New Stories from the Edge of Asia: Tabaimo: Her Room

NEW STORIES FROM THE EDGE OF ASIA

TABAIMO: HER ROOM

h e r

r o o m

SAN JOSE MUSEUM OF ART

“SHE” IS A WORD USED TO DESCRIBE ONE INDIVIDUAL.

In this exhibition, I created four pieces in the installation—danDAN, yudangami, akunin, and aitaisei-josei—based on the character, “Miho Kaneko.” I have never met “Miho Kaneko,” but I created this person in all these works as someone from my generation, or a neighbor, or someone who could possibly be myself.

She appears in the novel, titled “Villain” by Japanese author Shuichi Yoshida.

In this novel, she is a supporting character who has a relationship with Yuichi, the murderer and protagonist of the story. I feel very close to her because she only exists through Yuichi and her small part in the story. That is why I started to imagine her life beyond the novel. In everyday life, I compare myself with “her” and imagine her present life. Before I knew it, “Miho Kaneko” became a symbol to my generation, and I find myself invoking “her” many times when I express myself. “Miho Kaneko” is in this exhibition. Always the person of my delusional feelings, she breathes next to me.

“She” signifies me. “She” signifies you for me. “She” signifies “Miho Kaneko.”

Tabaimo

彼

女

部

の

屋

。

「彼女」 とはある個人を指す言葉だ。 この展覧会において、 この 「彼女」 とは、展示されてい る４つの作品に共通してモチーフとなった 「金子美保」 という人物。 しかし、 どの作品にお いても 「金子美保」 は、私が会ったことの無い人物であり、私と同年代の人物であり、 もし かしたら隣にいたかもしれない人物であり、私自身のことかもしれない人物として描い ている。 日本人作家、吉田修一によって書かれた 「惡人」 という小説に登場する彼女は、殺人を犯 してしまう主人公、祐一と過去に関係をもった女性として描かれている。相関関係として は、祐一から伸びる一本の線でしか繋がっていない 「彼女」 は、 ストーリーの中では脇役 中の脇役だ。 だからこそ、私は、彼女に親近感を感じ、彼女の描かれていない人生を想像 してしまった。 日常生活の中で、 自分の想像で作り上げた 「彼女」 と自分を比べて考えたり、 小説に描かれていない彼女の現在などを想像したりする。 いつの間にか、 「金子美保」 は、 私や私の世代を象徴する存在になってしまい、 自身を表現する上で、 「金子美保」 を引き 合いに出してしまうことが何度もあった。 私の現実の生活の中で、常に隣で息をしているように感じている妄想の人物「金子美 保」 が居る展覧会。 「彼女」 とは、誰かにとっての私を指す言葉でもあり、私にとってのあなたを指す言葉でも あり、金子美保を指す言葉でもある。 束芋

INSTALLATION VIEW OF THE EXHIBITION TABAIMO: HER ROOM AT THE SAN JOSE MUSUEM OF ART, FEBRUARY 6– AUGUST 21, 2016;

© Tabaimo. Photo by Benjamin Blackwell.

彼

女

部

の

a dream within a dream

。

Tabaimo (born Ayako Tabata in Hyogo, Japan in 1975) first addressed Japan’s unique social conditions in a series of early allegorical works with the modifier “Nippon” (Japanese) in their titles—an uncomfortable designation as most Japanese avoid sensitive topics such as sexual assault, depression, or exploitation of labor.1 In works such as Nippon no Daidokoro (Japanese Kitchen, 1999) and Nippon no Yuya— Otokoyu (Japanese Bathhouse—Gents, 2000) to Nippon no Tsukin Kaisoku (Japanese Commuter Train, 2001) and Nippon no Ouchi (Japanese Interior, 2002), the adjective changed from a cheer voicing national pride to a lens through which Tabaimo considered how a generally passive culture can accommodate ostensibly contradictory and darker elements of life.

