima of the Asaza Project.
I noticed that the Outsider Art Fair was held recently in New York, its 18th manifestation. This made me think about my own art background and the fact that I was taught by two of the most significant figures working in this field in the late C20th.
My art teacher at Aldenham school was John Maizels, the founding editor of Raw Vision magazine and author of Raw Creation. Although I never excelled in the studio, I remember John very clearly. He lived down the road from the school gates near the big Hare Krishna temple. My brother Peter, who is today an artist, worked closely with John.
My PhD supervisor and professor was Roger Cardinal, who then taught at Kent. Roger wrote the seminal book 'Outsider Art' in 1972, coining the term and outlining its parameters. I worked very closely with him for over three years, writing my thesis. Roger remains my most important mentor/ teacher.
Roger Cardinal, left.
It's never really occurred to me in a big way that the two art-related teachers in my life were also intensely related to outsider art. Thinking about this now, after working as a curator in the contemporary art world for over ten years, is quite interesting. For one thing I have never once felt the urge to work in a museum or a gallery, preferring the more unstable route of working independently and founding an art non profit. I can also point to certain experiences of art which triggered my move into studying art - Kurt Schwitters and Franz West are two important artists who I saw in exhibitions and affected me strongly. Roger Cardinal's writings on Kurt Schwitters are some of my favorite pieces of art writing. Franz West's work I think moves into the domains of fetishes, African art and wonderfully lumpen forms. My fascination with altered states, mysticism and psychedelics led to a Masters degree in the Study of Mysticism and Religious Experience at Kent - all subjects deeply related to John and Roger's fields. My imminent move to the forests of Nagano prefecture is also partly I think inspired by wanting to put physical distance between myself and Tokyo, the hub for art activities. I do often feel despondent, or at least worn, by the whole contemporary art world. I certainly find little pleasure in 'playing' the global art circuit of openings etc - and I say this as someone who has had the good fortune to participate in it as a biennale/ triennale curator.
I feel that it is a good time now to think again about what my two teachers are about. Whether this results in an extended hibernation or withdrawal from the Tokyo contemporary art scene....we'll see.
John Maizels profile in NY Times.
I am preparing some curatorial/ art things there in the forest which shall be announced soon via the internet.
I had the opportunity to visit the US Embassy Residence in Tokyo last month.
I asked a friend to take a photograph of me standing in the same spot where General MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito stood for three photographs at their meeting on 27 September 1945. The 1945 photograph was taken by US Army photographer Lt. Gaetano Faillace in the main reception room on the first floor.
Although the furniture has changed and the thick carpet taken out, the pillars and rounded windows at the rear are unchanged.
The third image is a simple superimposition of the two. A spirit photograph of sorts. One of the principal power spots of modern Japan. A James Joyce domain where space, time and history floats, potent.
The end of the year is always hectic - particularly with lectures at AIT, but also Tama and Musashino Art Universities. My classes at Tama, on the City and Art for 3-4th year students and 1st year's Introduction to Contemporary Art, have four sessions to go each. The Musabi class on Reading contemporary art through texts also nears its completion, and an avant-garde has even self-appointed itself in the group to organise a 'nomikai' drinking session. As well as preparing lectures weekly, universities and AIT must also prepare curricula and schedules and guests for next year - I decided to stop at Tama, and continue at Musabi, and there is a new offer from Joshibi. I feel that Musabi is my 'base' in many ways. I get this feeling through the architecture of the place, its formal but also slightly worn seminar rooms, which contrasts with Tama's brilliant white and shiny halls. I really find it itchy being in white pristine spaces for too long, especially trying to engage students in discussion on complex topics that need time and thinking. I have found that the time-worn corridors of Musabi are more conducive to this. And there is the issue of how lecturers are situated. At Tama, we get a neat, little room to ourselves, next to the administrative offices. At Musabi we share a large open office with the admin staff, where the art magazines are stacked, photo-copiers whirr and bento is taken. This is clearly a better system. I am sure that the architectural, and by extension narrative, contexts mould the students in particular ways. I don't think universities should be white and pristine, like hospitals. They should be in dull shades of scarred and worn green's, blue's and grey's, because this gives permission to the students to use the space, to kind of take it over (by sticking posters on walls, hanging out in seminar rooms etc.). Pristine white spaces seem to say, 'don't touch me' and 'only occupy the centre of rooms'.
I went to see the Mike Kelley exhibition at Wako Works of Art yesterday. It is very good. Kelley is presenting four groups of photographs and a selection of recent sculptures from the 'Kandor' series. The photographs all relate to Kelley's long interest in spiritualist, symbolist and pictorialist photography. Of particular interest to me was seeing The Ectoplasm series, initially made in 1978 with artist David Askevold for a project entitled 'Poltergeist'. The Wako exhibition shows never-before printed images.
The exhibition made me think about fakery, the human body as an organ always on the verge of spillages and liquid excretions, and how artists have related to matter as some manifestation or extension of something totally Other, fluid and unspeakable, like ectoplasm.
Above, Theodor Prinz, Ghost, c 1900 and below, Edouard Isidore Buguet, Fluidic Effect, 1875.
If there is one artist who 'turned me on' to contemporary art it is the Austrian Franz West. I have always thought about his Adaptives - blobular sculptural forms which can be held and awkwardly played with - as something similar to psychic excretions, unformed unconscious shapes which we are invited to examine and behold. West has exhibited with Kelley in the past, and the two clearly share interests.
The idea of spillage may also be used in thinking about UFO phenomena. Carl Jung and Terence McKenna have both proposed that we think about them not as actual physical things out there, but as extensions or excretions of our imaginations - perhaps objects refracted back from some Other place into our here and now - into our imaginaries.
