After a short jaunt back to the guesthouse to freshen up, we went back out into the night, first to Roppongi Hills. There we found a fascinating spider--with an egg sac--sculpture outside Mori Tower, where we bought tickets to go up into the observatory and Mori Arts Center.
Their current exhibition was quite fascinating and thought-provoking. "Can There Be Art?" includes a variety of media, photography, sculpture, installations, and performance art from many different modern artists in Japan (some are well-established and others are new faces on the art front.)The name of the exhibit derives from Furuhashi Teiji's question about whether art can exist directly with society outside of the boundaries of the art world.
Teruya Yuken's Notice-Forest pieces are on display, that is, there are little paper trees constructed from the side of a paper bag, which serves as the "window" for the light source as you look inside the bag from the mouth. We didn't get to see the actual performance part of it, but there's still the brilliantly spray-painted skateboarding ramp constructed by HITOTZUKI (Kami+Sasu). One of the last pieces is appropriation artist Yasumasa Morimura's (who is probably the most well known Japanese artist in the West, out of the entire group) A Requiem: Laugh at the Dictator, which is essentially Morimura performing as Charlie Chaplin performing Hilter in Charlie Chaplin's film The Great Dictator. Takamine Tadasu's piece Baby Insa-dong, a long string of sheets of photography and text, was rather though provoking: in it he describes issues of racism and other troubles that arose when he was dating and getting married to his Korean wife, who was born in Japan. (In case you didn't know, Korea and Japan have some major beef, pretty much like all of the Asian countries have some form of beef with each other.)
The pieces I found myself most closely engaged with were those of UJINO, which are a combination of sculpture and sound performance art. One room was full of these contraptions, installations comprising instruments, wires, electrical equipment, cars, lights, and random props, which popped, whirred, flashed, and purred in a strange symphony of light, motion, and sound. (See the Rotators Installation Views for a better idea, perhaps...these aren't the same installations I saw at the Mori Gallery, but you'll get the picture.)
The Tokyo City View at the top of Mori Tower (left) was also pretty inspiring, although it's terribly annoying to get a non-blurry shot.
Some of us spent the rest of the night back in Shibuya. Margot, Sabrina (les française), Elliot (Cali), Thomas (Deutchland), Momo-chan, Sun Young (S. Korea), and I went to Club Atom, and thus I had my first clubbing experience. I'd recommend it if you're in Tokyo and you like clubbing. The experience still seems a bit surreal to me.
The people are friendly, and the bouncers are all very kind, large black men who speak very good English. And the dancing isn't skanky. In fact...on the main dance floor, it felt more like people "dancing" at a rock concert...only there was a DJ and no band. Basically jumping up and down and rather non-sensual boogieing. Apparently on the bar-level dance floor there were some people with skills, but the floor I spent most of my time on was full of people who reminded me of the nerdy white-kid dances--you know, from middle school. Because by the time high school came around, our nerdy white-kid dances had grown some eccentric character, might have even passed as cool. The music was entirely too loud, as music in clubs is wont to be, but there was a nice mix of Japanese and Western popular music-turned dance music. The dance version of He's a Pirate (from Pirates of the Carribean) sticks out the most in my memory. That and techno Can't Take My Eyes Off You--of course, all I could think about was Velma's little song and dance version.
I suppose what struck me as so surreal were the interactions. After losing track of and then relocating Margot and Sabrina, I stood by them and was friendly and personable since two young Japanese men were buying us drinks...They were dressed in suits, said they were graduate students, spoke decent English, and seemed nice enough. The surrealness occurred when I was conversationally occupying Margot's spot while she went to the bathroom, and the guy and I were talking about our majors, etc, and then he asked if I could do an animation or video of his cell culture project..."Be still, my beating heart. Of course, I'll get right on that animation thing." Of course I didn't say anything remotely Still not sure if that was a moment of culture shock for me...or if it was more of a club-culture shock. I don't really have enough experience clubbing to understand these transient interactions which I find so strange and bizarre.
After leaving the club sometime after 2, the French girls and I wandered until we found a Mc Donald's, ate some food, and fell asleep at our tables. We weren't the only ones either--Micky D's was filled with people, some studying, some just socializing, and many snoring and drooling on their arms. We woke up once the Korean girls found us...I think they just happened to find us there, because it was one of the few restaurants open 24 hrs, but again, I was asleep. Once the subways started running around 5 or 6 (in Tokyo, they shut down after midnight), we made sure the guys got back all right, and slumped back to the guesthouse to catch a few more hours asleep before we had to skidattle back out by 11 am.
Interesting family on a subway sign...maybe an ad
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