The Norwegian, the Scotsman and the Japanese

[imomus]

A Norwegian, a Scotsman and four Japanese women walk into a Berlin restaurant. In between the sesame chicken and the panacotta two questions about Japan come up. The Norwegian, an artist, has been to Korea several times and Japan once. During the course of workshops with art students he's found it very hard to get them to do "critical thinking" -- for him, the beginning of creativity. What he finds puzzling, though, is how amazingly creative Asian countries are, despite this. They come out with the equipment we all use daily, with the most imaginative animation series, computer games, and so on. So how do they do it? The Norwegian also wants to know about the state of the Japanese art world. Is it healthy and thriving?



The ball's in the Scotsman's court. I take a deep breath, a bite of chicken, a swig of white beer, and start with the art world question. Japan's art market is underdeveloped, I say. There are some "pop stars" like Murakami and Nara, who've mostly made their names outside Japan. Inside Japan (a bit like Berlin), there aren't really serious art collectors. Inside Japan, people like Murakami and Nara make their money by doing corporate identity (Vuitton, Roppongi Hills) or mass-producing souvenirs. It's a bit like Andy Warhol's statement that he'd be happy for people to have his pictures printed on the side of plastic shopping bags. In Japan, it's really like that. Art is collapsed into the mass market. Galleries are often in department stores, and often show what we'd think of as commercial work; record sleeves, airline advertising. But also there's the wider perspective that Japan doesn't really have a tradition of high art separated from design, crafts, practical things, commerce. That idea of "fine art" is a Western import. And there's no point in accusing Japanese artists of "selling out". When Nara makes a puppy-shaped alarm clock, he's distributing his work through the radically flat social structure of Japan much the way Warhol said he'd like to.



As for critical thinking, that too is a Western way of looking at things. We in the West (in places like Scotland and Norway) have a metaphysical tradition which encourages us to think we can step outside of social contexts and judge things from a place of security, objectively. What we don't see is that what we call "critical thinking" isn't objective or critical at all -- it's all tied up with assumptions we inherit from Plato and protestantism, the idea that you can say "No!" and that this radical "No!" and the "outside" it comes from is where everything good starts. Asian societies have a different underpinning, a Confucian one, which sees the maverick, the loner, the outsider as a loser. For those societies, there is no safe or objective "outside". Radical affirmation takes the place of radical dissent; the "yes" wins over the "no", the "we" over the "me". You innovate not by trying to divorce yourself from others, but by joining a team. It is this team or family (Kaikai Kiki, Murakami's organization, would be an example) that makes everything possible, including expressions of originality.



The paradox you quickly reach here is that Western-style "critical thinking" is actually so endorsed by such central institutions (corporations, the academy, the media), is paid such daily lip service by educators and facilitators and team leaders, that it's become the most conformist, obedient, hierarchical and unoriginal thing you could do. As I sang in my song "Robocowboys", there's so many insiders on the outside / I think it's beginning to be the inside / there's so many mavericks off the beaten track / they're beating a track to my door / and i'm beating them back with a board. And so, all over the West, a kind of theatre of the absurd is played out in colleges and workplaces daily; the moment when some teacher, team-leader or other authority figure commands a bunch of cowed students or employees to "think critically" on cue. Shouting at them to "get out of the box", he actually crams them into one.

At that moment in the conversation a sort of miracle occurred. Naoko Ogawa, a Japanese woman who'd been very quiet up until that point, produced a plastic-bound portfolio from her case and handed round a series of clear-wrapped cards. On these were mounted her "jewelry" -- but it wasn't like jewelry we'd ever seen before. Naoko makes small aluminium rectangles with rounded corners and traditional Japanese kimono patterns printed on them. As the text on each card explains, you crush these metal leaves to your clothing, "either destroying or changing it". There's only a limited number of times you can clasp the crushed metal to the crushed cloth beneath before the aluminium fatigues and begins to crack. At that point, Naoko says, you should throw the metal sheet away and buy a new one.

The pieces themselves -- each one is unique, and in a packet you get three or four, in assorted patterns and colours -- were very beautiful. I'm not normally interested in jewelry at all (just the other day I was telling Hisae I can't understand people who stand in front of jeweler's windows gawping at silver and gold rings and necklaces), but Naoko's pieces were just so original and so attractive that I really wished I could afford the €118 she was charging for each packet. It was also a very Japanese proposition; the way the card was laid out, with a strip of pictures along the top showing, on a neutrally-dressed woman's torso, how to attach the metal tabs (the photos were very frontal in a Mark Borthwick sort of way), the rather conceptual, quirky yet unpretentious instructions (a bit like early 1960s Yoko Ono text pieces), the trad kimono patterns of the tabs themselves.



