imomus | Wannabe Asians

Well, should I title this entry Edinburgh is (almost) a city in Asia or Fashion Goth bis? Yesterday Hisae and I met my friend Suzy off the London train and took her to our favourite Edinburgh restaurant for lunch, Bonsai. The kitchen staff there are really Japanese, and the food is pretty much what you'd get in Japan. The Asian-flavoured stuff we've been seeing on the Festival, on the other hand, is the artistic equivalent of a Japanese restaurant owned and run by Westerners: a kind of Asian-fusion art made by non-Asians (should we call them—us—"aspiring Asians"? "Wannabe Asians"?). First there was the Russian film about the Japanese emperor, then the Mexican silent film presented as if it were being shown in Japan. Then, last night, the dance piece based on the Ring trilogy.

Darren Johnston, the choreographer, video artist and sound designer behind Ren-Sa, is British. But his imagination has clearly been encamped (so to speak) by the spooky, beautiful witches of the Ring films directed by Hideo Nakata. (Read the history of the films here.) I can totally understand that: I too was blown away by these films at the Edinburgh Festival back in 2000. "These films (I'd recommend parts one and two, but not the prequel, Ring 0) were so scary I was in tears throughout, but maybe that's because they got me missing my girlfriend," I wrote at the time.

Darren Johnston's tribute was also scary, although this time only to my girlfriend. Once we'd been ferried in darkened mini-buses to a warehouse out at Granton (I know because there was a tiny chink in the tarpaulin), the audience was ushered into a big smoky dark hall and encouraged to cluster behind a circular mesh curtain, behind which the action took place. Sadako and Samara themselves emerged out of the ground (they'd been lying in sand) and did their familiar lame vindictive twitch-walk, hidden behind cascades of hair. But it was a bit like the Thriller video; all too soon beats began and the horror turned into synchronised choreography routines. Hisae still managed to cower in horror (it was Suzy she hid behind, not me) each time "Samara" came rushing up to the curtain, and it was rather disconcerting to see the spooky child mere inches from your face, her (or was it his?) rigid mask staring through the thin curtain into your eyes.

But I wasn't scared. Oh no! I was too busy watching the video, which looked like multi-screen CCTV footage of Sadako's asylum, or some kind of fashion goth reality TV show. The highlight of the piece was when two more witches rose suddenly out of the sand and struck hideous postures under a staccato Morse Code strobe light, as the music shrieked and roared and scary children's voices filled the warehouse. We were then bundled back into the blacked-out buses and driven back to town. Actually, the most disturbing thing about Ren-Sa is that there are no toilets out at the warehouse. We all returned to the land of the living with desperately full bladders.

Much more impressive, for me, was Teaming, the art show about collaboration we saw at Embassy Gallery earlier in the day, which contained film of The Boyle Family's 1965 destructo-art happening at the ICA. I'd just written about Mark Boyle in a big article about the history of VJing I did for the Adobe website, and described this action from accounts on the web. To see film of the event I'd only imagined was indeed a thriller.

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From:

imomus.livejournal.com

For those who prefer parody to self-parody, self-described "cheeky little acerbic punk" Kovacs has made his own abusive version of a Click Opera entry here (http://www.kovac.co.uk/). Extract:

"That very night in Tokyo at Roppongi's, Super deluxe “Jisatsu” was performing one of their renowned rakugaki performances. Not one to miss out on a very, very, small insignificant art performance that only appeals to the people that created it and the small enclave of sycophants that follow them blindly, I blackberried the blind fool idiots I tricked into having me write for their magazines to wire enough money to my bank account so I could jet off, as one is want to do, with my Japanese accessory-nymph-boy-muse-translation-girlfriend-plugin to participate in an event that would no doubt be half filled, with posturing art flakes and a small clutch of poor children who should be in bed at that time."

From: (Anonymous)

is this the same kovacs?
http://www.chicagoinnerview.com/archives/may04_shot_baker.htm

tony?

\]

After playing shows with the likes of the Queers and Murphy's Law, Shot Baker seemed destined to tour the States in support of a well-known band. Not so, says Tony. "We're sick of coat-tailing," he proclaims with a sneer. "It's not about what bands you played with. If you think that sharing a stage with a huge band will give you credibility, you're not in this for the right reasons."

From: (Anonymous)

Well to be quite frank I enjoyed the 'kovac' article, very good! Is this some kind of publicity stunt?

