Pottery on videotape

[imomus]

Today's entry is a video installation containing pottery, music, voices, hands, time, shapes, calmness and the texture of ancient video tape.

Below you'll find two clips from the legendary out-of-print VHS tape Shoji Hamada: A Potter's Way and Work. Please start them at the same time and let them play together on your screen. Admire the shapes and motions of the pots, and how they relate to each other. Pay special attention to the burn-out, blur and grain of the antique video tape, and any imperfections in the playback as the videos stream off YouTube's servers. These "errors" should become part of the beauty of the installation. Let the music from the two clips mingle randomly to create a third music, in somewhat the same way that Hamada's collaborations with British potter Bernard Leach created a British-Japanese pottery fusing both, then creating a third. Here are the clips:

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Shoji Hamada was a Japanese potter who travelled with Bernard Leach to England in 1920. He spent three years in St Ives, then returned to Japan where he contributed to the mingei folk art movement, celebrating the hand-crafted art of ordinary people. In 1955, the Japanese government designated him a Living National Treasure. Here's a colour slideshow of Hamada at work, and Hamada's works, and here's one called Art of the Potter. My Click Opera piece about Bernard Leach is called Good pots have errors. Hamada died in 1978, just three years after the invention of VHS.

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Note to self: this section of the Wikipedia page about mingei (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mingei), entitled Criticisms of Mingei Theory and Orientalism, touches on the oriental self-orientalisation you note in your text The Japanese are almost Japanese (http://imomus.livejournal.com/82872.html):

"In recent decades, scholars such as Yuko Kikuchi and Brain Moeran have uncovered power relations and ultra-nationalism that lie at the core of the formation of mingei theory. In 1927, Yanagi put forward the “criterion of beauty in Japan” (日本における美の標準 (nihon ni okeru bi no hyōjun?)) in The Way of Crafts (工芸の道 (kōgei no michi?)). During the years of rising militarism in Japan, Yanagi Sōetsu extended his application of the “criterion of beauty” to the crafts of the Okinawans and the Ainu in the Japanese peripheries, and to those of the colonies including Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria. These scholars argue that mingei theory, far from being an Oriental theory, is a “hybridization” and “appropriation” of Occidental ideas such as that of William Morris (1834-1896) which Bernard Leach (1887-1979) introduced when he lived and worked in Japan from 1909 - 1920.[1] Whereas Leach helped Japanese artists to rediscover their Oriental cultural origins in Occidental eyes, Japan applied Orientalism to its own art and projected the same Orientalism to the art of other Far Eastern countries such as Korea. Yuko Kikuchi terms this phenomenon “Oriental Orientalism”."

It does raise the question, though, of whether Western academics can object to self-orientalisation by orientals in quite the same way they're able to object to fellow Western academics orientalising orientals. At a certain point such arguments become both rockist (there's nothing unreal or dubious about a self-consciousness "artificially" induced by travel, or a self-orientalisation stimulated by the orientalism of others) and racist (who are we to tell a culture it can't become its own ideal?).

[sm255.livejournal.com]

I loved how the two music tracks came together.

[(Anonymous)]

Do you how cool this looks? He seems like a dj, cutting beats on cue of clay.

Alex P.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That's a nice metaphor! Except that it implies that pottery is uncool and DJing is cool, and in my view it's exactly the other way around. A DJ who spins "like a potter throwing clay on a wheel" is getting cooler and more interesting. A potter who spins "like a DJ" isn't.

[sarmoung.livejournal.com]

Note to travellers: An oft-overlooked drinking spot in the city of Osaka is the Leach Bar (http://www.rihga.co.jp/osaka/restaurant/restaurant/leachbar/index.html) at the Rihga Royal Hotel, hiding out amidst the beguiling Showa-retro excess of the rest of the establishment. Leach designed this in the 60's and it's been untouched since. Drinks are at suitably mingei-level prices, but you can still light your pipe without being ejected outside by the landlord. Just don't wear brown, or you'll disappear into the walls.



Your note begs the question whether we consider Yuko Kikuchi (http://www.chelsea.arts.ac.uk/17227.htm) to be a Western academic and the similarly rockist/racist question of the authenticity of Japanese academics working in non-Japanese universities. If Yanagi's self-orientalisation is dubious, as Kikuchi is suggesting, it is in part because he claimed that it was all his own work, rather than something directly stimulated by British Arts and Crafts and his contact with Leach et al. It's a historical question of intellectual provenance as much as the wider questions of Japan's relations to its peripheries and colonial acquisitions of the time.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Are you mixing up Yanagi and potter Hamada?

It seems to me that Hamada was very much into the mingei aesthetic of celebrating the uncredited, the faceless, the ordinary, the anonymous, the non-designer designers. But of course we quickly run up against "the Cage paradox" -- that when Cage puts his name to sounds which belong to no-one, in a sense he makes them his own property.