Naoko was typically self-deprecating about her work (if being a maverick is the Western conformity, being self-deprecating is the Japanese boasting); "I haven't presented them very well," she said. She told us she'd come to Berlin because she wanted to work with Bless, the amazing fashion design team on Mulackstrasse who do conceptual jewelry (they'll sell you customized designer USB cables!). After she'd interned for them for a while, Bless told her she should set up on her own. I'd love to direct you to a website where you can see or buy her stuff, but she doesn't have one.

The Norwegian's questions were answered much better by the Japanese woman's work than by the Scotsman's waffle. Here was something that presented itself, without big claims, in an artisanal tradition, something you could buy in a shop rather than a gallery. And yet its originality could easily match and outstrip that of your average work of art. The instructions printed on the packet asked the user to rethink his or her relationship with clothes and jewelry. The odd beauty of the results would spark conversations wherever the aluminium was worn. "That's pretty amazing," people would say, and their way of thinking would be subtly freshened.

Comments

[charleston.livejournal.com]

But also there's the wider perspective that Japan doesn't really have a tradition of high art separated from design, crafts, practical things, commerce.

Didn't you do a post about Leach's pottery a while back? that's what I loved about his work and those of similar potters - that it's outside the idea we have in the west that there is either the "potter" (craftsman, making useful things, not particularly artistic) or the "ceramicist" (artist, somehow superior, making things that are impractical) and that you have to choose which one you want to be. I love the idea that a pot should be a work of art, a beautiful thing, not existing to be criticised or pontificated over, but just to be enjoyed and used. And then, at some point, you break the pot, and you get a new one. Like Naoko's jewellery. Art not as a thing to be revered and preserved but enjoyed, used, broken, lost, replaced.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, and looking at the Bless site (http://www.bless-service.de/aboutbless.pdf) I see they have quite a good and simple way of describing this non-hierarchy: "Bless is a project that presents ideal and artistic values by products to the public." Metaphysics ("ideal and artistic values") and the market are totally non-separated there, and I think that's what you find in Japan too, and what attracts so many Japanese people to Bless' work (if you look at their events schedule, it's mostly shows at the National Art Center and MoT, both in Tokyo). (http://www.bless-service.de/home.html)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_grimtales_/]

I disagree on your assessment of critical thinking. While all human experience is, by necessity, subjective the only way we can hope for an objective view of reality is by thinking critically, assessing evidence and trying to create safeguards. In this way (most manifest in the scientific method) we can approach and objective (and useful) understanding of the universe.

When people approach the universe subjectively they can do so with an awareness that they are (art and representation) or not (religious/spiritual beliefs). Thinking that one's subjective view necessarily corresponds to reality is an incredibly dangerous game to play, especially when it comes to imposition of that imprint on others.

For me, art and creativity gives me a greater appreciation of the reality/unreality split and my practice in mythmaking, storytelling and the analysis of such informs my atheism (which derives from critical thinking). I appreciate art and fantasy but have a keen sense that it is not real, this even extends into my dream world, I dream lucidly when I dream, with control over that dreamscape.

A lot of people seem to think that an artist (writer, poet, visual artist or whatever else) must, by necessity, be spiritual in some way and it seems to disappoint them when they discover I am not, that my tales of magic, horror and fantasy are just that - fantasy. That I don't, in some way, believe them - even for a moment.

Spirituality, religion, subjective thinking, distorted perception, seeing through the eyes of another, these are all important inspirations for art I think, but without that separation of reality and fantasy there's a danger of... getting lost(?).

I've always been attracted to commercial, or commercial style art over classical art or abstract. It has a definite purpose to it and in fulfilling necessity has a certain sort of 'evolved' or 'functional' charm often lacking in self indulgent high art. Innovation and evolution of the form within this context is as much a matter of appeal to me as the end result itself. The form of a plastic chair, people attempting to squeeze some new spin out of established forms like adverts for cars and so forth.

I've always liked Japanese graphic art for this reason, it is a part of the world, but that jibes with what you say about the insider/outsider contrast between east and west I think, at least from a western perspective. Certainly in the field of comics and animation (and computer games) the Japanese designers (and consumers) still seem to be outcasts of some sort (Otaku) but even their rebellion seems tame(ish) from a western viewpoint, even if the results of their labours can seem perverse or strange (again from a western viewpoint).

