A Lennon at art

[imomus]

Tokyo art teacher and curator Roger McDonald looks like a lost member of the Lennon tribe -- especially when he's holding up his "Museum is over! If you want it" slogan. The family resemblance must have perplexed Yoko Ono, with whom he sat through some meetings during the organization of the 2001 Yokohama Triennale. And he does in fact have a background in music -- okay, he wasn't in The Beatles, but he played drums with the Dougals, who made a flexi-single in 1989 called "Bobby Gillespie's Dead".



Roger and I sat for an hour yesterday in Sign Cafe in Daikanyama, not far from the building where he runs his AIT and MAD courses (the acronyms stand for Artists Initiative Tokyo and Making Art Different), talking about Japanese art, and making parallels between the zine scene of the late 80s UK indie world and the sort of artist-run spaces he now focuses on.

I'm an avid reader of his Tactical blog, the only place you'll find the ROJO group being related to Certeau (whose distinction between Strategy and Tactics gives the blog its title, of course), or a description with photos of Makoto Aida's spoof "biennale" tours of his old house in Nishi-Ogikubo.

Since there are cynical spooks out there who insist that Japanese society is rigidly conformist, authoritarian and top-down in nature -- a place where nobody's adult and everyone's some kind of robotic dupe -- I asked Roger the $64,000 question: how did he see the relationship between grassroots initiatives in Japan (whether it's artist-run spaces or street fashion, underground theatre in Shimokita or the Amateur Revolution Group in Koenji) and the power of experts and authorities? For Roger, it wasn't an either/or thing, more and/and. Because information passes so quickly from top to bottom and bottom to top, there's a perpetual circle of synergy in Japanese culture, a cycle of energy passing from what people are doing "on the street" to what they're being advised to do by the experts -- and back again.



Sitting outside the same cafe a couple of hours later, I watched a team of style scouts pouncing on interesting-looking passersby and snapping photos of them. Within hours that "bottom up" information (itself a tactical take on the strategic consumer system) will be on the internet or in a magazine, feeding back through the system as "top down" information.

Power to (and from) the people, as John Lennon might say.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

This post has come at a bizarrely fitting time for me - I'm currently revising for a history exam on Friday about Japanese culture/society/art etc during World War 2, at the moment focusing in particular on how Japan managed to inculcate its population in the drive for support for the military's efforts on the mainland and further afield. The main point is basically that, despite the official line that seems to have been adopted ever since the Tokyo War Crimes Trials and through postwar Japanese education that the military duped the population and led them astray, in actual fact the process was far more give and take, one in which propaganda took the form of a relationship between the government and the people, allowing the spread of 'grassroots fascism' (Yoshimi Yoshiaki). Your mention of a 'perpetual circle of synergy' passing from top to bottom and back again particularly reminded me of the way opinion surveys (!) would be handed out after propaganda speeches by government ministers so that the people could give their feedback on the points they felt were particularly persuasive and worthy of emphasis in future speeches, creating an atmosphere in which everyone felt as though they were playing their part and that they were part of something far larger than themselves, a real sense of mission.

Apologies for the sudden steering of a Daikanyama anecdote into the murky waters of imperialism!

Adam

[imomus.livejournal.com]

War is over! If you want it.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Actually, your description reminds me of a funny and politically trenchant scene in the new Matsumoto film, Dai Nihon Jin. Matsumoto plays a superhero who can expand to enormous size (the transformation depends on Shinto rituals and large quantities of electricity) in order to fight Toho-like monsters threatening Tokyo. At the end of the film he's joined by four Power Ranger types dressed in stars, stripes and red white and blue. They're beating up a hapless, babylike "monster" in an overly violent, and yet totally ineffective way -- ripping off his underpants, stomping on him, pulling out clumps of hair. It goes on for a long time, then Matsumoto is asked to join in. "Daijobu," he says. I'm okay. But the Americans insist. They join hands, and their collective power zaps the baby monster in a huge explosion. The Americans then insist on carrying M over the sea to their realm, where they dine on abstract-looking, inedible food and have a bizarre conversation completely at cross-purposes. On the way, M's Japanese slipper (he's got up as some kind of sumo wrestler, whereas the Americans are uniformed tag team wrestlers) falls off into the sea. He asks to stop and retrieve it, but the Americans ignore him.

This is a comedy take on Japan's enforced participation on the pathetic "coalition of the willing", and Matsumoto's unwillingness -- he looks perplexed and disgusted by the authoritarian antics of the team, their pointless violence -- speaks volumes about how Japanese feel about today's imperial fascism, the kind Bush and Blair have perpetrated.

[(Anonymous)]

"This is a comedy take on Japan's enforced participation on the pathetic "coalition of the willing", and Matsumoto's unwillingness -- he looks perplexed and disgusted by the authoritarian antics of the team, their pointless violence -- speaks volumes about how Japanese feel about today's imperial fascism, the kind Bush and Blair have perpetrated."

i'd say their taste in prime ministers--most of whom continue to cower to the imperialistic demands of the U.S.--speaks volumes too. as does their apparent tolerance for newly devised "patriot act"-type legislation (nationalism now to be taught in schools, a clamping down on supposedly "seditious" political activities [hilarious], ever-new talk of revising the post-war constituition in order to give themselves more war-making powers, etc). anti-authoritarian? anti-imperialist? anti-war?

well, one continues to hope, anyway.

michael

nationalism now to be taught in schools

[pay-option07.livejournal.com]

It is a very specific instruction on patriotism to amend the occupation authorities 1947 version. I'm sure we all would like to know the details!
I'm sure Abe's intent is not Imperialism or Americanism but identity true to Japan's future roles in the world.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20061216a1.html

http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/westbury/Paradigm/crawford.rtf

However the Education Dept.of Japan is now trying to make the six day school week a reality.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070527a1.html

nationalism now to be taught in schools

[pay-option07.livejournal.com]

It is a very specific instruction on patriotism to amend the occupation authorities 1947 version. I'm sure we all would like to know the details!
I'm sure Abe's intent is not Imperialism or Occupationist but identity true to Japan's future roles in the world.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20061216a1.html

http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/westbury/Paradigm/crawford.rtf

However the Education Dept.of Japan is now trying to make the six day school week a reality.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070527a1.html

[imomus.livejournal.com]

My point is really just that if we want to find the closest thing in today's world to fascism and imperialism, it's not in Japan we should be looking. It's much, much closer to home. This is the big picture, and we need to keep it in mind.

If you want it.

[pay-option07.livejournal.com]

File me! If you want it.

ichi nichi de