From: (Anonymous)

muggles
masonic orders

"putting an end to things"

From:

imomus.livejournal.com

Is this some kind of publicity stunt?

I think it's a plug from Andrew Marr (the BBC's political correspondent, retired) for his new book, "I Hate Them". Extract:

"They are in their twenties, probably lovers, certainly unmarried. He wears a thin grey jersey and leather trousers, with carefully maintained stubble and wraparound shades, despite the dim light. She is Japanese, dressed in a bright plastic jacket, child colours, unsmiling. They are standing among a scattering of domestic electric detritus on a polished floor. They exchange a look, impossible to interpret. The man mutters and they move on, glancing at a book he holds... All around there are people like them, all part of a modern tribe, a vast nomadic group, mostly young, urban, clever, a little intimidating, given to expensive hodden clothes and rimless glasses. They speak a dialect closely related to that of neighbouring peoples, but studded with other names - Ofili, Opie, Sensation-Apocalypse, Takahashi. And anyway, they are not voluble, as they stand in front of inscrutable images or slow, silent films. They seem poised. They treasure silence. I am talking, obviously, of the followers of contemporary art... I hate them. It is time to elbow them aside and fill up the galleries with the rest of us."

From:

dandy-darvish.livejournal.com

who does he mean with "the rest of us"? who are the rest of us?

From:

imomus.livejournal.com

Well, it's him arm-in-arm, shoulder-to-shoulder with the lumpen proletariat, innit? I mean, forget that he went to a school (Loretto) quite as posh as the one Tony Blair went to (Fettes). He wants to make a populist gesture and close the gap between himself and the people. So he attacks nomadic, miscegynating, unmarried, non-mortgage-paying, non-chattering class contemporary art fans and envisages a scenario in which they're ejected from art galleries by "the rest of us", an unholy alliance between the political elite and the masses. My hero!

From:

qscrisp.livejournal.com

Me.

From:

qscrisp.livejournal.com

Don't you think that the 'political elite' play off the masses and the educated, artsy liberals against each other anyway? I think you've maybe spoken about this sort of thing before.

Another view of this, for instance, is that expressed by Kurt Vonnegut in Breakfast of Champions, that modern art is a conspiracy between the bourgeoisie and the art world to make poor people feel stupid.

This in distintion to the pact (unknowing on the part of the former, in many ways) between the masses and the political elite.

By the way, have you seen Nakata Hideo's Dark Water? I wondered how you thought it compared to the 'Ringu Cycle'. Personally I love Nakata's style. He has rescued horror from mere gore and returned it to genuine chill.

From:

dandy-darvish.livejournal.com

I don'think the lumpen proletariat are aware of such places as art galleries and if they are don't really care. he preaches for a parochy thats deaf.

From: (Anonymous)

Do you really mean that everyone going to art galleries fits the description of the type he professes to hate?

From:

qscrisp.livejournal.com

Sorry, that was me. For some reason the default keeps returning to anonymous.

From:

imomus.livejournal.com

I did see Dark Water, also at the EdinFest, and liked it. I like how he comes from a "women's picture" background and how his goodies and baddies tend both to be women, and also how he manages to make his shock moments emotionally charged rather than mere explosions in the adrenal glands. There's a lot of mother-daughter stuff going on in his films.

From: (Anonymous)

Reading on in Andrew Marr's article:

"I feel ambiguous about some of this, but the main point is that most of the contemporary art around in 2000 is not immediately difficult or chilly. The artists themselves are breaking down the barriers. The Chapman brothers' 'Hell', swastika-set of eight glass boxes inside which 5,000 tiny Nazi models do unspeakable, Bruegel-like things to one another, is something which, once seen, will stay with you for life whether you think you are an art intellectual or not. That is in 'Apocalypse'. Susan Hiller's work 'Witness', in which hundreds of earphones dangle from a darkened room, while recorded witness statements from people across the world who have claimed to see UFOs or aliens whisper in scores of languages around you, like fingers brushing your ears as you walk through - well, just amazing, simple and beautiful. That was in 'Intelligence' at Tate Britain. And there are literary hundreds of other examples."

From: (Anonymous)

Well, the parody is a little bit nasty but sort of on the nail as well. Whenever you post photos of yourself, you do seem to fit neatly into the "guy-at-the-art-gallery-opening" convention. You think you're being creative and imaginative bu there's something actually very conventional about the way you dress. And your lifestyle sometimes comes across as almost too parodic to parody. The thing about the hipster/art gallery opening tribe, is that they are far more tightly prescribed by convention than they think they are, because they think they're the creative types, unlike the boring middle classes or whoever. But go to an art gallery or a hip happening or a groovy photography bookshop or whatever, and it's the same wherever you are, whether it's London, Buenos Aires, Melbourne or Paris. The parameters are very tight.

