Where are you now and what have you been doing today?
Right now I’m in a class at the University of Tokyo. I got up today, took it easy for too long, made some breakfast, then looked at the clock and then ran out the door to get to class. But, I’m really happy because I washed my hair for the first time in a while and now it feels really soft again.
UPDATE: Now I’m sitting outside a convenience store drinking a whiskey high ball and finishing this up before going to watch the first World Cup match.
What are you wearing?
In my first look at this I was wearing a big baggy t-shirt and that’s about it, sitting on my stoop, drinking the first coffee and cigarette that I cherish every morning. I can feel it slowly waking up every molecule in my brain.
Now I’m in a seminar about the history of the seminar. Very meta. And I’m back to basics in a 70s kind of way going all brown and blue, not in a bruised kind of way.
What have you been listening to lately (musicwise)?
A friend of a friend has got this great mellow music (you could maybe call it chillwave) that he is producing on his own just using his computer. HIs name is Constantin, and the album is called dream show I think. Also Toro y Moi, and since its summer, gotta break out the T.Rex. Oh yah, can’t forget Caribou and the new LCD Soundsystem album. If you’re looking for some Japanese music, check out Fishmans, or more recently my friends Trippple Nippples, and Immi.
What made you decide to pursue becoming a curator?
I think it was part of a process of self-discovery made possible by those around me at the time. I was in my first job after college in a global health thinktank in Seattle, Washington. I was sitting in front of a computer all day long punching buttons, crunching numbers, and generally doing the bidding of those around me. Of course it was all for a good cause, but in general it felt very mechanical. This dissatisfaction led me to re-examine my self and try to distill some goals. I realized that I loved helping people and working with information but I needed to have a little bit more of a creative input in my projects.
Through this very technical work I came to understand some of the ways in which technology was influencing our world. Part of the research at this thinktank was using simulations that took data from studies and interviews/questionnaires and created virtual worlds in which different public health scenarios were tested. At the same time I was spending most of my time researching the creative efforts of net artists, digital artists, and media artists etc… It was also at this time that Second Life and Twitter were born. I saw more similarities than differences between the scientific goals of this data-based research and the social and creative research that artists were producing in the form of media art works.
In the end, a number of experiences working with wonderful, intelligent, creative, and dedicated people in galleries and museums led me to realize that these were ‘my people.’ My brother gave me very good advice once (well probably more than once, but this is the one I remember most often). He said that the way to discover your passion is to be rewarded and inspired by the people around you. I think this is a very good maxim for having a moral compass in life.
I guess the other influence that pulled/pushed me in this direction was my passion for the contemporary. I’ve always been fascinated by our ability as modern humans to assimilate massive amounts of information and synthesize this information into meaningful elements. I think ultimately I view the role of a curator as sort of a synthesizer of information. Its up to the curator to make links and connections between sometimes disparate works of art and demonstrate the interconnectedness of different elements of society.
What projects have you been involved with recently?
Living in Tokyo would seem to be a fantastic opportunity to work with media art, but it has differed in many ways from my expectations. I don’t want to be too extreme because there are some absolutely fantastic artists working in Tokyo, but I think at this point in time, Tokyo is really a fashion and food city.
That being said, I’ve discovered a very vibrant culture of people working to expand the boundaries of what is possible with technology. This has been especially true in terms of the creative potential of VJs(video jockeys) and live media art performers.
Last year I was able to help out with the International Festival for Arts and Moving Images in Yokohama. This was a very large media art festival bringing a wide selection of media artists from all over the world including Pipilotti Rist and her immersive environments, and Evan Roth of Graffiti Research Lab (to name but a few) together for a monthlong exhibition.
More recently I’ve been working as an independent curator organizing an event series of live media art performances. Much of this work focuses on taking artists who often work in nightclubs and large parties as VJs and showcasing their work in a gallery setting. Often VJs are seen as background or embellishments to the nightlife, but in my opinion their work deserves attention in its own right. Often VJs are actually capable of much more complex audioreactive and architectural installation work that doesn’t have a place in the normal nightclub. Essentially my work in Japan right now is focusing on live elements of media art such as live programming and performance artists.
What excites you about New Media?
I’m actually very skeptical of technology’s impact on society. What I mean is that I feel like our technological world has been dominated by a small number of corporations developing the software and hardware that we increasingly rely on daily. This concerns me greatly. I think one of the excellent results of practicing media artists is to expose this and rip it apart. We all tend to use technology in a prescribed way determined by the limitations of the software and hardware. In other words, this technology has a homogenizing effect on our social interactions with technology. Creators, artists, and alter-techno-subcultures are reacting to this. Hacktivism, open source, liberal piracy, and culture jamming are very direct examples of this, but even with installation and net art we can see the potential of technology to be used in yet undiscovered ways.
