Artwork from Takashi Murakami at the Hong Kong art fair 2010
Sailor Moon (1992 – 1997) transcended Japanese anime and reached a pure state of corrosiveness. Sailor Moon is an artificial flavouring substance: depthless, highly satisfying and addictive. It is more than any artwork of Takashi Murakami the best illustration of his superflat art movement, depicting “the shallow emptiness of Japanese consumer culture”. The original manga is a little different from the anime and somehow more spiritual. The anime version expunged its scenario of any particularity, leading to the ultimate stereotype of the Japanese girl, flanked with kitsch accessories ready for merchandising, cheap love stories and consumerist lifestyles. The characters were designed as for any animes to appeal both to girls and perverts thanks to a quota of ‘subliminal’ underwear scenes. Their transformations into self-centred wonder women are the climax of every episodes (otherwise rather mediocre in their drawings). The same scenes of transformations are shown again and again, becoming objects of cult, obsessing and hypnotic. They saturate the narrative with their superflat symbolic.
Since my current occupation is to write a graphic novel, I’m free to work wherever I want. So, I have decided to stay in Berlin for few months. Here are few glimpses from the autumn:
What you can see when you walk the streets of North Neukölln for many hours such as I did.
An electronic shop on Hermannstrasse in Neukölln. People have more time in Berlin it seems, and they use it well.
A building in Volkspark Hasenheide, when futurism meets Berlin culture!
Since my current occupation is to write a graphic novel, I’m free to work wherever I want. So, I have decided to stay in Berlin for few months. Here are few glimpses from my last summer:
A magical art installation by Hans Peter Feldmann at the Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof. The objects are mechanically rotated and form a moving scene of shadows on the wall.
A ceiling painting by Daniel Richter at the Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof. The contemporary work fits somehow well in the room.
The strange atmosphere of the forgotten Königskolonnaden built in 1780 in Kleistpark
Two videos that I made to illustrate my Study on Verticality were displayed few weeks ago on the screens of the Toronto subway, thanks to the Toronto Urban Film Festival. The ‘Concentration’ video was part of ‘The medium is the Message’ selection, and the ‘Elevation’ video was presented in the ‘Urban Ideas and Politics’ section.
I have always been convinced that video art should not only be screened in galleries and small cinemas, but also in public spaces and unusual locations. Many of my videos don’t require the same kind of attention than a film, displaying them in public spaces can prevent some of the misunderstandings deriving from how we are accustomed to consume films in a ‘formal’ context. So I hope that these distribution channels will become more frequent!
