DesignFesta 2005 - Seeing the Tokyo Art Scene

I had a great time this past weekend at Design Festa, a semi-annual gathering of artists, illustrators and, well, anyone who can get a group of friends to rent a space and "do" something suggestive of "art." That amounts to thousands of exhibitors (5700 or so, according to the official website), and about fifty thousand people show up to shop and gawk. That's Tokyo Big Site in the picture above (Design Festa took place in an area to the left of the big "room with a view"). The conference hall was roughly the size of a football field and packed. I doubt that I saw half of what was there, despite spending some ten hours wandering and weaving through the rows. As I began my journey, I noticed an abundance of postcards. Most of the artists and designers were selling them. Actually, that's about all they were selling. Most reacted with a blank look to any question about buying the original art pieces (which were often hanging there above the postcards). "I need the originals to make new postcards?" was a common reply. Even so, I enjoyed seeing the variety of cards. They ranged from photographs of childlike acrylic paintings to incredible examples of what can be done with Photoshop and an Epson printer. (Everyone I asked printed their cards and larger prints on their Epson printers at home.) Impression-wise, their work ranged from super cute and colorful to grimly violent; and morbidly sexual to simply perverted. Much of what I saw struck me as undeveloped (or not developing). Most of the participants were young (students and twenty somethings). But I found plently of work that stood out. Work that was doing something fresh and really going somewhere. You can see a few examples of various sorts above. These aren't the worst or best cards that I saw, but they're representative. I did a double take at the "cute" pictures (top right) that, on closer inspection, show a girl holding puppet strings attached to her parents and school girls tied up with a rope. I stopped and talked to the artist for a moment, a friendly girl who probably never exposes the depths of her soul to passengers on a train to the degree that those cards on the wall revealed her deeper mysteries to anyone passing by. That's one thing that I really liked about Design Festa--that many participants revealed themselves in ways that ordinarily you would never see. Obviously, some did so with much greater complexity and awareness of the process than others. I asked the artist about the piece just above (left), and she said, "It's the inside of my heart." Hmmm. I thought. Maybe someone can suggest the follow up question that I missed. (Not that I'm mocking her work. It was developing, I'd say.) I didn't meet the artist behind the display on the right. It looks like she created little badges or awards, wore them, and them took pictures of herself doing that. It's like a nostalgic moment that wasn't. "Remember how I used to dream about 'Being special' ...?" I give her bonus points for making me stop, come closer and try to figure this out. One of the stranger things you encounter at Design Festa are the dolls. Now there are all sorts of dolls. In fact, lets distinguish between "figures" and "dolls." Figures are like the little man in the bottom right picture. He's a little caricatured creation that portrays a type of person in society. A small slice of society. For the purpose at hand, let me say, Figures depict something that the artists sees. Whether that's art or design, good or bad all depends. "Dolls," on the other hand, are an extension of the creator. I'm not talking about children's dolls (although maybe Barbie dolls apply). I'm talking about the adult dolls I saw on display. Dolls with dead eyes, dressed in white dresses or kimonos. Sometimes with a touch of blood coming from their mouths. These dolls are not the final product either. Their creators pose them and take pictures that invariably depict a sprawled out corpse-like form, looking vaguely real -- though possibly dead -- with a languid gaze staring out of the darkness of her soul. Once I caught the eye of a young woman standing next to the dolls she had made, and I sensed the same darkness in her eyes with a shock and looked away. Later, I realized, I should have talked to at least one of these women and asked, "Why?" As far as the art itself goes, amidst all the youth culture and "developing" art (and design), I saw quite a bit of really great work. I could dwell on the weird, but, honestly, I appreciated the 'real' people who I met in a way that eclipsed all the rest. Most of the artists I've known don't put on costumes and assume personalities. They're refreshing and able to engage. Here in Tokyo human contact is generally held to a minimum, and when it happens people conduct themselves through masks without revealing themselves deeply. But in that gathering many people had lowered their masks. Or, at least, they acknowledged their masks. Some people wore literal masks. Others had made masks. They also displayed masks in their art, and depicted in many other ways the isolation and ugliness that makes up life in this city. Along with despair, perversion, hope and beauty...this was a whole basket of life in Japan, not just a slice. What can I say? The next Design Festa will be coming in the Fall. If you're in Tokyo, I strongly suggest going.

By the way, I haven't even talked about the food, like the Indian curry I kept going back for. I haven't mentioned the ten hours I must have spent speaking in Japanese (a whole semester's worth of conversation time at a typical language school). Nor have I described all the clothing, jewelry and other handmade stuff on display. Or the bands playing outside. Or the cheap prices (mental note: art and design school students sell their work at cost). But I've used up my quota of words for the week. So if YOU went to Design Festa please leave a comment and a link if you blogged about it. And, as always, all comments are read and appreciated!

Posted by jw at May 18, 2005 06:26 PM