What are you wearing at Geisai 6?

[imomus]

Geisai 6, Tokyo's annual pay-to-display youth art fair, displayed founder and organiser Takashi Murakami's usual predilections: the abject, the otaku, the cute, the perverse, cosplay, Japanese historical themes... I found a lot of the art trashy and sugary, but maybe that was the point. And I wondered if Takashi's attempts to find an alternative to curation's filtration hadn't ended up by becoming a sort of 'curation by influence'. In the end I was somewhat longing for curators and filters to sift out the dross. Never have I missed the Yokohama Triennale so sorely -- the last one was in 2001, the next one, oddly enough, will be in 2005.

In the end, I had the most fun just people-watching. What is creative young Tokyo wearing? Follow the link to find out. And follow this one for a 10MB avi video panning the Geisai mayhem.

The best contemporary art to be seen in Tokyo just now is the fantastic, playful, inventive and exhaustive Answer with Yes and No, the Tsuyoshi Ozawa show at the Mori Art Museum atop the Roppongi Hills building. Ozawa is a contemporary of Takashi Murakami's, and while he may not have had his friend's commercial success, he seems to be moving forward, developing and inventing while Takashi commercialises, establishes and consolidates.

Comments

[iloverobots.livejournal.com]

oooh I like the big camera head. I think i already wear one of those though. shhheeesh.

[ex-ebb439.livejournal.com]

Have you heard of Design Festa? (http://www.designfesta.com/index.html) Giant Robot covered it in their most recent issue - looks like a neat thing to go to.

[saikoutron.livejournal.com]

That last picture reminded me of a game I used to play, maybe you've tried it?

http://www.kiteretsu.jp/on/grow3/index.html

the main idea if to take each artifact to its maximum level, the more artifacts you simultaneously maximize, the
higher the score.

[dzima.livejournal.com]

That was my impression of the first Geisai in 2001 too: i liked/didn't like it, it was interesting/uninteresting, boring/stimulating, too much/not enough... Maybe Takashi-san was/is playing with binaries, a subject you're so interested in!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That game is like an art piece Ozawa Tsuyoshi did in 2002, Korea Japan Art Football World Cup. He sent a football back and forth between various Korean and Japanese artists, and each one altered and added to it.

[klaus-nomi.livejournal.com]

[klasensjo.livejournal.com]

This would be the ideal spot for Captain Porno to make a grand entrance. http://roughtoyz.com/CaptainPorno/product_cappol.html

[vogdoid.livejournal.com]

Agh...just missed that show's opening by a week. Couldn't agree more about Murakami...can't help but feel he's wasting his talent.

Coincidentally, I was walking in Shimokita listening to "Cat from the Future" a few days before that photo was taken. A pleasant and relaxing neighborhood.