How do you decide if you like a piece?
It’s less of a decision and more of a gut reaction. It’s actually very hard for me to intellectualize this reaction, but that is something I find the most beautiful about art. It’s this challenge of explaining your visceral reaction as a curator, and the rewards of being able to give opportunities for others to see and experience works you enjoy in this way.
For some curators this might be sacrilege, but to be honest, when I first get to an exhibition I walk through it as fast as possible glancing every which way until I get through it all and back to the beginning. Then I see what is left in my brain and what draws me back for a second look. I’ll go look at those pieces and see who they are by and what they are about and spend some time reflecting on why they impressed me so. Then its time to look at the exhibition as a whole and try and get a glimpse into the overall impression that is left.
Are there any recent or forthcoming shows or artists you are excited about?
I’m going to focus here on artists working in Japan because I would love to expose them to a new international audience.
There is going to be a show on June 27th by one of my favorite groups Exonemo at Gallery Vacant in Harajuku. Wada Ei or Crabfeet will also be performing there on June 26th as part of the Interferenze Seeds 2010 Tokyo two-day exhibition.
I don’t know when his next show is, but Oonishi San or HeHeWho took part in the live media art performance night I curated in April and his work is incredible, a perfect blend of creative applications of technology with a tongue-in-cheek criticism of our currently media-saturated society.
Also, probably the most prominent media artists working in Japan right now, Shimura Bros. are having a show at Taka Ishii Gallery in Kyoto right now, and I believe they will have a solo show in September at Taka Ishii Gallery in Tokyo.
My favorite recent show was the exhibition/open studios of artists-in-residence program at Bank Art in Yokohama.
Plus I have to throw in a plug for my crew at the LAB in San Francisco (16th and Capp) and invite everyone to check out this lovely artspace. They always have great events and will have the second annual art.tech festival in September.
How has the Internet influenced artist communities? Has the importance of geographical location changed?
I think this question is huge and could probably take pages and pages to expound upon. The short answer is that artists are incredibly influenced by the Internet. The second short answer is that the importance of geographical location both has and hasn’t changed.
Today the Internet is both a muse/source for artists to use in inspiring works, and a medium or context in which to present their work. I think that access to boundless amounts of information is great for artists working today, but it can also be confusing.
Some ways in which artists actually use the Internet in work include net artists who actually present their work on the Internet and use the Internet as their main medium of expression.
Telepresence is another way in which the Internet is used by artists today. The networked aspect of the Internet is utilized to be present and create art in a location other than where you are physically present.
Whether or not geographical proximity is as important as before, I think we still need to see things in person and meet people face-to-face to experience the full impact of many works (of course excluding those that are expressly intended to be experienced virtually such as net art). I think this is one instance in which Walter Benjamin’s “work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction” is still incredibly relevant today. Published in 1936, this text examines the ways in which art and artists will change as a result of the industrial revolution and the infinite replicability of art. Without going too far into this dense text, he describes the original work as containing an ‘aura’ that is lost in reproduction. This aura represents the actual work, time, effort, labor, skill, etc… that went into creating the work in the first place. In a media art context I think this can often be difficult to see or for a less technical person to understand. How this influences our impression of the work is a very pressing question I think.
That being said, I am not in complete agreement with Walter Benjamin (who is?). I think that some of the most successful works of art are actually very technically simple, but conceptually sophisticated. They can involve taking something we interact with in our lives and tweaking or adjusting it slightly to invite the viewer to have a perceptual shift and to see the world around him/her in a new way.
Let’s take a look at one of Cory Arcangel’s work Super Mario Clouds. In this work, Cory takes the clouds that float in the background of the NES video game Super Mario Bros. and excises them from their context within the game to create a beatuiful serene digital projection. Taking these clouds out of their original context of a background in gameplay provides them new life almost twenty years after their original creation. It also asks us clearly to take another look at the aesthetics of gaming and specifically a certain nostalgia for 8 and 16-bit videogames.
I seem to be getting a little bit off-topic, but to try to tie at all together, there are many youtube uploads of this installation work by Arcangel from its installation at the Whitney Musuem of American Art, but viewing the work in these contexts, it may just look like a bunch of 8-bit clouds floating across your screen. To see it in person, however, you see the technique that Cory used to make the project, physically hacking the NES cartridge and replacing it with his own program. This process, as much as the result, is what becomes apparent when you visit the installation.
