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imomusJapanwatchers -- or simply people watching Japanese TV -- will already know about train-man-gaffer-tape-lettering-hero and folk artist Shuetsu Sato. He's been featured on Pingmag ("Gaffer Tape Art in Tokyo’s Train Stations"), Chipple, Patrick from Chipple's Flickr page (Patrick took the top picture in my strip), and held an exhibition which has just closed in an art gallery in Koenji. As if the articles, the TV shows and the art exhibition weren't enough, there's also the DVD and the t-shirt.
So how did a railway employee who carves temporary lettering out of gaffer tape shoot to multimedia fame? Why did so many people turn up to watch Mr Sato do live tape-cutting at his gallery show that it was impossible to see past the forest of raised digital cameras?
It all began when members of a collective called Trio4 noticed the tape lettering, and its unusual gothic forms, in temporary signage at Shinjuku station back in 2003. These kids -- members of the Koenji Shiroto no Ran or Amateur Revolution group I blogged about back in June -- had been casting about for something to make a documentary about, and these letters seemed to be the perfect subject. At first, Sato-San proved a reluctant folk hero. ”In the beginning," Trio4's Hikaru Yamashita told Pingmag, "Mr. Sato wasn’t friendly at all. Later, he told me that me approaching him seemed kind of troublesome… However, he was much nicer in our second meeting. He agreed to do an interview and to demonstrate his skills on our live show”.
Little by little the young hipsters upped the charmingly gap-toothed old man's cultural capital with their curation. "Skills" became street smart "skillz", which eventually became "art" and -- the final apotheosis! -- goods marketing.
Here's the documentary Trio4 made about Sato, The Shinjuku Gaffer Tape Guide. This video is the basic alchemical act, the place where Sato's transmogrification began. It's quite basic as a document, full of stills, almost as handmade as Sato's own lettering. Perhaps this lo-fi approach is part of the Amateur Revolution's electronic folk style: the DVD cover boasts that their documentaries are a YouTube movement. But the decision to pay aesthetic attention to something practical is the film's crucial value-adding act, the Trio4 collective's basic curatorial decision. What really matters here is the original moment of seeing, and the subsequent framing.
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The film reminds me of the chatty, informal investigations of Rojo, a group of friends (including architect Terunobu Fujimori) who travel Japan observing quirky details.
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The reason I wanted to add to the blanket coverage of Mr Sato is that his work touches on a number of themes dear to me. First, I love the Japanese train networks. Second, I'm always snapping this sort of lettering. Third, the idea of folk heroes has been central to my work since "Folktronic". Fourth, I'm fascinated by the relationship between analog and digital here. Look at all the digital cameras in Patrick's photo of the gallery performance. They're snapping a defiantly analog event -- a man cutting tape by hand to make a stubbornly pre-digital letterform. Or is this actually a crucial part of post-digital celebrity, what I've called the post-bit atom age? Must our folk heroes shun computers precisely because we're all chained to them these days? It's also ironic that Mr Sato's work concerns orientation -- his exhibition was titled "You Are Here" -- and yet, in an age of satnav systems, it's lo-fi tape arrows that orient us best.
Mr Sato embodies another interesting paradox. He isn't just a pre-digital man (one of his first jobs was hand-lettering newspaper headlines) who makes perfect grist to the digital mill, he's also a bit of a wallflower in an age of attention-seeking and hype -- and therefore the perfect subject for exactly such hype. The true folk hero is a reluctant one. "Many people create something because they long for attention from others," Hikaru Yamashita told Pingmag, "but Mr. Sato is different… He just wanted to offer more safety and better accessibility for the passengers. I really do respect that.” Sato's self-effacing pragmatism is what makes him a star, a bit like the communist-era worker's statues which still line the streets of East Berlin.
I can't fail to relate this to Superlegitimacy, of course. "It will always amaze me how seriously some people take their job in Japan," says one commenter after the Pingmag article, "even if it’s just a seemingly trivial one as 'train guardian'". But here we come across another paradox -- several of the Pingmag commenters seem to want to learn Sato's gaffer tape skillz for the purpose of illegal street art. Yet they're full of respect for this superlegitimate, uniformed guru, this folk hero who confines his "street art" to his train organization.
