On the importance of having big balls
Dec. 18th, 2007 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusTwo inspiring things for you today. First of all, Berlin-based artist Tino Sehgal has his first solo show in New York just now, a piece called This Situation at Marian Goodman. The Village Voice describes how it works. As you enter the large, empty room, six "players" greet you in unison with the words "Welcome to this situation". They're normal people, standing, sitting or lying on the floor, distinguished only by coats they carry over their arms. "Each of the six," reports the Voice, "will then walk backward in a generally clockwise motion, find a new spot to occupy, freeze in a mannered pose, and wait for a fellow player to utter a previously memorized quotation, all of which begin with a date and anonymous author: “In 1693, somebody said: ‘Be dead to the world but diligent in all worldly business,’ ” or, “In 1670, somebody said: ‘True eloquence has no use for eloquence.’" The players then spend anywhere from a few minutes to upward of 30 discussing the introduced idea. The afternoon I was there, topics included labor theory, gender relations, the art of conversation, technology, and environmentalism. Occasionally, one of the players will turn to a visitor and ask directly, 'What do you think?'" (It sounds a bit like a live version of Click Opera, actually!)
So excited was I by this idea that, after reading about it, I went to bed and dreamt I'd flown to New York to see the show. I ran into Zach Feuer, who told me he'd pioneered shows like these years ago, when he'd exhibited a cloud of fertilizer chemicals in upstate New York. So successful had the cloud been, Zach said, that he'd had as many letters about it from farmers as art-lovers.
The other thing I've really been inspired by is the amazing, crazy 2005 film by Seijun Suzuki, Tanuki Goten or Princess Raccoon. It may well be the 84 year-old director's last film (he suffers from emphysema and doesn't feel up to making more), but it's probably the most energising and visually glorious film I've seen all year. It's basically a musical, a revival of a genre popular in the 1940s and 50s, the tanuki film. Here's a scene from Suzuki's version, a song-and-dance number called "Man is an Epidemic":
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The tanuki film tradition is perfect for Christmas -- it's like going to see a pantomime. There are frogs, fairies and princesses, sword fights, and above all lots of songs, in every style (there's even some Japanese hip hop in Suzuki's film). To show you what the genre used to look like, here's the wonderful torch singer Misora Hibari dressed up as a scarecrow in the 1958 tanuki film Shichihenge Tanukigoten.
The tankuki, or raccoon dog, is an important symbol in Japan -- as the 1991 Studio Ghibli animation Pompoko explains, tanukis are magical animals capable of transforming themselves into ghosts and other fabulous creatures. They've learned not just to use their own energy, but also to harness and amplify the energy of fire, electricity, levitation and other natural forces. They also have phenomenal testicles, the size of eight tatami mats (as anyone who's seen the statues of them outside Japanese drinking establishments can testify).
In his tanuki film, Suzuki uses a different kind of magic -- digital graphics -- to bring Misora Hibari back to life. She appears at the end of the film as Kwan Yin, singing a song, despite having died in 1989.
I think what Sehgal and Suzuki both embody is the idea that anything is possible if you give yourself enough license. Or, as The Guardian put it in their interview with the elderly director, "Suzuki puts anything he likes into his crazy little world, be it a femme fatale who lives among dead butterflies or a protagonist with a fetish for the smell of freshly boiled rice, or some ingenious assassination techniques - one victim is shot through the plughole of his sink... "
Such idiosyncracy comes with a commercial price, though: "The qualities for which he is celebrated by today's postmodern cultural magpies are the very ones that cost him half his career." Suzuki, you see, was blacklisted by the Japanese studios for more than ten years ("Your films make no sense!") but saw his fortunes revive partly thanks to being championed by Quentin Tarantino, who, in the 90s, loved and copied Suzuki's energetic, stylish 60s yakuza movies like "Tokyo Drifter".
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The Tarantino endorsement produced a questionable tribute-to-the-tribute, 2001's too-Tarantinesque Pistol Opera. But, with Tanuki Goten, Suzuki has become a sort of King Lear of directors, outliving his enemies, outgrowing his fascination for gore, and reveling in his capacity to say -- and film -- anything. In the winter of his years, tanuki-like, he's grown eight-tatami balls.
So excited was I by this idea that, after reading about it, I went to bed and dreamt I'd flown to New York to see the show. I ran into Zach Feuer, who told me he'd pioneered shows like these years ago, when he'd exhibited a cloud of fertilizer chemicals in upstate New York. So successful had the cloud been, Zach said, that he'd had as many letters about it from farmers as art-lovers.
