With our present awareness, the arts we have known up to now appear to us in general to be fakes fitted out with a tremendous affectation. Let us take leave of these piles of counterfeit objects on the altars, in the palaces, in the salons and the antique shops. These objects are in disguise and their materials such as paint, pieces of cloth, metals, clay or marble are loaded with false significance by human hand and by way of fraud, so that, instead of just presenting their own material, they take on the appearance of something else. Under the cloak of an intellectual aim, the materials have been completely murdered and can no longer speak to us. Lock these corpses into their tombs. Gutai art does not change the material but brings it to life. Gutai art does not falsify the material …

So begins the Gutai Manifesto, written by Jiro Yoshihara in 1956 (English translation here). In the late 1940s, Gutai co-founder Shozo Shimamoto had started aestheticising holes in stretched canvases (see here), emphasising the corporeal contact made between painter and painting (incidentally, Fontana was developing his Cuts around the same time in Italy).

Pictured here is Gutai artist Saburo Murakami’s action work at the 2nd Gutai Art Exhibition in Ohara Hall, Tokyo, in 1956 (below is a reconstruction of the same work in a Gutai retrospective at the 2009 Venice Biennale). Concerning himself with the physical reality of the painter’s canvas, his bodily intervention complicated the relationship between art production and performance.

The Gutai Group’s work around Japan in the ’50s and ’60s anticipated later performance art, happenings and conceptualism in the west, and they had an especially formative influence on the Fluxus movement. They were explicitly concerned with the materiality of art (gutai means ‘tangible’ or ‘concrete’) and, by extension, its material degradation. The manifesto continues:

… what is interesting in this respect is the novel beauty to be found in works of art and architecture of the past which have changed their appearance due to the damage of time or destruction by disasters in the course of the centuries. This is described as the beauty of decay, but is it not perhaps that beauty which material assumes when it is freed from artificial make-up and reveals its original characteristics? The fact that the ruins receive us warmly and kindly after all, and that they attract us with their cracks and flaking surfaces, could this not really be a sign of the material taking revenge, having recaptured its original life? …

In the mid-1950s, Gutai artist Atsuko Tanaka made herself a ‘dress’ out of coloured light bulbs and electric wiring, inspired by the hidden physiological systems of the human body. She wore the dazzling, cumbersome thing to various exhibitions and happenings in Tokyo and Osaka. More here.

Get your pppost-it note armour ready: Trippple Nippples are performing on December 16 at Warehouse702 in Tokyo …

Photos by Alex Singh

Aristotle called on eating as the primal function of the soul. Whether in literal digestion of food or the more subtle consumption involved in sensual processing like seeing and hearing, in the act of consuming the Aristotelian soul was taking something foreign and transforming it into itself.

Instant noodles, for instance, seem to be so unlike us and yet our bodies can easily incorporate them – and through looking and listening we also take things inside us, assimilating them into our being with our subjective perceptual apprehension.

Sound artist Mamoru Okuno has been working with the idea of basic consumption for several years now. We spoke to him in April about the sonic values of soda water and plastic drinking straws, and last month he performed in Sydney and Melbourne at our 2010 Big in Japan events.

Using an audio loop to deftly build up the surprisingly diverse sounds involved in preparing instant noodles, he finished his live sets by inviting people from the audience to eat the fresh steamy bowels of ramen with him.

They won every heart from every nipple-studded chest in the room when they ppperformed at Big In Japan last year, now the inimitable performance outfit Trippple Nipples are releasing their debut LP, available on iTunes from today.

Illustration by Dora & Maja

Combining movements from hip hop dance, martial arts and street brawls, contact Gonzo have staged impromptu performances in public settings around the world, from urban train stations to sewers to remote mountains. Exploring what they refer to as their ‘philosophy of pain and techniques of contact’, their work depends on extremely high levels of trust and physical skill. An unsettling beauty emerges from their violent spectacle of accidents, which they say is their way of questioning how we are to relate the self to other selves and to the world.