An interesting, but marginalised, scholarly resource that provides a useful theory into such speculations may be Julian Jaynes' 1976 "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind". In the bicameral state human beings actually heard voices which they interpreted as coming from Gods or spirits - the mind is conceived as still fragile, open to the interjections and disturbances of Mysteries.
This little painted stone by Max Ernst from 1934 is another favorite of mine. It reminds me of the human urge to mark material objects in order to somehow soften or prepare their surface for spillage to occur. My reading of archaic cave drawings and scratchings also follow this thinking. The preparation and ingestion of psychedelic substances by people through time and into the present can also be understood as a loosening of the bounded mind, allowing for temporary re-circulation and seepage.
I took the train down and back to Kokura and Hakata for the second Kita-Kyushu Biennale and to see the fourth Asia Pacific Triennale at the Asia Museum in Fukuoka. Both were worth the five hour journey down.
The Asia Triennale is an important and pioneering exhibition which has also helped form the extensive Asia-Pacific collection of the Asia Museum. The fourth edition, held mainly in the museum, presented a mix of old works by established artists such as Cai Guo-Qiang, Xu Bing and Subodh Gupta and newer pieces by younger artists such as Yee I-Lan, Atul Bhalla and Seema Nusrat. Atul Bhalla (India) showed an impressive photo-text work which documented his journey along a river in a large Indian metropolis. Referencing in parts the land art approaches of Hamish Fulton and Richard Long, Bhalla's work was a poignant documentation of both the environmental and human effects of rapid industrialization. In a similar documentary vein was the powerful video and installation by Bangaldeshi artists Yasmine Kabir and Ronni Ahmmed. They filmed workers hauling steel and detritus from massive ship wrecks in a scrap yard along the Bangladeshi coast. From Japan the photographer Higa Toyomitsu's ghostly photographs of the Nanamui shamanic rituals and his images of the anti-base demonstrations in Okinawa during the early 1970s were utterly absorbing.
The 'Imin' exhibition over in Moji-ko outside Kokura for the second Kita-Kyushu Biennale was a silent, serious affair. Held in the disused former offices of Japan Railways, the exhibition consisted entirely of projected and monitor slide works. Takuji Kogo of Candy Factory Projects collaborated with Mike Bode (Sweden), Federico Baronello (Italy) and Charles Lim (Singapore) on documentary-type photo essays exploring immigration. All of the works shared a formal language which I found interesting - being translated into Kogo's signature method of slide shows which jitter between scenes. Each work was accompanied by an A4 text written by the artists explaining the contexts and situations of the respective places documented. Mike Bode and Kogo photographed Brazilian worker communities living near Toyota City. Federico Baronello's work explored the sinking of an illegal immigrant ship near the Sicilian town of Portopalo. Charles Lim contributed a work looking into the hiring of foreign domestic workers in Singapore. The artists group Second Planet created a collage slide show of historical images of Manchuria, which existed between 1932 and 1945 under various colonial and multi-ethnic formations. The fact that such an exhibition is under way in Japan is something to be recognised - and from talking with the organisers (the non profit alternative space Gallery SOAP, Kita-Kyushu), I learned that they were denied funding from various public sources because the theme and title was deemed too strong. They could have changed the title to something like 'Mobility', and shown the same works, and probably received funding - but the fact that they chose to go with 'Imin' is testament to the organisers and artists critical fibre. Having said this, the exhibition left me with a number of questions, particularly regarding the ethical position of the artist when confronting these complex issues. I kept pondering the difficult relationship which is necessarily created between the artist-witness and those who they film for an art work - migrant workers etc. What was this sense of distance which the act of photographing or filming produces? And how am I, as a viewer, implicated in this in the act of watching? The artists decision to use no sound and to stutter the images, so that a segment would endlessly micro-loop were perhaps attempts to address these issues and lessen the spectacular potential of the subject matter.
The opening symposium was held from 5pm to 7pm. I sat between two 'senpai' critics, Mouri Yoshitaka to my left and Noi Sawaragi to my right. Mouri spoke about the ability of those who could move in today's globalized situation and those who simply could not. I offered thoughts on my recent naturalization experience and trends in curatorial and critical writing towards things 'being on the move', nomadic and flowing - a position reflected in Nicolas Bourriaud's recent book 'The Radicant' for example. Sawaragi, in customary art historian mode, contributed three case studies about what he usefully termed 'Imin teki kouka' (immigrant-like effects) on Japanese art history. He cited Ernest Fenelossa and his use of Hegelian modes to write a Japanese linear art history, the 'dentou ronsou' of the 1950s between Jomon and Yayoi cultures as the true origins of Japanese culture (Okamoto vs Tange Kenzo/ Kawazoe), and debates around Mono-ha in the 1970s and the role of Korean artist Lee Ufan in theorizing it. Other interesting points which emerged included: Isamu Noguchi's 'haafu' identity, the essentialist writings of Bruno Taut in the early 1930s vs the counter essentialist position of Sakaguchi Ango, thoughts about architecture and issues about the mechanisms in Japan which continue to promulgate a Japan-culture centric discourse. The discussion centred largely around art and its writings rather than socio-economic issues of immigration, in line with the sessions title which was 'Immigration and Art'. Around seventy people attended the talk, which was held in Gallery SOAP, Kokura.
I have been following a recent series of public service manner posters pasted around the Tokyo Metro with interest. I realized that the symbolic bad persons depicted had non-Japanese counterparts.
From the United Kingdom, supreme punk icon and eater of cup noodles using a pronged fork, Mr Sid Vicious:
From Italy, the icy greased hair Godfather of the Mafia tradition, Mr.Al Pacino:
From Suburban America, that icon of inept fatherhood, salaryman and general barfer, Homer Simpson: