Lazy and bad

Places I'd like to do residencies in.

* Libraries
* Shops
* Warehouses
* Factories
* Attics
* Greenhouses
* Storerooms
* Anywhere well-lit

I need to learn some new skills. Meh meh and meh.

Last word for the day

I'm finally really stuck into this book.


It's totally doing it for me now. I'm about a third of the way through.

I can hear the Fleet Foxes in the other room, so I'm going to read some more.

Aussi, parce qu'il pleut.

More on Martin Creed sort of

I quite like this one. There's a kind of art where you get painted into a corner by the history and possibilities of art, and it's so inhibiting that all you can do is something very simple or small.

Are we running out of possibilities, though? Surely not. Perhaps if you have fixed ways of thinking about things, then that might happen. A radical shift isn't so easy. maybe MC's work is not any kind of shift, but it's a kind of narrowing of the field.

I feel a bit like that sometimes.

Sometimes also I think I like works based on what I imagine making that work to have been like. I would like to have made this. I would have enjoyed it, I would also like to be confident enough with my practice to make such a work and classify it thusly (a work).

Maybe it's just about getting rid of all the limitations. But thinking is a discipline, you develop your own way of doing it, and without that limitation, I don't know if art is possible. Without limitations. Therein lies the paradox.

That's something to work towards: the courage to strip things back further, further and further.

OK, it's definitely leave the house time.

Circular Post About Miranda July

I've been reading Miranda July's blogs and interviews with her and watching YouTube clips from her movie all morning. She's a great character, just very honest and real. Not that she's a 'character' like someone who's made up, but I don't know her so I can't exactly say she's a great person. She has a kind of earnest lightness, or a light earnestness that makes me feel good.

When I first saw You Me and Everyone We Know I thought it was just OK. I liked certain things about it a lot, but I found it a bit self-conscious, or found the pace a bit forced or something, just in general. But taken in the context of her whole work, you figure out a bit more where she's coming from, and it becomes a whole lot more likable. A long narrative like a feature film I guess, when it's made by someone who's perhaps less of a 'pro', comes out as different, uses different narrative techniques and different scales of events, and less conventional structures. I guess I was just being conservative in how I looked at it.

Like, OK (bear with me), when I chatted with TP and said it was hot here and I was wearing a skirt and t-shirt, and he commented about how cold it was there and he wished he was wearing a skirt, and I went ha ha boys in skirts. MJ probably would have said, yeah, boys should try wearing skirts because it's light and airy in summer and they don't know what they're missing. Whereas I had a small-scale knee-jerk conservatism. 'Haha, you're a boy and you said you wished you had a skirt, haha'.

Which brings me to an astute observation made by my ex-pat host the other day, which is that here (Japan) there is no concept of the 'tryhard' such as in Australia. We had seen some wannabe (see there it is again!) like boy band/girl group j-pop kind of singing teams practicing in the park, and thought that no young people would do that in Australia, because they'd be laughed at. She reckons that in Japanese culture, people respect people for trying hard, at whatever it is, and would not judge you negatively for it. She claims there's an absence of cynicism about people's aspirations and actions here (I'm wildly paraphrasing), and that people are hence more encouraging and experimental. She called it an absence of irony, I think. She said she'd miss it when she left.

It's a fairly appealing quality. I imagine I'd have trouble shaking my sense of irony. Probably a balanced approach would do. We yam what we yam, a bit.

Anyway, Miranda July's movie blog has a post from Paris about spending the day in looking at antique lace in a store. She picks four bits and buys them and makes a lace collar in homage to the Viktor and Rolf clothes she will never own. It made me feel better about what I've been doing here. And also like today might be the day I go and buy the curtain fabric.

I'm so impressionable!

[Meta-moment: OMG, this means I can reuse that post label I thought would never ever come up again!)

I was looking actually at the YouTube clips (it's all about Miranda) to find that part of the movie where there's a visit to an artist's studio. The visitors try to get rid of the artist's trash and he's all 'don't touch that sculpture!', and when they get stuck into admiring another work, it turns out to be his coffee cup or something. I couldn't find it. This happens to me all the time with my work. I was reminded of it because I went to a Martin Creed exhibition here a couple of days ago, who I bet this happens to all the time. He probably enjoys it. It happens to me, and I get frustrated, thinking 'does this mean I'm a gimmicky one joke artist like Martin Creed?'. (Disclaimer: I don't know anything about Martin Creed's work really. I'm sure it's complex and interesting. Most things are, even a screwed up piece of paper.)

