Mai Ueda Times

[imomus]

After my performance at the Rubin Museum last night I was joined by Mai Ueda and DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, "the world's most pretentious man"©. Here you see us reading the Mai Ueda Times, a publication written entirely by and about Mai and published by Celine to promote the limited edition bag Mai designed for them, a form based on the standard cheap plastic carrier bag, but made of baby kangaroo hide dipped in gold and silver and treated with a special silicone process.



We all went for dinner with Andrew Maerkle of Art Asia Pacific magazine (who'd organized the Rubin event) at a Japanese pasta joint called Basta Pasta (blacky squid ink pasta, yum!). Spooky of course dominated the conversation with his dazzling name-dropping and breathtaking array of projects (he's recording music in Antarctica next, flying out in a helicopter, has recently spliced together a box set of rare Trojan dub plates, has made an orchestral piece, and so on). On the L train home I read a passage in Mai's "newspaper" dealing with our exhibition last year which moved me. I reproduce it here in full:

"I did a performance with Momus in New York at the gallery LFL in summer 2005. 3 weeks of improvisation of words, sounds and situation. Momus was creating stories, my voice and me were supposed to be objects in his story that he makes in people's head as landscape. It was challenging to make something out of nothing non stop everyday in a front of people or no people, spending so much time with somebody interesting and talented who is not dating me. Last day was a live house performance, at Tonic in downtown. I saw Momus playing his own songs on stage. It was the first time I saw him perform, he is very good. I cried in my bed at night and couldn't sleep."

That reminded me of Kahimi telling me she'd cried when recording my lyrics for her song "Tiny King Kong":

"I leaned too hard upon my microscope
The barrel buckled and the slide-tray broke
In tiny pain my tiny world caved in
I'll never see my tiny friend again..."

I haven't seen Kahimi in a few years (I had a chance to see her perform with Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Ensemble in Kyoto in February, but I was over on the Sea of Japan that weekend, celebrating my birthday at onsen resort Kinosaki), but it occurred to me that Mai is to my 00s what Kahimi Karie was to my 90s. Kahimi and Mai are both beautiful and generous women, they both exude a magnetic superstar charisma, Kahimi in the world of pop, Mai in the world of art, fashion and performance. With both of them I managed to work on a "not-dating" basis, and somehow that only increased our respect for, and connection to, each other. I think the best word for this kind of relationship is "recognition". We both recognize in the other something we lack, want and need. Talent recognizes beauty, and beauty recognizes talent. And of course to recognize talent you must possess some yourself, and to recognize beauty you must be, in some hidden way, beautiful. Good morning, world!

Comments

oops, this turned into an interview...

[never-the-less.livejournal.com]

The similarities are almost uncanny though. When I read this, all I could think was "how perfect a match!"

It's interesting because when you put yourself in the context of DJ Spooky, I start to wonder about the idea of a shift from apprciation of/cultural meaning being created by expertise to the idea of dilletantishness/pretensions as a new form of culture making (because I start to recognize this as a trend perhaps?). That is to say, what I immediately identified as commonalities between what I know of you from what you write here to what I know of DJ Spooky from the public image he has created for himself is that you both claim almost the entire realm of culture as your spheres of operation, and that you both operate within that realm based mostly (correct me if I'm wrong) on personal experience and intutition rather than studied/learned knowledge.

However, both of you also very much flirt with the realms of studied/learned and most importantly institutionalized knowledge -- i.e. the museum, the university. Which, for someone who takes the entire realm of culture as a subject, is almost required since these institutions are some of the primary producers of culture.

Okay, now that I've tried to sort things out in my head (sorry if you feel pigeonholed by these statements, and please feel free to correct them, I'm just observing what is available to me), here is what I really want to know:

What are your thoughts on let's say, amateruism, with a wide terrain of operation vs. narrow expertise? Is that a position that you are intentionally trying to carve out for yourself, and do you have thoughts on the rolls of these two positions w/r/t historical or contermporary change?

Where do you locate your realm of operation, and where do you locate your realm of influence? How do you position yourself w/r/t the institution -- to what degree is your position contingent on being outside of it (which, among other things, perhaps affords you the freedom to take on so many topics as your areas of interest)? To what degree do you attempt to have influence within it?

Finally, what do you consider your greatest cultural products? (I guess one must ask "greatest for whom" in this case, and I suppose I'm interested in two questions -- for yourself in terms of personal meaning and in terms of general cultural meaning) Your music? Your installation work? This journal? The conversations you have with people? Are you even interested in production of culture for it's own sake or are these things just the by products of experience for you?

Okay, sorry that this turned into an impropmtu interview from someone you don't know at all. Somehow the association of you with DJ Spooky in this post just brought up all these questions about which I always wonder (i.e. how do you theorize your position? which is a question driven by my own of how should *I* understand your position...) so I thought I'd ask, since you have this forum....I'd obviously love to hear your answers, and I hope that maybe these questions can be provocative for you as well, but I understand that you also have stuff to do!

Re: oops, this turned into an interview...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

What are your thoughts on let's say, amateruism, with a wide terrain of operation vs. narrow expertise? Is that a position that you are intentionally trying to carve out for yourself, and do you have thoughts on the rolls of these two positions w/r/t historical or contermporary change?

I like amateurs, as long as they're good at spelling!

Where do you locate your realm of operation, and where do you locate your realm of influence? How do you position yourself w/r/t the institution -- to what degree is your position contingent on being outside of it (which, among other things, perhaps affords you the freedom to take on so many topics as your areas of interest)? To what degree do you attempt to have influence within it?

When I was at university I actually got the department to let me shape my own syllabus. It was very kind of them. I think they were as bored as I was with the set texts.

Finally, what do you consider your greatest cultural products?

My records, for sure. Theory never made anybody cry.

Re: oops, this turned into an interview...

[never-the-less.livejournal.com]

Thanks for repling to a few of my questions, even though the answers to me read as a bit more dimissive than what I was hoping for. (Which was to have a genuine conversation regarding something along the lines of the role of the expert vs. the amateur in today's society; also a discussion of the status of the theorized position in contemporary culture)