Another example, and something I’ve been working on recently, is the presentation of VJs and live performances including many live coders. To see this VJ work in a club you are only seeing the result and while it may be visually compelling, how can we expose the process? This is one of the benefits of live coding in which a technically masterful visualizer will project the visual output of his programming alongside his coding process. For me, this is one way to emphasize the aura of the piece and re-emphasize the role of the artist in creating art.
Social medias are changing the way our culture disseminates information. How are artists using social medias in new ways in their work?
I think the best way to answer this question is to point you towards an example of artists using social media networks to conduct their work.
Introducing the art collective ‘Jogging’ comprised of artists Brad Troemel and Laura Chirstiansen. They write in an essay on “Redefining Exhibition in the Digital Age,”
“Art cannot exist without an audience, as it relies on media for its existence as art. With today’s burgeoning potential for digital mass viewership, transmission becomes as important as creation. Contemporary online artists are aware of this fact and seek to actively make use of its potential. Dematerialization is not an oppressive suffocation of art but a possibility for art to flourish in disparate and progressive discourses. The web offers infinite room for expansion and participation unlimited by the more severe constraints of space and finance.” –via Rhizome
These artists use the blogging platform Tumblr as an incubator for ideas and also a platform for their work to spread around the blogosphere. The socially networked aspect allows their work to be accessed by an audience much larger than the tradition audience of gallery-goers.
Similarly, the collective created an online presence in the form of a facebook account Perfor Manceart. Using this account as a platform for interventions and interruptions in the online world of facebook the collective was able to involve the power of the hive (its friends and fans) to expose some of the limitations of online presence:
“Perfo Rmanceart is a Facebook avatar that acts directly on the public interfaces of other profiles. Using the company Facebook as a medium for artistic intervention is an extension of Jogging, a blog that uses the company Tumblr to spread images through the internet at a viral pace. Like Jogging, Perfo Rmanceart uses the passage of information through media as its final output. If Jogging forfeits the artist’s ability to control meaning online, Perfo Rmanceart investigates the power users have in shaping their perception of one another on social networking sites. By using communication with other Facebook profiles as its subject, the avatar is dependent on viewer interaction. Documentation of the avatar’s interactions is presented in its own Profile Pictures section, making Perfo Rmanceart an autonomous archive as well.” –Via Jogging on Tumblr
Jogging: http://thejogging.tumblr.com
For other net artists working with social media platforms such as second life see:
Eva and Franco Mattes
Interview with them:
Also, a brilliant interview from Chicago art blog Bad at Sports (http://badatsports.com/) between Nicholas O’brien and Jon Rafman about life as an avatar and art on the virtual reality platform Second Life: http://rhizome.org/editorial/3549
How is the art world similar to the fashion world? How do they intersect? It seems club culture, fashion and art are intimately linked. How are the lines between them becoming blurred?
I don’t know how similar they are, but they definitely inspire each other. Designers are incredibly influenced by artwork from cinema history to performance art. I think both fashion designers and artists are trying to comment and reflect on contemporary society and perhaps open our eyes to new possibilities and directions.
I think that recently I can identify two directions in which fashion and especially media art are becoming: wearable technology and fashion shows.
The first is pretty self-explanatory; there are a number of artists working today to find new ways to hybridize fashion and technology. Will the products of this creative output be considered fashion or art or both?
Take a look at some of the work by Kristin Niedlinger for example: http://slimavocado.com/blog/2010/ger-galvanic-extimacy-responder/
The second way in which fashion and especially media art are becoming blended is in the presentation of fashion. As designers and organizers are looking for ways to make their collections stand out on the crowded runways, some are involving media artists in runway design and shop design. While it could concern me that some of these attempts are devaluing the media art, or simply gimmicks to boost sales or add that ‘wow-factor,’ a recent experience at the Louis Vuitton gallery (Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton) in Paris proved to me otherwise.
The Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton is in an adjunct space next to the flagship Louis Vuitton location on the Champs-Elysees. I suppose this cultural space is partly an attempt by the traditional luxury brand to infuse a sense of contemporaneity in its brand image. For artists, it allows them to develop what I’m sure is a profitable relationship with the brand. However, for me, the audience and the sometimes critic, it was an opportunity to see a diverse temporary exhibition of top artists from a variety of fields for free. And I didn’t even have to go into the glistening store overflowing with its monogrammed goods made out of cows.
Also, there is the simple matter of economics that media artists, because of the fact that their choice of digital medium is in many cases infinitely electronically replicable, often struggle to find funding outside of academic or national grant funding systems. My perspective is that these non-commercial funds for media artists should be expanded rather than forcing artists to seek out commercial applications for their work, but if it pays the bills and introduces a wider audience to art its hard to complain too vociferously (another manifestation of pragmatic anti-capitalism?).