As part of their recent foray into installation, earlier this year contact Gonzo created this space at Mori Gallery’s Roppongi Crossing exhibition, in honour of an imaginary character who embodies reclusion:

The prolific and perplexing Tatsumi Orimoto first gained recognition for his Bread Man performances where he travelled the world binding his head in baguettes, but more recently he has been developing his ‘Art Mama’ body of work, in collaboration with his Alzheimer’s-suffering octogenarian mother, Odai.

When he was rejected from artschool and discouraged by everyone around him, it was his self-determined mother who relentlessly encouraged his work. Now after a 30-year career he has moved back to Japan to live with and take care of her, and she remains his biggest fan.

Just in time for Mother’s Day, Orimoto is coming to Sydney for a one-off performance of his Oil Can work on May 13. With his unique brand of uncomfortable hilarity, it will see the artist and 15 volunteers standing solemnly in 44-gallon steel drums, everyone in close proximity but disconnected from one another. Want to volouneer to stand in a can? Contact the gallery.

John Cage discovered there was no such thing as silence when he sat in a noiseproof anechoic chamber and heard for the first time the cacophonous sounds of his own body, including the ‘high’ sound of the blood’s circulation and the ‘low’ sound of the nervous system. In 1952 he wrote what he considered to be his best composition, 4’33”. Although commonly perceived to be four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence, it actually consists of the perpetual sounds of the surrounding environment, which the audience is made sensitive to as the performer creates as little noise as possible.

In a similar vein, Mamoru Okuno is interested in making people aware of the sounds they hear all the time but never listen to. His recent exhibition at YUKA CONTEMPORARY in Tokyo had him preaching the unique sonic values of orange juice and soda, as well as continuing to spread the good word about the instrumental possibilities of plastic drinking straws. The show was part of his ongoing live, participatory series ‘etude for everyday objects and practices’, which have in the past involved listening to things like melting ice cubes or scrunched-up clingwrap, and usually include shared consumption of food or drink in some form.

Mamoru says his work is informed by the likes of Michel de Certeau and Nicolas Bourriaud, but also by Japan’s ancient art of the tea ceremony, as reformed by Sen no Rikyu in the 16th Century. Rikyu advocated the use of humble, everyday materials, which would be invested with high spiritual and aesthetic tenets through their inclusion in the rituals. Incorporating anything from performance to architecture, garden/interior design, flower arrangement and ceramics, The Way of Tea is founded on unscripted human exchange and could be considered one of the truest forms of multidisciplinary, interactive and ephemeral live art.

If people react to Mamoru’s work with “I could do that”, he knows he’s on the right track. His simple aim is to facilitate new experiences of everyday objects, and thereby position the individual as creator of their own experience.

Mamoru is currently growing his own vegetables in his room at Tokyo Wonder Site (where he has a one-year residency) for his 36th etude, ‘water and dry earth / variation for growing plants’, based on the subtle, fleeting sound of dry plants being watered; and at the end of April he will be hosting a three-day show in his hometown, Osaka, at projectroom ift.

Image rights reserved by Mamoru Okuno / YUKA CONTEMPORARY.

I think it would be best if I let Kiiiiiii introduce themselves. Kiiiiiii according to Kiiiiiii:

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drums…..lakin’ a.k.a REIKO TADA

lakin’ the Kiiiiiii loves….

Queen!

PERRY&KINGSLEY, Jackson5, Ramones, mute beat, KRAFT WERK, C-C-B, Yoko minamino….Ra-men, TV programs for Children(like SESAME STREET), Stickers and her cat(named “NYAN”)!

Lakin’ is a illustrater ,a designer and liryc & song writer in Kiiiiii.

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vocal…….ut a.k.a UTAKO TAYAMA

ut loves…..

MICHAEL JACKSON!

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, NEU!, tama, Miho nakayama…..SPAGHETTI, macaron, pho, Cosmetics(Paul&Joe,anna sui…e.t.c) and her dog (named “STOMP”)!

u.t. is an actress in TETSUWARI ALBATROSKET.

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When we met each other for the first time, we were 12 years old. Since then,we have been special friends like DJ & KIMMY in “FULL HOUSE”!

++We play songs by……The Wiggles, Chip munks, Roco’s modern life by NIKELODEON, Hooley dooleys, Michael Jackson, and kiiiiiii ( Almost all songs are written by Lakin’ except for cover songs.)!

