Art is so long
06.19.05 (7:02 pm) [edit]The above is a catalogue of the exhibition of question. Let me quote from the magazine Interview that's got coveniently a good and articulate description of the show.
"Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture" is the third installment in the "Superflat" trilogy curated by Japan's current art superstar Takashi Murakami. Hosted by New York City's Japan Society and running through July 24, the show explores Japan's obsessive Otaku (geek) subculture and its extreme fixation with things horrific (radioactive monsters, atomic apocalypse), huggable (Hello Kitty), or somewhere in between (lollicom "Lolita Complex" figurines). In addtion toa number of works by contemporary Japanese artists like Yoshitoomo Nara and Cinatsu Ban, the show features an exhaustive array of pop culture artifacts---toys, manga, anime, and films that address Japan's postwar state of mind. (...)
I took it out of the intro of the co-interview of Murakami and Yoko Ono on the eve of the exhibition in NYC. Anybody interested should go get the June issue of the magazine.
The first thing that came over to me after the show was certain inability to verbalize some disappointment. It was completely all right to be caught by surprise for anything, resentment, disturbance...etc. However, I had this very mixed feelings when I was going through each item in the show, from animations, cartoons to sculptures and stuffed animals. All the things I saw were either boring, sickening, shallow or impenetrable. Honestly, there did not seem any criticism or any firm stand; to say the least of simple joy to appreciate when I usually experience to encounter any art work.
The theme Murakami has set seems to be so accurate and ambitious that I almost correct my presumption on this artist or (I would rather call him) the art critic. Among all the agendas he raises in his statement in the beginning of the whole show, he keenly points out how low people in Japan have to keep their profiles or how desperate they have to avoid conflict with others, to the extent of impossible. To summerize all of the characteristics that go back to the trauma of war, he employs the terminology "super flat" that dominates the total mind set of Japanese postwar culture. I am not quite sure if the word 'flat' is correctly defined in his idea (Murakami uses 'flat' as meaning oppressed state of mind in the society as well as to describe two dimensional visual logic), but can't agree more with his articulate point.
However, the whole artworks Murakami collected for the show pretty often sidetracks or succumbs to pointlessness. Imagine that I am standing jaw dropped in front of a video screen that plays 'Yurui (loose) characters' show', which would resist all the translational attemps but let me try; say, all the second class characters from off the center of Japan as opposed to the main stream and renowned character such as Hello Kitty that anybody knows? Yet, it is too much to ask regular audiences to see this and still intrigued or appreciate instead of being perplexed. There were too many works just as this, which did overly nonsense and appears to be pointless to consist any sequence of logic to support the theme the curator sets in the beginning.
(One of the things I hate most in my life is translation. I have led a life that is divided into languages I command depending upon each occasion and people I deal with, I am not used to translating process, which consumes energy unnecessarily.)
Anyhow, this (seeing the Loose Characters' Show in Japan Society) was quite a mind-bending experience to me. There seemed to lots of notions and terms that I did not digest ot even know. What was outstanding was now thatthey would not go starve for the well off nation's economic status, all they seem to care is to minimize the amount of activity and confine themselves in their own confy rooms. Funnily this was the original meaning of otaku, which referred to a house in Japanese, or 'you', the casual second person adressing form used among geek y people. It could also derive some kind of arrested development cases who had no clue to socialize with other people in adequate manners.
It was not a coincident that those otaku crowds were finally registered in the collective consciousness as sex offenders (or the petentials) that was initially manifested as the famous Miyazaki's case: an aging out figure kidnapped girls and butchered the bodies to videorecord (which is actually brought up in Murakami's interview in 2000 I pasted in the previous entry, so go back and check it).
We can draw out certain conclusion of Murakami's theory; he tries to make certain consistency among the postwar state of mind in Japan and the trauma of war. People's current neurosis and grown-up men's acting out are inevitable consequences of the wounds from the slaughter the tribe went through. The reason Japanese people keep their lowest profiles is because they are scared to get attacked again. That is the dead true lesson people learned: they never know when they will be attacked again by some monstrously destructive and unarticulated power to whom they have no way to fight back. This has become the recurrent theme and the developed fixation for destruction that we so often observe in Japanese violent animation, cartoon or SF where geeks were originated.
Reading back the interview of Murakami circa 2000, I have got this funny impression on the artist: I am completely uncertain if he is trying to make people laugh or if he is being serious and zealous for what he is talking. Prabably for both, I'd say. At the stage, he might be more on the joking side, though. He jokingly set so many working theories such as the geeks' culture as a weapon to fight back to otaku bashing. The trouble is tha tis no longer a laughing matter. If geeks are crowds resulted by the political defeat of Japan and geeks' culture should be the response to the opression. The world wide circulation of the otaku culture originally from the center of otaku, Japan, there should be some meaning to be analysed when people locate the common vocabulary in the phenomenon.
Regarding for the warfare and the trauma rooted to it, now they know what was done and who did that. US military force dropped the atomic bombs because Japanese people were considered to be monstrously impenetrable and helplessly anarchy. But that was then and this is now. If Jaoanese can't get over the fear and if they are aware of living the submission ever since they got shut up by the bombs, all they can do is to confront the cause and speak up, isn't it? What those people are suffering for is that they still have no affirmative self-images: they consider to be invisible, who transcend to anything they want. But they can't build up any relationship with others also because they have no bodies. Nobody. It does not take a rocket science but just some focus and courage to get their bodies back. It is just that it would take US side's recognition and apology for having denied and deprived their bodies by the slaughter. Otherwise, they have to go around the wound that's got tons of puss, which has not come out yet but worsens the wound.
So here is Murakami, who seems to be clever and fiece enough to reach the point. But he really disappointed me by his evasive and unarticulate presentation of the show. What he ends up proving is paradoxically the very characteristic of Japanese same old mentality. He cannot keep holding the opinion high enough to get the recognition as he initially might mean, with so many excuses to be made. But if you shoot, then you would be shot back. I don't believe if he shot in the dark unknowing the very basic law. He could not endure the argument he brought up probably for the fear of being solid political or becomes not arty enough. It is always easier to avoid the confrontation. Another might be, eh, he might be very unaware of what is uncool here: being timid, unconfrontational, uncritical or spineless.
Well, then, what did he want to do if he would withdraw or resign so easily with all the remote, pointless and uninteresting installment? At least the book that I pasted the link of from amazon at the beginning of today's entry seems to be loaded with all the historical backgrounds, agendas and theories with illusrations organized so well. It is worth taking a look at, I would rather say, the irony is that reading this book is enough to understand what the whole show is without bothering to go see it.