The show I saw had that work in it. It was in a small side room. I started to go towards it and the gallery attendant stopped me, explaining that it was the office. I guess they don't feel it's important that people can get close to that particular piece of work. I encourage you to look at that work. I guess I was thinking of that when I made this. What a hack.

When I gave my newly developed short spiel about my work the other day to a friend of my host, she asked me 'but why?'. I mean, what can you say to that?

I'm going to take this opportunity to find out about Creed's practice properly.

Blog til you drop

You wouldn't know Japan was in financial crisis. Shopping is like a religion here. It's almost sexual to buy things. The smallest purchase has a hint of luxury, because of the attention they pay to each item that you buy. They bag and wrap things so beautifully, so you feel you're taking home some of the elegance of the inevitably well-presented stores. They take branding to an art form too, everything has a 'look' and conforms effortlessly to it. Many people's fashion sense is very thematised; they're 'summer of love' or 'victoriana' or 'ethnic baggy'. But this is probably how fashion works; it's just that they're good at it here.

It's raining a lot today. Only the second day that's lived up to my 'rainy season' expectations.

Did you know in Japan the year is 21? That's all I know about it.

Edit: I don't mean shopping is a religion. I mean it's very ritualistic as an action here.

Melange du chose au deux jours

Yesterday I tried to find fabric town, but got lost in 'normal people live here' town. It was lovely, actually. Lots of tiny narrow streets. I found a shopping street that I decided was functional and not uber consumerist and paradoxically went a bit buying things crazy. The ceramics they have here are to die for ... I still want to go back and buy the $50 red mug ... today I managed to only spend money on lunch and entry to a parky thing. What a star! Such restraint!

I've seen no art yet, I keep wandering on foot and getting lost in neighbourhoods or shops, or getting lost on a bike. Tomorrow I am totally going to see some art.

Today there were iris fields, which were frankly a little bit overrated (or perhaps it made me nostalgic for my Mum's garden). It was full of Japanese couples of a certain age, which is nice, and many were doing watercolours of the flowers. Yesterday I bought these dried banana things and they are so amazing that I've now looked up whether I'm allowed to bring them back to Aust (I think so, if I declare them) ... soooo goooooood.

What else happened in Tokyo? My charming host took me to a beautiful bookstore, full of gorgeous books on the twentieth century avant gardes. I can't tell you how pleasing a second-hand bookstore can be made to the eye in this country. I just can't. I exhibited great restraint in not buying the book of photographs of Morandi's studio in Bologna, or the Fluxus artist's book wherein all the contents of a table are described in great detail.

Oh, curry is ready! I'm being so well-looked after.

What a lovely day

Today's experiences included, but were not limited to, the following:
- ate raw chicken (chicken sashimi!)
- rode a bike through lots of places I can't name
- ate charcuterie
- withdrew cash (yay for functioning ATM card! - long boring story)
- bought a fancy pencil
- looked at seven floors of fabrics
- ordered udon from a machine, which was then served by a person
- drank a beer brewed in Brooklyn
- saw crickets for sale in a little cage box thingy (like guppies!)
- sat on a heated toilet seat (how can I ever go back??)

(no particular order)

Can barely keep my eyes open.

snotty

So I should post because I'm bad with the posting at the moment and my New Second Half of 2009's resolution is blog more. Give the people what they want, I say.

So, still, I am in Tokyo. I've been here just a day. Bliggedy-blogger, who I can't link to because for some reason things look DIFFERENT on computers here, took me out with her to a distant suburb where a lovely friend taught us how to do colographs in her gorgeously lovely Japanese apartment with her many many yen printing press. Which was a nice change to spending the first day shopping.

I think I am going to go and wander around now. Get some lovely things (that was spoken like Edina in Ab Fab when she goes to Morocco to acquire things for her shop. Lots of lovely *things*). Some of which may be photos or ramen.

Um ... arigato? No, wait, what I mean is sayonara, a bientot.

Post script: I forgot about the title. I have a rotten cold. Apparently you're not supposed to blow your nose on the street in Japan (you should use a tissue! har har har). Um, so, like, that explains the title, and allowed me to slip in a bad pun. Hooray!