MOT the Music is a new initiative organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) where professional musicians are invited to perform in front of particular works of art in their permanent collections galleries. With the appointment of Yuko Hasegawa (formerly of Kanazawa C21st Museum) to cheif curator at MOT a couple of months back as well as the appointment of younger curators like Fumihiko Sumitomo (also AIT founding member, formerly of ICC), there is some expectation now in Tokyo about the future of MOT. MOT the Music is a great idea - a way to broaden their audience, particularly to their permanent collections (which is usually very quiet), and bring in something fresh. I have not been, but from things I hear, it seems that this kind of event brings in new audiences. Listening to music near art has a long history of course - one thinks of salons in royal palaces and of course church musics. More recently, venues like Palais de Tokyo have initiated club nights, though admittedly slightly demarcated from art works. I think there are groups in the US who make independent podcasts to go to MOMA with....adding music and narration. While one hears about the need for slowing down and silence in museums today, it is also interesting to think about the ways in which music and sound can generate rich experiences of art works. I must admit to being a long time walkman listener, strolling around the city almost always listening to music. It adds another dimension to one's encounters with places - memories inter-weave with new sights and smells, and occasionally there is a moment of intense sublime magic, when sound and physical experience meet. I have archived in my mind certain places in Tokyo which go particularly well with certain songs - also depending on whether it is a sunny day or raining etc.
November 06, 2006
October 21, 2006
'Sora Mimi Hour' - Best Japanese TV
My favourite TV in Japan is 'Sora Mimi Hour', a 3 minute slot within 'Tamori Club' late on Friday nights on channel 10. More of a diversion, than a proper programme or segment, 'Sora Mimi Hour' is nevertheless a masterful example of making the most out of seemingly ordinary experiences. The programme asks viewers to send in segments from songs which sound like they are being sung in Japanese. These segments are lovingly choreographed into mini video clips which hilariously illustrate the Japanese sounding lyric segment. Thus a phrase from a song sung in english also sounds remarkably like a completely different phrase in Japanese, with completely different meanings. The more surreal or strange sounding entries are awarded with special 'Sora Mimi Hour' goods - a thin towel for mediocre entries, a T-shirt (rarely given) and a wind breaker (I have never seen this given away). Tamori (wearing the sun glasses below) judges each entry and decides which ones merit which award. The programme is, for me, a perfect example of intentional tactical diversion and digression - altering the meaning of lyrics (mostly English songs but also Spanish or Italian) into something totally different which only those who understand the Japanese language can ultimately appreciate. Unbeknown to songwriters and bands, every Friday night in Japan their creations are mercilessly appropriated and gently torn up.
The presenters of 'Sora Mimi Hour'.
Chief judge Tamori reviews the original English lyrics of a song.
June 08, 2006
'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.
May 28, 2006
New Space on a roof - Polyphonic Viewing Room
I went to the opening of a new art space and studio complex in the Nihon-bashi area last night. It is called Polyphonic Viewing Room, and has been initiated and organised by artist Keijiro Niino and friends. This part of town has become somewhat 'emptied' recently with the increase of new office developments around Tokyo, so Keijiro managed to secure the use of three floors of an old foreign workers hostel for cheap rent. Small studio cubicles are rented to bring in some income, and the roof area houses a small white cube gallery, bar and unique artist in residence facility.
The small gallery space as seen from the roof terrace. Initiator of the space, Keijiro Niino's exhibition is up now, called 'For the Beginning of All the World'.
Just across the roof terrace from the gallery is a small wooden hut structure, which is the perhaps the most unique artist in residence facility I have seen. Approximately the size of six tatami mats and only furnished with ther bare essentials - a mattress,air conditioner, lamp and some cupboards - this little hermits room will be used to accommodate visiting artists. I am not sure of the system yet, so interested parties should perhaps contact the space directly.
Above is the hermits residency hut behind the tentage, and a shot of the interior.
Keijiro told me that he plans to begin a loose and fun programme of shows and bar nights at Polyphonic. Its really great to see such initiatives come off the ground in Tokyo. The current show continues until June 11 (Mondays closed).
Website here.
May 15, 2006
Mapping Kodaira: "at/@"
AIT has just curated an exhibition in a new art space run by an eye surgeon in Kodaira, Tokyo. 'at/@' is the inaugural show in the new space, called Shiraya Art Space, and shows new works by Kazz Sasaguchi and Yasushi Noguchi. AIT member Keisuke Ozawa was curator in charge, and developed a project around various mappings of the town by the two artists. The space is a slick white cube two storey building, and has the feel of a collectors home.
The first floor of the space during the opening on Saturday May 13.