The other thing I've really been inspired by is the amazing, crazy 2005 film by Seijun Suzuki, Tanuki Goten or Princess Raccoon. It may well be the 84 year-old director's last film (he suffers from emphysema and doesn't feel up to making more), but it's probably the most energising and visually glorious film I've seen all year. It's basically a musical, a revival of a genre popular in the 1940s and 50s, the tanuki film. Here's a scene from Suzuki's version, a song-and-dance number called "Man is an Epidemic":
[Error: unknown template video]
The tanuki film tradition is perfect for Christmas -- it's like going to see a pantomime. There are frogs, fairies and princesses, sword fights, and above all lots of songs, in every style (there's even some Japanese hip hop in Suzuki's film). To show you what the genre used to look like, here's the wonderful torch singer Misora Hibari dressed up as a scarecrow in the 1958 tanuki film Shichihenge Tanukigoten.
The tankuki, or raccoon dog, is an important symbol in Japan -- as the 1991 Studio Ghibli animation Pompoko explains, tanukis are magical animals capable of transforming themselves into ghosts and other fabulous creatures. They've learned not just to use their own energy, but also to harness and amplify the energy of fire, electricity, levitation and other natural forces. They also have phenomenal testicles, the size of eight tatami mats (as anyone who's seen the statues of them outside Japanese drinking establishments can testify).
In his tanuki film, Suzuki uses a different kind of magic -- digital graphics -- to bring Misora Hibari back to life. She appears at the end of the film as Kwan Yin, singing a song, despite having died in 1989.
I think what Sehgal and Suzuki both embody is the idea that anything is possible if you give yourself enough license. Or, as The Guardian put it in their interview with the elderly director, "Suzuki puts anything he likes into his crazy little world, be it a femme fatale who lives among dead butterflies or a protagonist with a fetish for the smell of freshly boiled rice, or some ingenious assassination techniques - one victim is shot through the plughole of his sink... "Such idiosyncracy comes with a commercial price, though: "The qualities for which he is celebrated by today's postmodern cultural magpies are the very ones that cost him half his career." Suzuki, you see, was blacklisted by the Japanese studios for more than ten years ("Your films make no sense!") but saw his fortunes revive partly thanks to being championed by Quentin Tarantino, who, in the 90s, loved and copied Suzuki's energetic, stylish 60s yakuza movies like "Tokyo Drifter".
[Error: unknown template video]
The Tarantino endorsement produced a questionable tribute-to-the-tribute, 2001's too-Tarantinesque Pistol Opera. But, with Tanuki Goten, Suzuki has become a sort of King Lear of directors, outliving his enemies, outgrowing his fascination for gore, and reveling in his capacity to say -- and film -- anything. In the winter of his years, tanuki-like, he's grown eight-tatami balls.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-18 12:29 pm (UTC)Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 12:42 pm (UTC)( ･∀･)ﾉあなぶきんﾁｬｧｧｧｧｧｧｧｧﾝ!
I've been meaning to watch Branded to kill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branded_to_Kill) for ages now.
I really liked that clip of Hibari. Did you notice she had a henohenomoheji (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henohenomoheji) drawn on her face?
Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 12:46 pm (UTC)Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 01:02 pm (UTC)Near the end of the song she makes the pun "ふくらむふくらむ" (which is a Japanese saying meaning "Be positive!" literally "expand/swell/inflate") and obviously that's when we see the Tanuki, waving about his giant, swelling testicles. They're trying to associate the attributes of the tanuki with their business.
Can you imagine a little girl being presented with giant testicles waved in her face anywhere other than Japan?
Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 01:30 pm (UTC)Take the London Evening Standard's review (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/artexhibition-20634236-details/Tino+Seghal/artexhibitionReview.do?reviewId=23384000) of today's other subject, Tino Sehgal. The reviewer goes to see a Sehgal piece at the ICA featuring childen as guides. The general attitude towards children isn't too positive:
"Confronted with all these exuberant children, I, too, can be found hugging a wall. But then I am forced to 'interact' when two little girls come up to me."
What's more, although sexuality is absent from Sehgal's piece, it's present in this reviewer's mind:
"one kind of gets where Sehgal may be coming from - where else, after all, are children actively encouraged to talk to adult strangers?"
We've sexualised children, and as a result see both them and their sexualisation as a horror best avoided.
Or am I just reading sex into that last quote? (I am British myself, after all.) Is it just a general sense of menace and danger, fear of the other, that comes through? Children shouldn't talk to strangers, that's common sense.