From:

cap-scaleman.livejournal.com

What about those people in western countries who try to dress like the members of certain J-rock/J-pop bands? Are they Wannabe Japaneses aswell?

From: (Anonymous)

"abusive" perhaps, but I wouldnt had made it if it werent for the very exsistance of yourself.Every eeked piece of poison was brought about by your journal, mo-eer disturbingly is how you glance the whole thing aside as do other visitors like nothing ever happened.Not that Im putting great importance on what I wrote (perhaps I should as you do), but my disbelief is staggered at how you and your visitors can just continue in your bubble. I wrote the parody as a sickening grout of hoched up bile that wasnt enjoyable that made me analyse myself for writing it, but yet you and others like you seem impervious to it; like its a tribute to you. Not a mere speck of your self was brought into self examination. It compounds my fears even more...but enough wanky lexical discourse; your manna.

From:

cap-scaleman.livejournal.com

I ment Wannabe Asians!

From: (Anonymous)

but momus is really nice.

From: (Anonymous)

Even better than the real thing.

From:

lord-whimsy.livejournal.com

Finally, someone takes a brave stand against the rising hordes of frail art-waifs.

~W

From:

ambiguboi.livejournal.com

Check out the hidden text of the Click Opera parody. It's white text against a white background. There are two messages; the second one ends with the line:

"W e hope you enjoyed our whimsy, no malice was itended. "

Adrian

From:

imomus.livejournal.com

Aw, sweet! Maybe it's because I've just seen some Shakespeare (in Korean), but that hidden message has a very "all's well that ends well" kind of atmosphere, like a Shakespearean epilogue:

"Fourtunately, our parody-play comes to an end. Written by one of the unfortunates, a failed writer and musician who could have been. Could have been, in the echelons of momus, but beaten by others ego,own self doubt and self mediocrity. A whelping underdog, hated curr pup... Still shouldnt all mens voices be heard in a council of fools... W e hope you enjoyed our whimsy, no malice was itended."

I have to say, "the echelons of momus" are not too hard to attain! I mean, it's easier than aiming to be Elton John, isn't it? And there's still time; I'm sure our parodist "pup" (who's posting from a cellphone in Japan, according to his IP address) is younger than me, so his "failure" is far from definitive. Anyway, no hate coming his way from here.

From:

lord-whimsy.livejournal.com

Your Lego-man icon reminds me of that fellow in Army of Lovers.

"Whimsy"? They owe me a royalty check.

~W

From:

ambiguboi.livejournal.com

You mean the guy who looks like he wears epaulettes with his nightgown?

<--- Kinda like him?

From:

qscrisp.livejournal.com

The Japanese at the bottom of the page - which seems a little ungrammatical, so it's hard to tell - says that the page contains four secrets. Presumably the white text was one (or two) of the secrets.

From:

ambiguboi.livejournal.com

...and the plot thickened!

From:

qscrisp.livejournal.com

Is one of the four secrets the slightly Squarepusher-ish track hidden in the photo?

From:

ambiguboi.livejournal.com

or the fact that that photo is named "actuallynicenoughguyforcedintoevilparody.jpg"

From:

ambiguboi.livejournal.com

...and though the calendar is correct in other respects, September of 2006 has 31 days

From: (Anonymous)

<Momus, i enjoyed this thread. i happened to be listening to Animal Collective's Feels album and it really synched up. What do you think of the new AC? Have you heard it yet?

From: (Anonymous)

Momus, i enjoyed this thread. i happened to be listening to Animal Collective's Feels album and it really synched up. What do you think of the new AC? Have you heard it yet?

From:

imomus.livejournal.com

I haven't heard it yet, but I'm looking forward to it. The album I've been listening to over and over this week is Tujiko Noriko and Aoki Takamasa's "28". (http://fat-cat.co.uk/fatcat/release.php?id=167)

From: (Anonymous)

How is that record by the way?-Jed

From:

imomus.livejournal.com

Minimal, funky, Bjorky, clicky, emotional, much better than Noriko's "From Tokyo to Niagara".

From:

d-g-m.livejournal.com

"white-piss-side-mouth-posh-froth"
Priceless.

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