Today I went to the Aichi Trienniale with my friend Mayu. Some of you may remember Mayu from my earliest visit to the Kobe Art Museum. Apparently she found my company entertaining, or I'm the only friend she has who enjoys art, because she invited me to this art festival in Nagoya. I'd been meaning to go myself, so I accepted. I figured it'd be good to get out of the apartment, do something different, see a new face. Break the solitary confinement that is Japan as of late...
Anyway, we went. It was fun. Saw a lot of neat contemporary art - and it was actually pretty good, something I can't say about all the art I see here - with some works by Yayoi Kusama of polka dot fame, as well as other cool works, like rings of falling water in a strobelight, set up so it looked like streams of sparkles in the dark, and if you looked at it in the right light, you could see individual drops of water, always falling and illuminated in the same place, as if frozen there. Very neat, on the most superficially entertaining of levels (not that there's anything wrong with that). Actually, I'm not sure I found any really "thought provoking" works - the closest one was a replica of a war plane covered in grains, as a protest of the way governments spend money on wars, when they should be spending that money on food for their poor (or something to that effect). Only problem is, the grains were all painted in bright colors, making the fighter look like a giant toy. Maybe it's just me, but all I could think was "cool plane!" - which kind of defeats the purpose of the critique. Maybe.
One of the last exhibits we saw was put on by a Yugoslavian artist name Natalija Ribovic, whose show was titled "Everyone is an eARThist" and involved a giant red inflatable rabbit, leaning on its arm and relaxing as if leaning against a tree or something. Drawings were all over the walls, in paint and marker, and the floor was covered in cardboard, where visitors had written messages to the earth, at the artist's request. I added "Best Planet Ever (at least that we know of so far)" - it felt kind of snarky, but it's hard to feel bad about things in Japan, because you're always doing something "wrong." Not to mention being depressed makes you generally not care about trivialities like other people's feelings.
So I go back to the entrance, and Mayu is talking with the artist, who is a pretty blond woman, maybe late 20s, who looks more Norwegian or Icelandic than Yugoslavian. Then again, when I asked where she was from, she said "My body was born in Yugoslavia, but my spirit is from Jupiter," so maybe that explains the incongruity. Needless to say, she was pretty wacky, but she spoke English and seemed to enjoy running into other people who spoke English, too. She explained to us that her works had 3 main characters - the rabbit and 2 others, I don't remember - and that there were 7 rabbits altogether, and together they represented 7 universal harmonies with nature, or something like that. She also showed us an extensive clothing collection she'd developed with North Face, to help save the earth or whatever. Sounded like a lot of commercial bullshit to me - and I remember the days when I thought art as commodity (a reversal from the Pop Art days) was so cutting edge! Blech.
So we got a good laugh out of her after we left, trying to decipher what the hell she was talking about, Jupiter and how "half the population of Iceland are fairies that live in the woods" and what not. But she was nice enough. Mayu had even left her her email and phone number and kept imploring to contact her if she wanted to set up a show in Nara (where she lives). Well, I guess that suggestion struck Natalija's fancy, because fifteen minutes later we get a call from her asking if we want to get dinner.
I've never been invited to dinner by an artist before. Hell, I don't even get invited to dinner by friends all that often. So that was pretty cool, and I had fun talking to her - she certainly was interesting. Asked Mayu whether she wanted a Christian vs. a Shinto wedding (wtf?) and kept going on and on about nature and how her body is just a vessel for artistic inspiration. I could even kind of understand that last point.
Alas, after about an hour we had to leave, so Mayu could catch last train. But it was a nice break in the monotony of life here, and it reminded me that I should really get on all the big artistic ideas I keep having and so rarely put into action. It also reminded me that sometimes there are advantages to speaking English in this country. It's a tradeoff: on the one hand, you're exempted from the soul-crushing social expectations; on the other, people stare at you and freak out when you try and talk to them.
It's good to remember just how crazy this place can be. But it perhaps bears contemplating whether it can drag you down with it. Natalija's been here 4 years and she's obviously gone batty. I'm only a year in and I'm already starting to lose it...
but as long as it's this kind of crazy, I think I can deal with it alright.
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