This, of course, is the same review that ends with a disparaging remark about art that pushes boundaries. It really is Britain in a nutshell, that review. You could base a whole Chris Morris special on it.
Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 01:40 pm (UTC)Not a British TV commercial, yesterday.
Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 03:11 pm (UTC)Recently a video game was released for the Nintendo DS called Doki Doki Mojo Shinpan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doki_Doki_Majo_Shinpan!) which is a borderline H game featuring young girls where you have to poke them (in various places...) to find out if they're witches. It's a completely official Nintendo game and It's now gone on to become the best selling pre-order DS game in Japan.
As for the reactions its been getting in the west, to quote Wikipedia:
"The import review of the game in the UK publication NGamer (like its predecessor NGC Magazine, famous for comical reviews of particularly bad games), felt so disturbed by the game that they abandoned their normal percentage scoring system and awarded it a 'score' of simply "NO" in every category".
My favourite thing about this pedo game however, is the Official English website:
If you didn't laugh you have no soul.
There's also Enjo Kousai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enjo_kōsai) which, whilst not strictly child prostitution, enables young girls to sell themselves sexually for money. There would be moral outcry of the highest order if shit like this ever happened Britain.
I also think that Japan as a society has a different relationship with nudity. Nudity can of course still evoke sexual feelings, but it's something a lot of Japanese people associate with cleansing and bathing, which is done as a group in onsens or at home. It's not uncommon for family members to bath together.
Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 03:50 pm (UTC)The film Harmful Insect (http://pinku-uploads.livejournal.com/33500.html) has a plot we can't really imagine coming out of the UK:
"Sachiko, a 12-year-old girl in junior high school, has a complicated life. When she was still an infant, her father disappeared. Her mother, who works in a bar, is secretive and distant. Longing for an escape from her dreary existence and lacking any kind of parental guidance, Sachiko has a short-lived affair with her sixth-grade teacher, Ogata. But fearing that his indiscretion might be discovered, Ogata moves to a town far away. Although he and Sachiko continue a written correspondence, soon the absence of her only real friend and confidant leads Sachiko into a deep melancholy. When her mother attempts to commit suicide, the turbulence of Sachiko's life becomes too much to bear. After dropping out of school, she finds temporary solace in the company of others who have fallen through the cracks of middle-class society. But when she is forced back into the confines of her classroom, her long-dormant rage begins to surface and her life quickly spins out of control."
coming out of the UK:
Date: 2007-12-18 04:11 pm (UTC)Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 07:03 pm (UTC)Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-21 09:08 am (UTC)Whoa, whoa. Do you somehow think there wasn't a huge moral outcry in Japan? EnjoKosai led to serious post-Bubble moral panic: the end of Japanese society, etc.
You can also point to bikini clad girls on the cover of comics that are targeted to young boys as proof of whatever you are trying to prove, but also note that the PTA and women's groups are always fighting against this. (http://blog.livedoor.jp/dqnplus/archives/1069874.html) Imagine if you seriously discounted the opinions of women in a society, and yeah, there'd probably be more openness towards men lusting after very young girls. Not saying that patriarchy is the sole engine Japanese sexual morality, but I wouldn't assume that Japan lacks the ideology of the ruling parties like in other countries. If you look at the groups who do protest against these things, they are all made up of women - who are not exactly racking up political power in Japan.
Marxy
Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-22 08:53 am (UTC)I'm well aware that in Japan enjokosai has a sleazy reputation that leaves a bad taste in a lot of Japanese people's mouthes, not just because of the unspoken sexual undertones of the whole situation but as an embodiment of the power consumerism and materialism has over some of Japan's youth.
What I am trying to point out is that enjokosai still goes on there regardless, and that in Britain nothing like enjokosai would ever ever be tolerated. Child prositution is the deepest of underground in the United Kingdom. Anything remotely related to children, sex and paedophiles sends the tabloids into a frenzy, and they create a perpetual spiral of hysteria. They wouldnt be happy until laws were passed banning that sort of thing.
The businesses would be targeted by vigilantes. It would not be tolerated.
in Japan, child prosititution can be thinly veiled as "enjokosai" where they insist that sex doesnt happen but everyone knows it does but they can't prove it, so no laws are passed against it.
Thats the difference between the UK and Japan in this matter. In Japan, they shake their heads and cry a tear of pity for the 15 year old girl willing to sell herself sexually in secret for a new phone. In Britain, they'd kick the door down, grab the girl by the arm and demand the government act immediately for the safety of our children, regardless of the fact sex isnt on the official agenda.
Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 03:27 pm (UTC)Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 03:46 pm (UTC)Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 04:10 pm (UTC)"But as an act of 'subversion' surely it's all a bit lame. Certainly, the typical ICA crowd this will attract are just too art savvy to think this a genuinely thought-provoking piece. For where once the pushing of boundaries in art gave the ICA its purpose, that very concept now appears extremely tired."
The implication here is that the point of "subversion" is to subvert the presuppositions of the radical audience consuming the subversive work. That's an absurdity -- it would mean that the more progressive your audience, the more you'd have to "shock" them with tame, lame, conservative fare.
Clearly, subversive work needs to subvert the wider values of the society, values which are quite different from those of the small audiences such work typically attracts. The art and the audience of a progressive institution should together be pushing at the wider society's boundaries, not smashing their own.
In other words, the ICA and its audience would subvert the values of the Evening Standard and its readers, rather than undermining its own values from within. It would be a self-castrating group of cultural progressives indeed who did that -- who subverted their own subversion in an endlessly-inward spiral of self-hatred. I don't say it doesn't happen, but it isn't "subversive".
Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 04:30 pm (UTC)You seem to have a bit of a blindspot when it comes to art. You can see that "rebellious individualism" in rock is a conformist pose these days, but you can't see "pushing the boundaries" in art has gone much the same way.
Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 04:36 pm (UTC)Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 04:56 pm (UTC)It's called Maoism.
No, your argument doesn't work. People who go to art galleries in London are not some core radical élite, they're people who read the review sections of The Guardian or The Independent or even The Telegraph. They're not the avant-garde, they're the broad mass of urban middle class people, for whom gallery-going is more likely to be one more entertainnment option rather than a radical experience. And the kind of art that gets into the galleries largely - often to a caricatural degree - meets these expectations. And any simplistic discourse about 'pushing the boundaries' is just added titillation. I'm not saying there isn't any great art out there, I'm just saying this is the way it is for 95 percent of the art 'industry'. It was probably ever thus.
Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 05:22 pm (UTC)Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 05:24 pm (UTC)Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 05:24 pm (UTC)Now, not every ICA show "pushes boundaries" of public taste, decency, tolerance. It doesn't purely exist to epater les bourgeois. But that's the battlefiend the tabloids, and semi-tabloids like the Standard (for whom I, for instance, am "uncomfortably close to insane" (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/music/review-23380595-details/Mad+Momus+is+an+inspiration+/review.do?reviewId=23380595)) understand. And in this review, it's The Standard which raises (in scare quotes, NB) the idea that Sehgal is being subversive. They then say he's failed because he hasn't challenged the ICA audience (who do not overlap in any significant way with the Standard audience, though you keep trying to drag in other papers they might overlap with).
Just consider the messages flashing through this conclusion:
"the typical ICA crowd this will attract are just too art savvy to think this a genuinely thought-provoking piece. For where once the pushing of boundaries in art gave the ICA its purpose, that very concept now appears extremely tired."
Okay, the Standard does think there's a progressive "ICA art crowd" -- it calls them "savvy". They, however, won't be "thought-provoked" by Sehgal's very original installation because they've thought of everything already. (Highly questionable, but anyway.) If this were so, you might think the Standard would find Sehgal "reaching his challenge out" to other groups -- for instance, readers of the Standard who might not have thought every possible thought, even the content of a Tino Sehgal installation, in advance.
But not a bit of it. Although they grudgingly "get where [Sehgal] may be coming from", the paper wants it to be a failed provocation staged in an institution which has outlived its remit to shock and challenge. There's even, I'd say, a veiled threat to the ICA in that ending -- the Standard thinks the ICA no longer has a purpose, since its purpose was to challenge, but that purpose is now "tired". That's just one small step away from saying the ICA should stop receiving public funding. And all this is based on the completely silly premise that to subvert should mean to subvert subversion. It at once gives a progressive institution one reason to exist -- its progressiveness -- then says that progress can only consist in self-questioning, and that the whole idea is tired.
Why are you defending them? Don't you think the paper should question itself rather than the ICA? What happens in a world where the Standard (with its self-confessed dislike of children, its boredom with art) wins and the ICA loses?
For the record, I actually think Sehgal's piece at the ICA was more subversive than, say, Chapmanworld. Chapmanworld played into the UK tabloids' view that children = filthy sex. Sehgal's piece routed around it entirely. It avoided the "self-sacrificial pervert" syndrome the UK tries to force its artists into (cf Genesis P Orridge getting hounded out of the country via accusations of Satanic abuse). It was original rather than subversive. The "failed subversiveness" line the Standard tried to pedal was simply a newspaper reductionism originating, I think, from a sad and cynical and conservative form of defensiveness -- a defensiveness anchored, perhaps, in frustration that there wasn't some more tabloid-friendly sort of scandal going on (abuse of the children, perhaps).
Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 05:26 pm (UTC)Ha ha, that's funny! Do you know the Evening Standard's motto? "Everyone needs standards"! And, for once, they're right. There is no society on earth "with no standards or fundamentals".
Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 06:55 pm (UTC)what struck me as tragic first time i saw this exhibition mentioned here is the seeming impossibility to generate a critical, political, intelligent discussion on the content and possible meaning(s) of that exhibition.
if we're talking of a dislike of children then it can surely be read on both sides .
chlidren as neutralized other made to look friendly (a la colonialist tourists talking photos with 'friendly' and 'intelligent' natives
or as a stand-in for the yuppie (whatever the new word for that old concept may be) kidult self ?? where does the proverbial single mother in the council flats (yes they still exist) stand in regards to the current hegemony of the childless couple etc etc ???
Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 01:46 pm (UTC)It's not just the testicles which are swelling. The lyrics of the song say that the dream is getting bigger, expectations are getting bigger, and her breasts are getting bigger too.
Re: Did someone say Tanuki?
Date: 2007-12-18 05:06 pm (UTC)"胸のふくらむ"/"The chest expanding" is a Japanese idiom meaning "to be positive" (imagine someone puffing out their chest in pride) which is why the word "fukuramu" has positive connotations, and why they also say "夢のふくらむ" etc.
If you were to write fukuramufukuramu next to a picture of someone puffing out their chest, you'd be implying they were in being positive. "fukuramufukuramu" isnt a saying as such (I thought it was until someone corrected me), it just has connotations of positivity.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-18 01:54 pm (UTC)I love how Suzuki describes his time as a studio director at Nikkatsu- the studio would give him fairly generic b-movie scripts to work with and he would try to make the scripts into films that he thought audiences would 'enjoy' - and that it was just that his idea of enjoyment in film was very different from the studio. He always seems a little baffled by the admiration coming from western art-house audiences.
Whilst we're on the subject of films, just thought I'd recommend the films of the Thai film maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (or 'Joe' to american critics who can't pronounce his name). I haven't been this excited by a contemporary film maker for a while.. 'Blissfully Yours', 'Tropical Malady', 'Syndromes and a Century' try any of these films. I think Bunnio would like his films too.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-18 02:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-18 02:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-18 04:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-18 08:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-18 08:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-18 03:45 pm (UTC)I've been meaning to catch Suzuki's prostitutes vs. pimps movie Gate of Flesh since we watched Tokyo Drifter in film class. Now I find it's on DVD, so thanks for that too.
On the importance of little girls having a... sword
Date: 2007-12-18 05:38 pm (UTC)It would be interesting to see what a Japanese anime film maker could do with In the Realms...
pistol opera
Date: 2007-12-18 03:59 pm (UTC)if anything it's a tribute to his own excellent zigeunerweisen era films (mashed up with his early stuff). it is perhaps too ambitious a film and , like wim wenders' until the end of the world collapses under its own weight yet i'd say it's exactly that failure which makes it more interesting than a lot of stuff that just works.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-18 10:46 pm (UTC)Just watched Survive Style 5+ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0430651/), which I'd guess you'd probably like. I liked it, mostly.
Also, have you seen Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169222/) (I forget-- I'm pretty sure you mentioned it before)? It strikes me as being heavily influenced by Tarantino, but still very much its own thing-- very Japanese.
Now I'll have to look out for Pistol Opera, too.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-19 03:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-19 06:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-19 07:40 am (UTC)Tarantino Is DEAD & the titanium sniffers should be!
Date: 2007-12-20 12:10 am (UTC)Why are you so scared of the TRUTH? (http://youtube.com/watch?v=CDfAMyyXv2E)
Are you Sweats Albano after all?
Date: 2007-12-20 06:38 pm (UTC)performer, writer and painter.
She said something once that is very apt
to you and your seemingly worsening obsession with her.
ref:"Karma" doesn't mean we get sick as punishment.
"Karma" means when you jump off a chair or table you move towards the floor, not towards the ceiling.
My prescription: Try making sense sometime. Reality isn't fucking you over.
It's all inside you, connect with yourself and stop being so judgeMENTAL about how she puts herself OUT THeRe!
Search out her links on youtube by yourself and stop "sharing" your feelings about her publicly, IT'S CREEPY.
Re: Are you Sweats Albano after all?
Date: 2007-12-20 06:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-25 10:31 am (UTC)