Why is fashion important?
Is fashion important? Sometime I wonder this myself as I get more and more drawn into this world living in Tokyo. Of course there are many arguments for the cultural importance of fashion: the artistry of designers, the self-expression of fashionistas, the creative potential of using the body as a canvas. On the other hand, are these just excuses used by the fashion industry to legitimize the prices they charge and the industries capitalistic ambitions? As an anti-capitalist living pragmatically (some may say hypocritically) in a fashion-based world I struggle with these contradictions on a daily basis. But I think the fact that fashion makes me, and hopefully others, address these inconsistencies justifies its importance!
How do you decide what to wear?
It is basically a very quick statistical compilation in my head that I perform on the spot every morning. It is about 20% based on how clean the object that I intend to wear is. This includes its location in my room (floor/closet/hanger). 30% weather. 50% wow factor. It’s all about dressing to impress, but for me that means the details. I know I will only have a good day if my underwear matches my mood and my socks somehow reflect my personality.
Describe the perfect day in Tokyo.
I’m going to describe a day in Tokyo that I’ve never had because in the summer I can never get up early enough. One of the things that never fails to amaze me is how early the sunrise is in Japan in the summer. They don’t have daylight savings time here, so around this time of year it gets light at 3:30am. I would love to wake up at 3:30am and have a completely diurnal day following the light around.
Anyways, I would wake up and make a big breakfast with lots of coffee and probably a croque monsieur. Then I would sit on my balcony with my favorite magazine Cabinet. After this analog morning I would spend an hour or so catching up on the latest from the blogosphere, reading my favorite blog I Made This For You, and reblogging the highlights.
Then, off on my bike for a leisurely tour around my neighborhood of Nakameguro in Tokyo. Hopefully later on there would be a gallery opening with free alcohol where I could gather with my friends to start the night, then we would continue to dinner and drinks at Combine, a cute little riverside café by my house, then to bar ‘M’ for some banging tunes late into the night until we make our way back home (probably right around when its getting light again!).
Actually it kind of sounds like today.
So I guess my best day in Tokyo would actually be a full 24 hour affair!!
Who are your biggest influences? Who do you look to for inspiration?
Art: Barbara London, media curator at the MOMA. She is one of the biggest reasons I’m in Japan. In 1999 Barbara toured around Japan making a digital diary of sorts of the latest trends in Japanese media art for here dot.japan project for the MOMA. She is sort of like a foremother to me.
Another reason I came to Japan is because of my immense respect for the performance art group from Kyoto called Dumb Type. Founded in the late 1980s and most active during the 1990s, this group blended technology, dance and theater in new ways and also used their artistic practice to expose some of the social issues of the day, most notable HIV/AIDS. The most notable artist to emerge internationally from this hub is the sound artists Ryoji Ikeda.
I’m also eternally grateful to Richard Rinehart of the Berkeley Art Museum for giving allowing naïve me to TA for a class on digital culture with him in 2008. I will never forget sitting on his floor and picking his brain on topics running the gamut from Bay Area queer politics to the sometimes bifurcated world of media art and the role of technologists vis-à-vis artists.
Actually too many to list, but I’m not giving an Oscar speech (yet).
Fashion: Gareth Pugh, Henrik Vibskov, Petar Petrov. All for different reasons.
Gareth Pugh for his groundbreaking and avant-garde ideas. Henrik Vibskov for his playful challenge to what we take for fashion, and Petar Petrov for his refined sense of style, creative use of fabrics and colors.
What do you see on the horizon for art and fashion?
I’ve noticed over the past year or so a trend in both art and fashion toward geometric shapes and patterns. I find this kind of algorithmic art and fashion beautiful and intriguing, but I foresee a reaction taking place to these overanalyzed patterns. My fashion friends tell me that the 70s are coming back into fashion, and although I’m not overjoyed by this prospect, I do think that there is room for some more chaos and entropy in visuals. I’ve been interested for a long time now in a movement called glitch art, and I’ve noticed a few shows and editorials popping up recently about this topic.
What is the ideal path of an artist from your perspective? (If you had an artist fantasy life, what would happen in it? What is the artists’ path?)
I don’t think that’s up to me to answer. That’s the great thing about artists; they come from all walks of life and strut through life in all sorts of walks.
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I’m glad there’s more curators taking an interest in glitch art! I think we’ll start to see more of this in video and graphic design hopefully
Glitch art is the unconscious art of the masses!
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