I'm starting to ramble so I'll just ask one thing.

I see a lot of thematic and artistic parallels between French art and Japanese art - visual media such as comics, healthy home-grown cinema and so forth. Do you recognise the same thing at all and why do you think that occurs?

Cheers.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Wasn't Toulouse Lautrec famously influenced by ukiyo-e and Debussy and Ravel and people by Japanese music? There was that 1890s thing going on -- William Morris and the Yellowbook gang were also Japanophiles, and the popularity of impressionism in Japan is partly down to self-recognition: "Where have I seen that lily pond before?"

Your point about otakus does remind us that the maverick thing has its Japanese parallels, though. One trend in Japan in the last ten years is the coolificiation of the nerd -- seen in everything from Murakami's celebration of the otaku to the Train Man film -- and it's arguable that this outsider-inside thing is pretty similar to the "conformist maverick" thing that happens in the West.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_grimtales_/]

Perhaps this convergence is an aspect of the globalisation of culture. Japanese 'insider' rebels moving outside and Western 'outsider' rebels moving inside.

That would explain the cognitive dissonance I felt hearing Iggy Pop used to advertise middle class, middle age cruise liner trips!

work and the Job

[niddrie-edge.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking about William Morris and artisan craft and perhaps also utopian socialist communities like New Lanark.

"All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer" Robert Owen.

Also this reminds me of a piece on Japanese Aesthetics (http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/miche2.htm) I was reading by a chap with a name suspiciously like that held by the "Scottish Randy Newman" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Marra).

I was also interested in the influence of Gamelan and other "exotics" at the turn of the 20th century after the Paris Exposition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_Universelle_%281889%29).

Excuse my indulgence I come at this insider/outsider thinking from a community arts bent having participated in the Craigmillar Arts festival activities and latterly the Digital Divide question. Hence my current application of psychogeographic tendencies as a "class" issue.

Then again there's always Kenneth White's Geopoetics (http://geopoetics.org.uk/pages/what-is-geopoetics.php).

Theres a lot to digest here. I am looking forward to the erudite replies and comments.

[winterkoninkje.livejournal.com]

I think the notion of the outsider and their acceptance is a universal one, though spun into different tales.

In the West with our obsession with individuality and self-sufficiency, the maverick gains their acceptance either by finally accepting themselves and so the world accepts them too, or by some coup de grace where they topple the current regime forcing them to see this new 'truth'. That is, even despite accepting themselves or forcing others to accept them by conquering them, the outsider remains an outsider.

But in Japan, the maverick still seeks acceptance, only this time it's finding some way to fit into the system despite their quirky nature. The rogue hero who picks up loyal followers one at a time until he has a family. The rebel who turns the enemy to their side rather than destroying them entirely. The teenager outcast because they don't follow in their parents' footsteps finally becoming accepted when they follow in their parent's footsteps only all too closely. But even when they finally have a community, the loner is still lone and different; the hero who saved the world through love and friendship is different from anyone else, and yet it's the love and friendship despite that uniqueness which is lauded.

Every culture that has adolescents knows of the pain of being different and excluded. In the West we glorify finding some way to achieve acceptance without "sacrificing what makes us unique", because we value uniqueness. Giving up that maverick status is "selling out", is failure. In Japan they glorify achieving acceptance despite the fact that everyone is different, because they value community. Not making friends is being a looser, is failure. But in either place the hero is the one who does both, who is accepted despite their difference. The words are different, but the stories and emotions and morals are the same.

[desant012.livejournal.com]

I think there is a distinct separation between the "rational" and the "mystical" between the West and the East. I remember in one of Mishima's novels he described Western culture as a "Day culture" (ruled by logic, rationality, and critical thinking), and Eastern culture as a "Night culture" (ethereal, mystical, dreamy, spiritual, etc.). What we consider to be artistic in the west is separate from our daily reality, but what we consider artistic qualities is in the east part of their daily reality, so it's more connected to everyday things. Personally, I have no idea.

Anyway, it semes like people have noticed these themes for a while now.

[(Anonymous)]

Funny you should mention 'Robocowboys'... I was listening to that song earlier this morning.

