Tactical Museum

Preparations towards 18 Hour Museum...

AIT is currently planning the next in our series of temporal 'museums' - we began this in 2002 with 8 Hour Museum, followed by the second in 2004 and the third this year. The first two manifestations went on for eight hours, but for the third we extended this to twelve hours, spanned over a weekend. Our thinking for these events have, from the start, been pragmatic and utopian - that is, responding to the lack of space for exhibition making in Tokyo by deciding to 'create a museum' for a limited duration, whilst also trying to probe the experimental dimensions of what could be done. I am particularly interested in the various (largely unwritten) histories of such hybrid events that blend elements of exhibition, club and disco cultures, screenings and lounges. I guess this has a lot to do with the fact that most of these kinds of events happen outside of the museum (probably breaking most of their rules of behaviour), and have been organised by a range of people from artists and curators to community groups and activists. What we try to initiate through our time-based 'museums' is probably shared or at least sensed by many people of our generation who experience museums as a rather formalised spaces and who are open to engaging with installation works, interactive pieces or environments that invite you to stay in them for a long period of time. I remember for the first 8 Hour Museum, some people who came left almost immediately, unable to grasp what it was, whilst most seemed to find their space within it and stayed for several hours. It helped that the largest space was given over to a huge bean bag lounge/ bar, around which were placed various 'services' and 'displays'. What interested me was the fact that this space was not bound by a singular focus (like the DJ or a screen), but purposefully allowed to contain multiple activities and sounds. I suppose the notion of 'programming' an event, in the way that Timothy Leary writes about psychedelic experiences or David Mancuso writes about his Loft parties, is something which we are into exploring further though.
So, we are now preparing for the next 'museum', which we hope to set up for eighteen hours, all night in early 2007. I have been reading various things as background material for this - histories which I would one day very much like to try to compile. More on these snippets as they arise.

'Disaster But Disco': Yason Banal at AIT

Our current artist in resident at AIT is Manila based Yason Banal, who will also show in the Singapore Biennale this coming September. Yason has just about completed an installation in our space in Daikanyama and will make a performance there tommorrow (Friday 9th) from 7pm. I interviewed Yason about this and post it in two parts, as it is a bit long. Pictures of AIT room now accompany the interview below.

Interview Part 1 begins below:

Hi Yason, Firstly, what is the meaning of 'Disaster but Disco'? Disco implies a place of colorful lights and pleasure, but it is offset with disaster?
Disaster But Disco, to put it plainly, is a space for both sufferance and pleasure, death and joy. Its perfectly summed up by two little known sexy starlets from the Philippine silver screen:
1) Stella Strada wrote on her suicide note: "It's a crazy planets!"
(misspelling intentional? still a mystery but hilarious and poignant just the same)
2) Azenith Briones said in the camp classic
'Temptation Island:' "There's no water. There's no food. Oh whatever, might as well dance then."
It’s this relentless drive to seek awkward pleasures and resistances as  well as errors and terrors that I find interesting. Tokyo possesses this drive to go on and continue amidst tragedy - surviving disasters both natural and manmade such as earthquakes, recessions and the atomic bomb.
Disaster But Disco also stands for DBD, which in Filipino parlance alludes to pirated movies sold on the black market. I am interested in music and film cultures, and how they can be used to reflect and deflect existing forms and narratives, and hopefully create new constellations in the process.
I understand that this installation and performance is inspired by a number of different elements - the Great Earthquake of 1923 Tokyo, constellations, your interest in Death Metal music and the intense Catholic traditions in the Philippines. Can you explain a little about these elements and how have you woven these things together in this installation?
Disasters are said to be caused by the bad alignment of stars. Stars can mean both heavenly bodies in outer space or failed celebrities in media hell Constellations are like disco lights. One bulb goes off and a dark disaster can happen, like tripping on the dance floor, or an earthquake destroying a city
like Tokyo.
Constellations are formed by various bodies in space, forming various alignments. I see my work, including the AIT project, as another constellation formed by various ideas, each with a certain trajectory of its own, but hopefully all of them at sometime meet at a certain point, and make sense to the viewer somehow, however nervous the alignments may seem.
I've become acquainted with black metal music 2 years ago when I did a show for the Oslo Kunsthall in Norway. I met these kids in a club - boy were they full of angst and make up. I found the mock scary attire hilarious, and found them quite sweet and fragile. I started hanging out with a few of them on and off for two months while in Oslo. Death metal in the Philippines is also quite big, and am friends with a few musicians from that community. Death and black metal are different in aesthetic though; in this work I have geared more towards black metal, for its camp and mock evil undertones.   
But both Norwegian black metal and Pinoy death metal are definitely critical, if not hateful towards Christianity. The growling reminds me of earthquakes, as much as fault lines make me think of sixties minimalism. The black metal make up and get up is a disaster, and is more disco than devil. Disasters, discos, jihads and metal concerts also cause mob hysteria, and cause agony and ecstasy at the same time. Any culture has this 'stampede' consciousness and 'religious' experience.  Philippine Christian pageantry  in its ritual performance and visual design is actually quite pagan, so I find that kind of surreal and subversive in a way. It has somehow effortlessly blended hardcore Catholicism with witchcraft, like a black metal gospel choir.

 

'Publicly Speaking' and video trolleys.