The gap between legal and illegal street art, then, is a rather narrow one. As is the gap between what Sato does and the work of tape installation hero Jim Lambie -- the gap, in other words, between practical tape and art tape. In the words of the famous underground slogan: "Don't mind the gap!"
So how did a railway employee who carves temporary lettering out of gaffer tape shoot to multimedia fame? Why did so many people turn up to watch Mr Sato do live tape-cutting at his gallery show that it was impossible to see past the forest of raised digital cameras?
It all began when members of a collective called Trio4 noticed the tape lettering, and its unusual gothic forms, in temporary signage at Shinjuku station back in 2003. These kids -- members of the Koenji Shiroto no Ran or Amateur Revolution group I blogged about back in June -- had been casting about for something to make a documentary about, and these letters seemed to be the perfect subject. At first, Sato-San proved a reluctant folk hero. ”In the beginning," Trio4's Hikaru Yamashita told Pingmag, "Mr. Sato wasn’t friendly at all. Later, he told me that me approaching him seemed kind of troublesome… However, he was much nicer in our second meeting. He agreed to do an interview and to demonstrate his skills on our live show”.Little by little the young hipsters upped the charmingly gap-toothed old man's cultural capital with their curation. "Skills" became street smart "skillz", which eventually became "art" and -- the final apotheosis! -- goods marketing.
Here's the documentary Trio4 made about Sato, The Shinjuku Gaffer Tape Guide. This video is the basic alchemical act, the place where Sato's transmogrification began. It's quite basic as a document, full of stills, almost as handmade as Sato's own lettering. Perhaps this lo-fi approach is part of the Amateur Revolution's electronic folk style: the DVD cover boasts that their documentaries are a YouTube movement. But the decision to pay aesthetic attention to something practical is the film's crucial value-adding act, the Trio4 collective's basic curatorial decision. What really matters here is the original moment of seeing, and the subsequent framing.
[Error: unknown template video]
The film reminds me of the chatty, informal investigations of Rojo, a group of friends (including architect Terunobu Fujimori) who travel Japan observing quirky details.
[Error: unknown template video]
The reason I wanted to add to the blanket coverage of Mr Sato is that his work touches on a number of themes dear to me. First, I love the Japanese train networks. Second, I'm always snapping this sort of lettering. Third, the idea of folk heroes has been central to my work since "Folktronic". Fourth, I'm fascinated by the relationship between analog and digital here. Look at all the digital cameras in Patrick's photo of the gallery performance. They're snapping a defiantly analog event -- a man cutting tape by hand to make a stubbornly pre-digital letterform. Or is this actually a crucial part of post-digital celebrity, what I've called the post-bit atom age? Must our folk heroes shun computers precisely because we're all chained to them these days? It's also ironic that Mr Sato's work concerns orientation -- his exhibition was titled "You Are Here" -- and yet, in an age of satnav systems, it's lo-fi tape arrows that orient us best.
Mr Sato embodies another interesting paradox. He isn't just a pre-digital man (one of his first jobs was hand-lettering newspaper headlines) who makes perfect grist to the digital mill, he's also a bit of a wallflower in an age of attention-seeking and hype -- and therefore the perfect subject for exactly such hype. The true folk hero is a reluctant one. "Many people create something because they long for attention from others," Hikaru Yamashita told Pingmag, "but Mr. Sato is different… He just wanted to offer more safety and better accessibility for the passengers. I really do respect that.” Sato's self-effacing pragmatism is what makes him a star, a bit like the communist-era worker's statues which still line the streets of East Berlin.
