A Lennon at art
Jun. 6th, 2007 05:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusTokyo 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.
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.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-06 08:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-06 11:20 pm (UTC)a mediocre 1969 McCartney song that started "If you want it here it is come and get it..." has nothing to do with the brilliant (also 1969) billboard campaign by John and Yoko that simply said "War is over! If you want it." It's a pretty common English phrase.
Being smug on the internet is over... if you want it!
Momus
If you want it here it is come and get it..."
Date: 2007-06-07 01:41 am (UTC)Dear Internet Pedant,
Date: 2007-06-07 02:53 am (UTC)