'Publicly Speaking' is now open at Shibuya Tokyo Wondersite. An exchange and residency between SSamzie Space Seoul and AIT, this project involves three Japanese and three Korean artists working around ideas of what the 'public' can mean today within cities and the realm of art. I was 'curator in charge' within AIT, so spent much time with the artists and conceptualising aspects of the exhibition, including creating a photocopied index archive of texts, flilers and images related to the public which is included within the exhibition as an extended kind of wall label and resource. A couple of images from the show::
A shot of the main gallery, with index archive reading area in the foreground, small monitor video works on push carts in middle and T-shirt works by Hiro Mori at rear.
  Detail of 'Rideshare' double monitor video work by Kazz Sasaguchi and Hiro Mori. Placing the monitors on small push carts makes them mobile and echoes the video itself which includes scenes from a driving instruction around Seoul.
There will be a public forum on Sept. 10th at the exhibition, with artist Masato Nakamura, Director of Wondersite Yusaku Imamura, artist Hiroharu Mori and myself, moderated by Yuko Ozawa (AIT), looking into new public art practices of the late 1990s and socially engaged art. The session will be held in Japanese.
'Publicly Speaking' closes September 11.

Curatorial Models blogged

I found my Moving Collection project listed in a very interesting blog called Txt Chandelier Here. Other listings include the Nasubi Gallery by Tsuyoshi Ozawa, projects by Ben Kinmont, Jeremy Deller and Dreamland Artist Club. The blog also has a nice archive covering topics from social space to important quotes. From what I can intuit from categories etc, the blog may be from the San Francisco area.

MAKEOVER

As you can see, the look of Tactical Museum Tokyo has changed. Content and editorial direction remains the same. I have always somehow been into changing the layout of interiors, the display of my books and CD's on a regular basis - I find that it re-charges me. It is not as if everything becomes new, as the content and objects remain the same. By simple acts of moving things around, re-placing, dis-placing, adjusting and altering, things take on new moods and meanings. Perhaps it is a little like re-focusing a pair of binoculars every time you look through them - one purposefully un-focuses in order to find balance again. I suppose that it is also a process of constant confirmation through partial erasure and probably also relates to activities like collecting and cataloguing.

Singapore Biennale press conference in Venice

I joined the other curators for a press conference in Venice last Saturday, June 11th. Held towards the end of the usual Venice Biennale round of art world parties and meetings, around 15 journalists attended our little announcement. The Director, Fumio Nanjo spoke about the broad objectives of the biennale and introduced his curatorial team. For detailed info and images on the press meeting, please see Universe in Universes special report.

from left: Fumio Nanjo, me, Sharmini Pereira and Eugene Tan.

Display Tactics

  The flier and poster display at Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco with gentle psychedelic ramp for finding the right things, 2005 March.

The Record Collector store and gallery, San Francisco, 2005 March.

Flier corner at the famous Amoeba Records, Haight street, San Francisco, 2005 March.

Advertisement poster for tea at Akasaka-Mitsuke metro station, Tokyo with 'real' cloth doorway flaps covering a photograph of a doorway, March 2005.

Flier and information lightbox at AIT, Tokyo, with posters from Jack Hanley Gallery San Francisco, a luminous plastic stick bought by artist Johannes Wohnseifer, beach-ball globe and 2005 calender from The Louvre (far left), March 2005.

Tokyo metro-surrealism

   

left: Roppongi metro station platform, Tokyo, 2005.
right: Marcel Duchamp Surrealism exhibition NY, 1942.

Tapeworms - Mayumi Kuronuma

Body Con artist Mayumi Kuronuma has an interest in parasites and tapeworms.

Alongside works which reference Shinto symbolism and betting at the races, she has been embroidering life-size tapeworms for some years. Tape-worms live inside the intestines of human beings or animals, feeding off its host organism. In Japanese they are called Sanada-mushi, so named after a famous samurai. If you have ever seen a samurai sword you will know what I am on about, but sword grips are wrapped in delicate decorated thread, which happen to resemble tapeworms. In Japan, at least, there is thus a relationship between the grips of swords and parasites. Two of Mayumi's works are shown here.

Body Con Radio Show at Nadiff

  I organised a closing event for Body Con, which has been on at Nadiff art bookshop in Tokyo, on Friday 18 Feb. Four of the Japanese participant artists came along to chat and share their views on works. Muneteru Ujino performed for the first time on his new updated 'Rotators' music machine in front of an audience of around 50. I have blogged about his 'Rotator' noise machines earlier, but Ujino's new versions have certainly upped the ante. Operating on the same principle of rotating records on turntables which trigger the switches on a range of ordinary electrical applicances (hairdryer, mixer, drill), his performance at Nadiff was an amazing hybrid of industrial noise music finely toned by elegant techno beats. Ujino even made a delicious banana milkshake using the mixer during his set.      
The second part of the evening comprised a 'radio talk show' with the Body Con artists - Ujino, Hiroko Okada, Mayumi Kuronuma and Naotaka Shimamoto. This is a form I have been interested to try for a while now...one way for me to get round my inability to write in Japanese. Being a fluent speaker, live events are a media for me. I asked each artist to bring along one CD track and played these while asking questions about their works and its links to body issues. I think it worked quite well - it managed to find a space somewhere in between the all out seriousness of talks and the slackness of DJ events and became a little living room. I hope to continue this.....tracklists from the radio show below:
'High Spirits' - Albert Mayer/ 'Every Little Step' - Bobby Brown/ 'Last Dance' - The Cure/ 'Quero Sossego' - Araci Cortez with orchestra/ 'Teenage Kicks' ; The Undertones/ 'Flower' - Madonna/ 'Bitches Brew' - Miles Davis.