I can't fail to relate this to Superlegitimacy, of course. "It will always amaze me how seriously some people take their job in Japan," says one commenter after the Pingmag article, "even if it’s just a seemingly trivial one as 'train guardian'". But here we come across another paradox -- several of the Pingmag commenters seem to want to learn Sato's gaffer tape skillz for the purpose of illegal street art. Yet they're full of respect for this superlegitimate, uniformed guru, this folk hero who confines his "street art" to his train organization.The gap between legal and illegal street art, then, is a rather narrow one. As is the gap between what Sato does and the work of tape installation hero Jim Lambie -- the gap, in other words, between practical tape and art tape. In the words of the famous underground slogan: "Don't mind the gap!"
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 10:33 am (UTC)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCYH1d1_4kk
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 10:39 am (UTC)that uninspired line of aesthetic dumbing down can also be detected in the approach of the street artists to sato. those two have not the same agenda, it's like the difference would be between an artist doing a bread performance, to be documented with his name labeling it as art, and a skilled baker selling bread for his happy customers to eat, without signing the individual pieces, and without the customers reading about the bakers conceptual position while eating it.
i'm maybe not the biggest fan of appropriation art, but i definitely find "drafting art" much more questionable: trick-casting innocent people into the ever greedy (not necessarily always only money-wise) arms of the gallery world.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 10:56 am (UTC)Emigholz - Schindler's Häuser
Date: 2007-09-10 11:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 11:16 am (UTC)But this is a gallery in Japan, remember, where galleries are very often full of record sleeves, graphic design, stools, airline uniforms... My language in the article (transmogrification, apotheosis, adding value) does suggest that Mr Sato has "moved up" as a result of his exposure, but in Japan it would be seen more as moving "across". Sato still works for JR (now at Nippori station).
I detect in Electricwitch's comment about hipsters and yours about artists a typical Western resentment of vertical gaps. It's one I understand, because I've felt it too. But I think that, as I say at the end of the article, these gaps don't need to be minded so much in Japan, because they're horizontal. Japanese hipsters and artists aren't a super-privileged leisure class, and therefore can't be hated on so easily. (Western creatives in Japan, though, do tend to be a superprivileged uberclass, which is why they can be so annoying.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 11:18 am (UTC)I say that despite aspiring, in every bone of my being, to be one! Or do I mean because of aspiring, in every bone of my being, to be one? We're resentful people, we Westerners.
Re: Emigholz - Schindler's Häuser
Date: 2007-09-10 11:43 am (UTC)After Badongo failed to give me a download link after the upload process (two times even) and some other site made the browser crash in the process, I'll try to find another place to heave the movie to later this week.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 11:48 am (UTC)but i want to correct any misunderstandings that i resent artists. being an artist myself, i wouldn't want to deal in self-loathing too much. i only wanted to say that i don't find it very inspiring to define every human manoeuvre that seems the least bit remarkable as "art", which is something "the" art world seems to do excessively these days, ever babbling buergels documenta being a prime example. and of course, i'm especially prone to critical discourse in my own realm, which i should be, i think (but mind you, 90% of the time i'm raving about fellow artists, editing them into anthologies, curating them into exhibitions and buying their books in obscene amounts).
a completely different thing:
in your recent article about matriarchy, you compared yoko ono to linda eastman, to show that japanese women may be more dominant than western women. which, of course, doesn't say anything, because i could just name a bunch of western females having become famous without the help of their prominent husband, unlike yoko ono (not that yoko ono did anything wrong there). but, maybe even your example is completely false to begin with: look at linda eastman, not only joining her husband on tours - something many musicians would never allow! - but also on stage, to display her peculiar sonic contributions ... the only explanation for that can be that there was some serious matriarchy going on not only inside the mccartney house!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 11:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 11:54 am (UTC)Think of Nathan Barley, whose dislikeability, in the original Charlie Brooker strip, is all about him being a hipster funded by regular cheques from his parents, and therefore being incapable of failing. Someone even altered my Wikipedia profile a couple of months ago to say that I'm "Mummy funded" -- not true, and removed immediately, but the kind of thing anyone in the West has to confront as part of a life of cultural production.