The Grasshopper Lies Heavy

[bikerbar.livejournal.com]

This post reminds me of Philip K. Dick's "Man in the High Castle" .. if I rmember correctly (I listened to the audiobook) a Japanese CEO sits in a park examining a piece of jewelry and has an epiphany about reality. You should seek it out ...

[akabe.livejournal.com]

The most relevant part here is i think the critique of western thought. The binary itself i find a bit too strong.

For example the japanese concept of isshokenmei gambaru -as strong and common as any confucian/communal idea- is on one level, while not exactly the same, in many ways a valid equivalent to the "maverick" and both Nara and Murakami arrived where the have doing exactly that in their respective ways. I'd also say it has its own metaphysical dimension. (which reminds me of that old book Transcendental Cinema: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

What we don't see is that what we call "critical thinking" isn't objective or critical at all... and that this radical "No!" and the "outside" it comes from is where everything good starts.

Of course, you'd have used your critical thinking skills to arrive at this conclusion, so I'm heartened that you're not saying we're absolutely doomed to be unaware of our relevant prejudices. (Particularly since I completely disagree with you about lumping western thought entirely on that complete hack Plato.)

[akabe.livejournal.com]

there are many vectors criss-crossing both ways and that binary makes for little more than 2 obscure, abstract points of reference.

in the case of Naoko's work obviously the work (and what makes it be work) is strongly informed by the margiela->bless kind of conceptualism, not just critical but hyper-critical (and 'western' you could say) , the edo-motif is just some cherry on the top (i reckon it'd sell better that way outside japan). of course martin margiela himself got half his inspiration from rei kawakubo who in turn has been chewing the entire history of western visual culture before starting to make unique clothes.

there is on another level though something distinctly 'japanese' about this jewelery though. there's nothing i love more about japanese fashion than to step out in some obscure town or suburb and watch spontaneous local micro-trends that have nothing to do with anything the magazines or the style curators tell us. an oversized hairclip worn in a certain, slightly awkward way, a particular hairstyle, whatever. but then again schoolkids do this everywhere, there is a certain japanese style though to the way they do it in japan.

pegged it

[lupoleboucher.livejournal.com]

"During the course of workshops with art students he's found it very hard to get them to do "critical thinking" -- for him, the beginning of creativity..."

I'm glad you pointed out this western/Socratic way of looking at the world isn't necessarily so. We've arguably gone beyond Socrates; outright rebellion has become a western autonomic reflex, which is why rooms full of dot-commers in jeans is about as exciting as a bowl of oats. Asian cultures don't think through Socrates' blinders, but through those of Mencius and Dogen. IMO, Zen is the source of much of Japanese creativity and dynamism.

IMO, Japan cranks out plenty of fantastic art; their swords and pots and kimonos are works of technical and aesthetic genius which excel anything of that nature we presently have in the west, other than perhaps a few composers of orchestral classical music. They're a result of a thousand year old tradition. In the west, we don't have any thousand year old traditions outside of the Catholic church. Their more "transgressive" art is also generally more interesting, because they generally put more thought and effort into it (which is why Aube is more interesting to listen to than Whitehouse). I've never heard of any Japanese people smearing cheese on hotel walls and calling it art; if that's what the Norwegian is referring to, I attribute their lack of it to good taste.

Re: pegged it

[akabe.livejournal.com]

> I've never heard of any Japanese people smearing cheese on hotel walls and calling it art;

You're reducing and stereotyping here. start with the 20s avantguarde, through hi-red and mono ha up to the present day and i'm sure you'll find exactly that.
if that's too much of a task then the guy momus has talked about several times here, the one who makes things out of saliva or belly-button lint or both i can't remember can surely stand in.

[(Anonymous)]

This post begs so many questions.

Some traditional Japanese arts - Noh theatre, Gagaku music for instance - are as rarefied, sophisticated and elite as it's possible to imagine. If Japan now has a "radically flat social structure" it didn't always have it. The story of how it changed, from feudal, aristocratic and hierarchal, to more egalitarian modernity, would make an interesting post in its own right.

Also, the supposed Confucian ethos of Asian societies is a bit of a simplification. Zen Buddhism is the ultimate loner philosophy, surely. Everything is about direct individual experience. And Zhuangzi's writings often feature wise hermit figures. Hence their attraction to Californians.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

If Japan now has a "radically flat social structure" it didn't always have it.