Your point raises the interesting question of how far attribution needs to go, or intellectual property claims can reach. Identity is formed not just by identification, but by differentiation; by what we decide we (or our creations) are not. Does Hamada really need to "pay" money or respect to the things his pottery tradition is not? In some kind of attribution-crazy parallel universe, Karl Rove is forever paying royalties to the 1960s counterculture because reacting against it gave him his core agenda. If Disney can extend copyright 20 years, I don't see why we can't extend it to cover negative influences too, or payments to "the other" for helping us realise our own otherness.

Alternatively, we could just forget about attributions and payments and work on the assumption that everything is connected to everything else in a big flow of influence.

[heartbeeps.livejournal.com]

Hey Nick,

I thought you might have a chuckle at these McGee twitter updates, if you haven't seen them already!

http://twitter.com/alanjmcgee/status/1242894383
http://twitter.com/alanjmcgee/status/1242910190

I particularly love the lack of punctuation. It must be a working class thing.

[(Anonymous)]

Yep, those working class people and their stupid punctuation.

Re: Alan McGee's Twitter userpic

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

+10 Youth-cred points

[(Anonymous)]

Yes you focus on the punctuation to avoid any other truths that could be gleamed from the message. It's called avoidance you numbskull.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Aw, sweet! Sunday Times Rich List types who spend Christmas in the Maldives calling people who don't "complete middle class dicks"!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Not sure why he's frothing so much right now -- I can only imagine he's just found out that I'm filming an interview for a major Creation Records documentary on May 1st, and imagines that I'm going to talk about how he's become a rich bastard and sold out, so he's started a campaign to undermine me in advance.

In fact I'll probably say perfectly nice things about him, unless he continues issuing these silly twitters.

[(Anonymous)]

My money is on Mcgee in the boxing ring. Sorry Nick.

[endoftheseason.livejournal.com]

Please to elaborate on all this Momus-vs.-McGee business, its origins and so forth.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Living National Treasures aren't permitted to box.

pubs

[pay-option07.livejournal.com]

I can see why you desire to spend your twilight years here!

http://www.asiarooms.com/travel-guide/japan/osaka/things-to-do-in-osaka/nightlife-in-osaka/bars-&-pubs-in-osaka/index.html

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"Not sure why he's frothing so much right now"

Really? (http://imomus.livejournal.com/424170.html)

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Momus implied that Alan was uncultured, "glum, evasive and insecure", illiterate and struggling to hide his baldness. and that Alan's friends were uglier than his.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

>>Western academics can object to self-orientalisation by orientals in quite the same way they're able to object to fellow Western academics orientalising orientals

i don't think it's a matter of that, rather , just as at the beginning of the 20th Century it was cool as an academic to boost your nation's grand stories, it's cool, or mandatory, now to question them (or at least it was in the 80s and 90s,, still dragging on though). if yuko kikuchi might not seem japanese enough because she writes in the anglo-sphere, there are plenty of academics doing the same here, as they are everywhere.

[endoftheseason.livejournal.com]

I see.

Oh that little Alan, so touchy . . . .

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Alan responded to that LJ entry by retaliating on Twitter. McGee is set to defriend Momus from his facebook account any day now. (http://encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/Internet_drama)

[endoftheseason.livejournal.com]

Perhaps these scrabbling youngsters ought to have a look at this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/24/social-networking-site-changing-childrens-brains

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure the Queen of Internet Drama (http://encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/Internet_drama) on that page released several solo albums on Creation.

[(Anonymous)]

Have to agree with Kuma there. Whether you think he's right to take offence or not, you can't really claim not to know why he doesn't care for you right now when you've already noted that he "unfriended" you after you last comments about him.

Alan has lost it

[(Anonymous)]

i used to love alan and everything that came from him and his label, but he's fu*kin lost it. when he nearly died, i thought he had found god. obviously not, he's out chumming it with freakin has beens all over the farcebook and wiispace's of this world. he just gets up my nose, why is he parading as this indie marty, dj'ing for chrissake and fondling for nubile attention all the time. everything from his stupid pork pie hat to his blog ramblings and his lack of punctuation and his penchant for proclaiming certain bands the next gorbalsvegas make me sit in the corner and want to cry. oh dear alan, stop messing around and do us all a favour and f'ck off.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

No, but that was all months ago. Why now?

He's either pissed off about me being in the Creation documentary, or about Gordon Brown nationalising the banks (one of the twitters compares me to the PM).

[(Anonymous)]

Why doesn’t McGee write this well for the Guardian? (Or is it the Morning Star?)

[(Anonymous)]

All the evidence suggests that someone else writes his columns, but McGee writes all the venomous comments under them.

[(Anonymous)]

Seriously, I'd love to see a regular Comment Is Free column by him entitled "C'mon ya cunts I'll take yees all on" in which he lays into every major indie rock star: the Klaxons look like "wee'uns roughed up a swimming pool peedo at Butlins" and Bobby Gillepsie has a face like a "graverobber pulling a deed auld ladies teeth oot".