I think Japan's horizontality (or rather its desire to hold back from resentment over the status differences that do exist) is extremely refreshing in this context, and when you put that together with the lack of a high art tradition, and the respect accorded to practical artisanal stuff... well, it's just great! It more than makes up for the lack of wealthy collectors and patrons in Japan. The "patrons" are people like the Amateur Revolution collective, the girls who shop at ABC Roppongi, the department stores, the corporations... In a sense, it's a totally petit bourgeois cultural scene, without either a proletariat or an aristocracy. I guess what you make of that depends on what you make of monoracial middle class solidarity. The downside is that it can be quite suburban, even at its most urban.
Re: Emigholz - Schindler's Häuser
Date: 2007-09-10 12:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 12:15 pm (UTC)I think that depends what we see this framing-as-art as. I probably mis-stated the process a bit in the piece -- for Sato to be shown in the Koenji gallery is not really "apotheosis as art". He hasn't changed his job; what he has got is acknowledgement for what he continues to do; make signs in stations.
As for the Ono-Eastman thing, Q. Crisp (I think) very wisely said that this sort of thing is very open to interpretation. Was Ono famous before she met Lennon? I think she was -- she met him at her one-woman show at London's trendiest gallery, Indica, for heaven's sake! She was a member of Fluxus.
And isn't saying that Eastman was "allowed" to join Wings equally open to interpretation? Playing backing music in hubby's band isn't exactly radical empowerment, is it? And although I have my Yoko Ono box set right beside me here, I'm not aware of there ever having been a Linda Eastman box set.
But I accept your point that you don't hate artists -- although you can be quite critical of many, I think maybe that's just the other side of your appreciation for a few!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 12:29 pm (UTC)that is another misconception, because i, in fact, appreciate quite many, and have been publicly critical only against a few. that reminds me of an exhibition i had many years ago, where i showed some fifteen pieces, and only one of them was explicitely sexual, but the whole show was considered by many to be "pornographic" because of those 7 % kinky material ...
and while my eastman-ono point was, of course, a bit of a joke, because i think ono did some great music, and linda eastman shouldn't be considered a musician for her own sake, still, yoko ono became, i think deservedly, enormously famous because of her relation to john lennon and of her reputation as beatles destroyer. otherwise, she would have just been mildly prominent in art circles. my parents know who yoko ono is, but even my mother, being quite interested in art, i'm shure never has heard of george maciunas.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 12:37 pm (UTC)only, i'm not shure about the japanese horizontality being always in place. for example, in manga production, the mangaka is the master, and his assistants recieve low payment and often not a lot of respect. i read an interview with one famous mangaka, who claimed that the background drawings his assistants would have, in his words, worked on for three days, he could always do better himself in "an hour or so" ... i think, a committed assistant can be compared to a mr. sato.
and maybe the lack of respect for designers in the west comes from more of them now wanting to be autheurs, which doesn't have to be discribed as something better, but something else, which most of them just are not. i studied graphic design, but never intended to work in that field, because what i do is something else, and i wouldn't find it fulfilling to just accomodate other people's contents. and you're right about the payment problems, too. so, being a poor, but relatively sovereing artist, or an exploited, hushed around designer in an agency isn't so much different anymore, wealth-wise.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 12:46 pm (UTC)i "hate" because i care! really, i think there's a lack of "critical culture" in arts today. artists tend to take everything so personal. even the professionals, the art critics, tend to be reluctant to really taking the minutiae of a piece of art into critical consideration, being afraid of saying something "uncool" to their "peer group". that's why it's so boring to talk to art theoreticians, because for too many of them it's mostly about the politics of their own career, and how to position themselves in the field.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 01:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 01:18 pm (UTC)That's a bit out of context, Kai -- controlling the household finances was just one element in quite a long list I drew up, a list that included shamanistic practises, consumerism, the employment market and the creation of the world!
You were trying to say that Eastman's inclusion in Wings was evidence of her -- no, forget it, you were making a joke!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 01:19 pm (UTC)Paul McCartney and John Lennon both lost their mothers at a young age. Both are documented as saying the women they lived with longest were like mothers to them. Yoko satisfying John's strange Oedipal thing and Paul having an earth mother from a wealthy family.