Oh sure, that goes without saying! I'm sure I'd never get around to writing anything as didactic as a history of those changes. I'm quite interested in the idea that Japan was a matriarchal society prior to its contact with China (up until the 15th century). I'd like to blog about that, and the traces of that in today's Japan. I think there are some still, despite what people tend to say about Japanese women being tremendously oppressed and submissive and so on. There are also traces of the aristocratic court culture still to be found in today's Japan, of Bushido, and so on. As in the life of an individual, former stages are preserved somewhere.

As for Zen, everything is direct experience, but can we talk about "individual" when all is one and self is lost in that?

[akabe.livejournal.com]

>I think there are some still, despite what people tend to say about Japanese women being tremendously oppressed and submissive and so on.

absolutely

>I'd like to blog about that

i'm looking forward to what could be a comments armageddon

[jenny-junkie.livejournal.com]

You made me think about the stages of embryological development where we can see that every species has still some artifacts of ancestral forms that could never "get rid of", even though functionally it might not make the best of senses. And also that Evolution is more than not a one way process that occurs always in relation to the species History and cannot take new routes independently of it. Is this also the way societies function? The evolution of the super organisms done in the same way as the single organisms. OR: this might just be an overstretched comparison.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

No, I love that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" argument, although I believe biologists aren't so keen on it any more. Call it a metaphor, then. Metaphors are what we salvage from the scrapyard of discredited science -- and hey, that's a metaphor!

[jenny-junkie.livejournal.com]

Yeah I know. But what if we assume that society is an emerging property of a group of organisms, in the same way organisms possess emerging properties that can't be explained only by the sum of its parts. Then society could be considered a biological phenomenon. Wow, this has nothing to do with the general discussion.

[jenny-junkie.livejournal.com]

So my point was that considering it a biological (or supra-biological) function, than you don't have to consider it a metaphor anymore. But I guess that would open the gates to social-darwinism again, wouldn't it.

[(Anonymous)]

"The Norwegian, an artist, has been to Korea several times and Japan once. During the course of workshops with art students he's found it very hard to get them to do "critical thinking" -- for him, the beginning of creativity. What he finds puzzling, though, is how amazingly creative Asian countries are, despite this."

I think the word "despite" is interesting there. If he had tried to get his students to jump but they didn't seem to know how to jump and yet went on to perform gymnastics outside his class, would he think they had been able to do so despite not knowing how to jump? The challenge for him would seem to be more how to engage those students so they can show him what they have in a way he can see.

To make the case that Japanese and Korean creativity comes in spite of a lack of critical thinking reminds me of a black jazz musician's retort when Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington were regularly referred to as "intuitive geniuses" or "natural talents": "Do you really think they didn't know what they were doing?"

Mulboyne

[imomus.livejournal.com]

If he had tried to get his students to jump but they didn't seem to know how to jump and yet went on to perform gymnastics outside his class, would he think they had been able to do so despite not knowing how to jump?...: "Do you really think they didn't know what they were doing?"

I wouldn't see it as an appeal to "natural" or "intuitive" genius so much as the idea of "standing on the shoulder [sic] of giants", in the immortal words of Oasis. We all stand on the shoulder [sic] of our culture and achieve what we achieve as mere tweaks a few degrees this way or that from the template, or by putting old things in a new context. This is why the arguments about Japanese achievement being "pakuri" or "copying" have always rung very hollow to me -- it's not that they don't do that, it's that we all do.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

"Is it radical?" is a boring question. "Is it beautiful?" or "Is it useful?" are much more rewarding. It's not just museums where art goes to die--that now includes galleries, too. I'd rather my work be bought and enjoyed rather than languish in a white cube like a ghost.

Wish you took photos of her work. They sound wonderful.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I normally never go anywhere without a digital camera. But that evening I was wearing my House of Minky corduroy jacket and didn't want to bulge the silhouette. Vanity, thy name is man!

Naoko's work

[zazie-metro.livejournal.com]

Mmm, they really ARE beautiful.


Here's the packaging (http://zazie-metro.livejournal.com/53921.html) for it.

Re: Naoko's work

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, fantastic, you took exactly the pictures I wished I had! I didn't know you'd bought one of Naoko's pieces! It was a "Japanese neighbours" evening, but you should have been invited, Sunshine, gomenasai!

Re: Naoko's work

[zazie-metro.livejournal.com]

She gave it to me for my birthday. I don't know if I could for out the Euros for it either, but probably would eventually...!

And please!, no apologies needed at all and yes, let's do Musashi - I haven't been there either!