[(Anonymous)]

I know little about Alan McGee and care even less, but regarding to the post Kuma linked to, surely he's rightfully pissed off at Momus. If a "friend" of mine wrote such a vindictive character assasination - all couched in the most charming, polite, public school educated veneer - I too would be mightily pissed off. There's something a touch autistic about Momus in that obviously can't see it that way.

Mr McGreeable

[imomus.livejournal.com]

"I see Oasis, the group I signed to my label in 1994, have a new album out. F·‚·ª# me, you ´·‹ˆ‹ˆ´‚‹ˆÎ‚ˆ‹Î‚Ø c£¨ª£¨ª¨£ª t£∆ø˚∂ø∆ås!...." [Turn to column 3, page 196]

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

Reading McGee's posts on Twitter, he's clearly lost the fucking plot. He's sending messages left, right and centre to celebrity Twitter accounts, telling Jonathon Ross to piss off one minute then messaging Brian Eno about Chrissie Hynde the next, then he's back to insulting people saying Jo Whiley should retire...

[(Anonymous)]

Hey momus you're from Scotland but you speak like a proper English royal!

What gives!

Tha gaol agam ort!!!!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

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[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

Great entry, apart from one tiny detail: the cassettes in that picture of the stack aren't VHS. They're sony Video8 camcorder tapes dating from the late 1980s....;-)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

So they are! That droop on the snub nose of the tape cover gives it away.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that Eno twittered, thanks to his feed (http://twitter.com/Brian_Eno) I'm watching this interesting documentary (http://www.artspace.it/flv/brian%20eno.swf) about his work.

[funazushi.livejournal.com]

You could also be talking about Kawai Kanjiro, a contemporary of Hamada in the mingei movement. Who celebrated the uncredited by not signing his own pottery, nor accepting Living National Treasure designation.

I visited his house when I was last in Kyoto. It is worth putting on your itinerary the next time you visit.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ah, interesting! And refreshingly on-topic!

The Cage Paradox isn't as easily solved as not signing your work or refusing honours, though. Because here we are saying Kawai's name, adding that he didn't sign his work, and that he refused Living National Treasure status. And this all adds to his legend, makes him seem more pure and authentic than those who did sign, and did accept state honours. It reminds me of the theme in T.S. Eliot's verse play Murder in the Cathedral, where Thomas Becket is being tempted by various devils, and the worst is the one who urges him to sacrifice himself and become a martyr and a saint, and Becket says it's "treason / To do the right deed for the wrong reason".

An excess of virtue, if it leads to spiritual pride, can be a vice. An excess of selflessness can be selfish, or can look that way.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I guess I've always been a sucker for that pure authenticity schtick.

Interestingly I found one of his vases on offer at a UK auction with an interesting description.

"A stoneware bottle vase with a beautiful ash chun glaze and iron poured glaze decor. The pot has an ageless, noble beauty, characteristic of 'mingei'. Kawai was a co-founder of the 'mingei' movement, which embraced an holistic process to pot making and aimed at achieving beauty borne of unselfconscious humility.
Height: 25.3 cm
Provenance: Purchased from Beaux-Arts Gallery, 1929. Copy of original receipt provided.
£6,000."

I'm not sure how you aim to achieve beauty borne of unselfconscious humility? If you are aiming to achieve it, how is it unselfconscious?

[funazushi.livejournal.com]

This is me

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes. I'm actually looking at photos of Leonard Cohen at his Mount Baldy retreat (http://images.google.com/images?ndsp=21&um=1&hl=en&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&q=leonard+cohen+mount+baldy&start=63&sa=N) right now, and they're very interesting, full of the simple austerity of that modest place. And yet to be photographed there is to turn Mount Baldy into a "theatre of austerity". I can't quite get that out of my mind. It's not that the austerity is staged, but that it's both real austerity and the theatre of austerity at the same time.

I guess it's the same thing that cropped up every time I did one of my Post-Materialist columns for the New York Times. It was both anti-consumerist and consumerist at the same time.

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't really see the point in Twitter -- til a friend suggested that twittering is "ambient blogging".
The use of a word from bioacoustical word to describe an online practice ... Eno in on the act ... perhaps it comes together.
(None of which explains Mr McGee.)
- Ross

[(Anonymous)]

Is it really Eno, though? Sounds a bit fake to me.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

True, the idea that Eno would speak in the gnomic, clipped phrases of Oblique Strategies every day does seem pretty fishy. It's obviously a fan feed.

[altarpiece.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

What a wonderful entry, thank you!

When I first started playing the videos, I didn't realize that internet radio had been on in the background, so for the first minute or so I listened to a well-choreographed third music layer. (The following song didn't work, and unfortunately I don't know what the first song was, but it sounded a bit "classic rock.")