There may be no Linda box set but I think she helped Paul along with the dirty nursery rhyme phase of C Moon/Hi Hi Hi.
is a hipster still revolutionary?
Date: 2007-09-10 01:35 pm (UTC)Or is this the Warholian or even Fluxian joy in watching paint dry?
Didn't Yoko Ono name one of her works "You Are here"?
Some loaves of bread are works of art!
Craftsmen and their guilds were always seen as magical.
Plumbers and Boilermen certainly charge enough!
I love that curating the alchemical or alchemicising the curation, whatever.
Its what I come to imomus for.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 01:38 pm (UTC)The internet certainly helped in spreading all this. Even if people saw the tape themselves, they would not have put two and two together. I know you disagree that the Net will change Japan, but it may restore a certain balance to the locus of cultural creation/mediation.
Marxy
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 02:09 pm (UTC)By the way, doesn't the whole idea of "changing Japan" rely on the same identity-essentialism as the idea of "unchanging Japan"?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 02:13 pm (UTC)Joking aside, Japan has changed. You can argue the degree of continuity, but the change part is pretty obvious.
Marxy
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 02:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 07:22 pm (UTC)mmm, bread
Date: 2007-09-10 08:18 pm (UTC)<http://www.co-berlin.com/>
Re: mmm, bread
Date: 2007-09-10 09:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 09:06 pm (UTC)His typeset isn't particularly unique. It has a generic, gothic look to it like you see everywhere in Japan; in magazines, books, newspapers, etc. The overall style of his work is something you can achieve very quickly in photoshop. I knocked this up in about 3 minutes:
So considering the somewhat unremarkable look of his work, what's the appeal?
You have have an eccentric rail worker with a remarkable eye for precision. You also have the hype effect compounding his fame. A computer can knock up his work in 3 minutes, but nobody gives a shit. Computers dont have personalities behind them. All computers can create digital type, but not every person has the skill to create lettering with almost digital precision without any digital tools at all. That's what makes this guy's unremarkable work special and interesting.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 09:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 09:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 09:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 09:52 pm (UTC)Re: Emigholz - Schindler's Häuser
Date: 2007-09-10 09:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 10:01 pm (UTC)Gimme a break, I was just demonstrating how unremarkable gothic-esque fonts are in Japan. You see them everywhere in all different styles with all their individual traits and differences. So what makes this guy so special? It's the personality and methods.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 10:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 10:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 10:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 10:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-10 10:55 pm (UTC)cornelius is in there somewhere
Date: 2007-09-11 03:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-11 05:14 am (UTC)this might sound a bit vague but i'm inclined to think Superlegitimacy ultimately is an attribute applicable more to the form itself rather than people, jobs and processes.
interestingly the fact that it's been eleased first on you tube becomes a selling point for the DVD.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-11 09:59 am (UTC)She described it as "not very well made" and "Messy". To me, the lettering on that lantern looked really crisp and nice. Obviously, she notices all the tiny disproportions because she's grown up surrounded by Japanese typography, where as I haven't.
That said, I still think Sato's fame is more about his methods and personality than his actual work.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-18 12:18 pm (UTC)theres a pic of hikaru wasted. he is a friend of mine. tokyo hipsters are nothing like at all like western hipsters.... i like your blog.
anthony
from shiroto no ran...
Date: 2007-10-15 11:34 am (UTC)thanks for the article
but...
"ran" doesn't mean revolution, nor do we mean it that way..
I mean, I may not speak for everyone, we're a loose group, and we don't have an official translation, but if you look at anything we put out that has it written anywhere, it always says "amateur revolt" which is not only closer to the spirit of what we do, but is also a correct translation.
we are also not "a group of Koenji secondhand dealers"..
if you have a spare hour or two next time you're in tokyo drop me a line and I'll show you around
actually anothony's picture of hikaru above speaks volumes
hikaru is not a hipster
neonwondergirl
http://www.youtube.com/neonwondergirl