Live footage and video works by Kiiiiiii will be featured at the Big In Japan event (CarriageWorks, December 2) and exhibition (Black & Blue Gallery, December 5-19), so you can get yourselves properly acquainted with the self proclaimed “masters of girl magic”.

Illustrations by Tada Reiko of Kiiiiiii.

The act of carving a traditional noh mask is referred to as “omote wo utsu” (to strike the surface). The sacred and supremely refined art of noh – which is said to be the world’s oldest form of theatre and to have remained unchanged for over six centuries – has at its heart the notion of masks and illusion; and the impulse towards complete body transformation is carried through to many areas of performance and life in contemporary Japan.

With choreography by Yuka Kobayashi and costumes by Taisuke Abe, She de cusu oh chee! is another Japanese performance troupe based on disguise and escapist alter egos – watch out for their super kawaii public interventions which can happen anywhere at any time …

It seemed like a pretty standard uptight fashion week party at TRUMP ROOM last night, until the Trippple Nippples exploded onto the dance floor with screams, water pistols, glitter bombs, fake blood and feathers, whipping everyone up into a messy mania before disappearing as quickly as they appeared. You better brace yourselves for these guys before they perform at our event in December!

“Everything is under surveillance of KATHY. Orders are constantly issued by KATHY. And the 3 are due to get their duties done.”

So their bio makes it hard to figure out exactly what is going on here but when you see their live shows you’ll understand. Actually, wait, their shows are even more obscure and bamboozling … But that’s ok because they are also mind blowingly amazing.

Classically trained as ballerinas, the unnamed dancers of KATHY collaborated extensively with the legendary Nagi Noda and share her love of strange cuteness, surrealist-pop, and hair. Always clad in identical blond wigs with black pantyhosed faces, they render themselves completely featureless (and fingerless) because anonymity is the ideal point of surveillance. Their eerie and ritualistic performances are like nothing else; think Moulin Rouge meets Victorian morality meets Lucifer rising.

And … they are one of our first confirmed guests for the Big In Japan event that is taking place this December at CarriageWorks. We are very excited to be announcing that KATHY will be on our program, along with the Trippple Nippples and others to be announced very soon. It’s shaping up to be a very special night of Japanese performance artists, experimental musicians, DJs and visual artists who have never been brought out to Australia before.

KATHY, you might be watching us but we’re watching you back, we can’t take our eyes off you. The girls are cooking up some big surprises for the event but for the time being lets just say I bags not cleaning up all the pigeon shit. Stay tuned.

First image by honagayoko, last image by Yumiko Inoue (D-CORD)

Meet the Trippple Nippples, your new best friends / favourite Tokyo performance group. They are coming to Sydney as one of our guests for the Big In Japan event this December, bringing their unhinged DIY aesthetic, an inimitably intense live energy and a song about teaching your nipples to speak. We can’t wait to see them ‘express’ themselves!

“We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the pattern of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.” (Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, 1933)

Before coming into the world dance at the ripe old age of 20, Hiroaki Umeda had been studying photography, which helped him cultivate an acute understanding of light and shadow. Recalling that he always found photography stressful, he explains how he became drawn to performance: “With photography I felt I had to be away from the environment and situation I was photographing. I couldn’t experience the situation. I think I wanted to experience and to be there more. I was also interested in changing time and space, but if I had to be away from a situation, I couldn’t feel or experience the change. So I was looking for a style of expression that could give experience and a changing space/time.”

He studied various dance styles before realising none of them really fitted the movements he wanted to do, and after less than a year he abandoned all formal training. Now one of Japan’s most acclaimed young performers/choreographers, and director of his own company S20, he continues to work in a highly independent and autonomous way – not only doing all the choreography and movement in his shows but also designing the sets, lighting, video projections and musical scores. “I cannot think only of dance,” he says, “in my thought, dance is to be made with the surrounding elements because the body is an element of the environment. For me, to make a dance piece is to make a space, including choreography, sound, light and so on.”

Hiroaki will be making his first trip to Australia in September to present his While going to a condition and Accumulated layout for four nights only at the Sydney Opera House, as part of their Spring Dance program.