Sasaguchi showed two series of works, each attempting a unique form of 'mapping' of Kodaira. One project involved monitoring the heart beats of various dogs as they walked around the town. The results were shown as video documentation. The other was a series of photographs of people's hands, on which the artist had traced maps of Kodaira - using hand lines as markers of the land.
Noguchi explored another kind of mapping through collating the data from used receipts given by visitors, and transposing this onto a computer model. Each receipts location and time of issue provided the data for a 3D graphical map of Kodaira which was projected onto a wall. This project will continue throughout the exhibition period.
The artists worked with already existing or unconscious aspects of the town, playfully suggesting that the streets we travel through daily are also pregnant with different readings, possibilities and textures. A small brochure accompanies the exhibition with a text written by Keisuke.
Shiraya Art Space is 2 minutes from Kodaira station on the Seibu-Shinjuku line (from Takadanobaba JR)
Opening hours: 10:00 - 18:00.
Inquiries: 042 - 341-0235.
April 27, 2006
April 11, 2006
Good Trip, Bad Trip - Assume Vivid Astro Focus and Satoshi Ohno
On my first visit to the new gallery complex in Kiyosumi Shirakawa, just east of the Sumida River I had the opportunity to see two exhibitions which displayed tendencies towards scattered, psychedelic installation. The new complex itself is located on the top three floors of a large warehouse next to a cement factory and houses Tomio Koyama Gallery, Hiromi Yoshii Gallery and Taka Ishii Gallery amongst others.
The gallery building is to the left.
Psychedelic installers Assume Vivid Astro Focus, who have been very much active over the past few years, made a signature style installation in Hiromi Yoshii gallery. On entering the space through rickety wooden doors, a gallery assistant offered me a pair of 3D plastic spectacles through which to view the array of coloured lights and swirling projections. It always seems futile to try to mimic the effects of a psychedelic experience through such props as they can never do it justice. I suppose that was my overwhelming sense being in the space - which was also rather silent and of course an art gallery. Any feeling of jouissance or loss is smothered out by the references to different states of consciousness. Of course this is something which artists of all persuasions have grappled with for ages - I noticed that there was even a big exhibition at LA MOCA titled 'Ecstasy', which explored these relations.
I was though, sucked into a small side room which one entered via a hole, and which was full of bean bags. On a screen was projected a compilation of various short music videos, concert footage and odd nuggets from the 1960s through to the present. At least here, on the screen, one could see and hear people generally enjoying themselves.
I proceeded upstairs to Tomio Koyama gallery where young Japanese artist Satoshi Ohno was having a large one person exhibition. Satoshi is an MA painting student at Zokei Art University and I have tutored him for several years.
He uses black spray paint to mark lines across the space and had scrawled the word 'ACID' on several surfaces. Orange coloured powder pigment was arranged in decorative patterns on the floor amidst plastic orange hose, netting and many paintings and drawings. Compared to the Brazilian downstairs, Satoshi's psychedelia felt somehow stoic and repressed.
In the 1983 film 'Brainstorm' directed by Douglas Trumbull, a helmet device is invented which allows the wearer to experience other people's experiences. Technology today creeps ever closer to realising such ventures - already smart pills and supplements supposedly increase mental health and agility. The work of Mariko Mori has also utilised helmet-like devices which supposedly interact directly with the brain waves of the wearer. The late healing work of Brazilian Lygia Clark represents another powerful avenue of art practice.
Are we nearing a time when audiences will pop a mind altering pill to experience an art work as the maker intended? Are we entering a phase of direct synaptic plug-in art viewing? Does the exhibition and museum then become vast public workshop spaces and does the curator return to its etymological root - a carer, a trip-master?
April 10, 2006
Sunday Afternoon
I went for a stroll along the Sumida river yesterday afternoon, ending up in the Ginza. Along the way I took some photographs.
Anti-Homeless picnic bench and table by the river.
Quite a nice rendering of a skateboarder (erased).
The hokohsha tengoku (literally pedestrians paradise) on the main Ginza shopping thoroughfare on a Sunday afternoon. There is even a phrase which means ambling along the Ginza - Ginbura. It was here in 1993 that a group of then young art students initiated Ginbuart - a guerrilla street art action for a day involving Tsuyoshi Ozawa, Makoto Aida and Masato Nakamura amongst others. Today, the closure of the street brings out pet-owners parading their dogs and cats, a few registered street performers (The City of Tokyo has made it compulsory for street performers to be registered) and a chance to gaze at the city from the vantage point of a car. As I ambled along I realised how much the city ordinarily forces us to march or propel ourselves along on narrow pavements and public passageways. I was also reminded of how little we actually experience walking on the road - in Japan, where there are hardly any demonstrations or protest marches, this seemed doubly poignant.
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