「彼女」 とはある個人を指す言葉だ。 この展覧会において、 この 「彼女」 とは、展示されてい る４つの作品に共通してモチーフとなった 「金子美保」 という人物。 しかし、 どの作品にお いても 「金子美保」 は、私が会ったことの無い人物であり、私と同年代の人物であり、 もし かしたら隣にいたかもしれない人物であり、私自身のことかもしれない人物として描い ている。 日本人作家、吉田修一によって書かれた 「惡人」 という小説に登場する彼女は、殺人を犯 してしまう主人公、祐一と過去に関係をもった女性として描かれている。相関関係として は、祐一から伸びる一本の線でしか繋がっていない 「彼女」 は、 ストーリーの中では脇役 中の脇役だ。 だからこそ、私は、彼女に親近感を感じ、彼女の描かれていない人生を想像 してしまった。 日常生活の中で、 自分の想像で作り上げた 「彼女」 と自分を比べて考えたり、 小説に描かれていない彼女の現在などを想像したりする。 いつの間にか、 「金子美保」 は、 私や私の世代を象徴する存在になってしまい、 自身を表現する上で、 「金子美保」 を引き 合いに出してしまうことが何度もあった。

In the years that followed, Tabaimo continued her exploration of contemporary life’s puzzling nuances, though with less biting social commentary. For almost a decade, she has drawn inspiration from Shuichi Yoshida’s riveting novel Akunin (Villain),2 beginning with a group of drawings also called akunin (2006–2007) and followed by, among others, the video animation installations danDAN (2009), yudangami (2009), and most recently, aitaisei-josei (2015). In this body of work, she has focused on her own anxieties regarding modern life to reveal her innermost, sometimes meandering thoughts on selfhood and generations.

私の現実の生活の中で、常に隣で息をしているように感じている妄想の人物「金子美 保」 が居る展覧会。

束芋

tabaimo

Prominent Japanese artist Tabaimo focuses on the anxieties lurking beneath the surface of everyday life in her country to uncover a darker world behind the exterior of Japan’s well-ordered society. She projects her alluring, room-sized animations of typical, urban communal and private spaces—public bathhouses and restrooms, crowded trains, cramped apartment dwellings—onto complex architectural configurations that curve and tumble into space. Seemingly mundane situations unfold from these stagelike structures and morph into absurd (and sometimes grotesque) dreamlike narratives. Ordinary interiors mutate, isolated body parts perform tasks, and violence erupts, often directed sexually by men against female protagonists, although males also appear among Tabaimo’s spectrum of bodies under duress.

屋

「彼女」 とは、誰かにとっての私を指す言葉でもあり、私にとってのあなたを指す言葉でも あり、金子美保を指す言葉でもある。

:

:

STILL FROM DANDAN, 2009; Three-channel

video installation; Running time: 4 minutes 31 seconds; Courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo and James Cohan, New York. © Tabaimo.

Japanese author Shuichi Yoshida’s psychological thriller Akunin paints an ugly and depressing picture of life in modern-day Japan. The story begins with a murder and ends in a heartbreaking twist of fate. Entangled in a web of lies, deceit, and loneliness, youthful characters grapple with questions of ethics and morality as they come to terms with living in an increasingly online, virtual world. A succession of first-person narratives exposes how past events, many of them private, online affairs too personal or illicit to reveal to anyone in the real world, have shaped each character’s particular worldview, though surprisingly they all strive for the same things in life: companionship, love, and second chances. As we dive deeper into the story, we come to understand the unique and quixotic challenges of navigating between Japanese tradition and modernity.

likewise provide a long, continuous narrative that flows from right to left like a traditional Japanese scroll. The fluid, confident lines and otherworldly characters of Tabaimo’s signature graphic style appear like apparitions from her subconscious and provide insight into how the artist develops her eerie and spectacular video animations.

Despite her penchant for sensational news stories and controversial subjects,3 Tabaimo was drawn neither to Yoshida’s complex, extroverted protagonists nor to the assumed villain Yuichi Shimizu, all of whom work long hours, drive fast cars, casually date online, and frequent shabby love hotels. Instead, she turned to a minor character, the quiet and reserved Miho Kaneko, the novel’s resident ingénue.

The “perfectly ordinary” bathhouse girl meets Shimizu while dreaming of running a small diner. Her failed relationship with the suspected murderer and her lack of purpose exemplified Tabaimo’s interest in the attitudes of her own supposed “lost” generation, or what she calls the “crosscut” generation (danmen no sedai),4 caught between Japan’s celebrated postwar “solidarity” generation (dankai no sedai) and the younger “enlightened” generation (satori sedai).5 Born in the 1970s, members of the “lost” generation came of age as Japan was rapidly evolving into a technologically advanced society, due in part to the strong work ethic, selflessness, and group mentality of the “solidarity” generation.6 With one foot rooted in the past and the other pointed toward the future, the “lost” generation struggles to negotiate the space between tradition and modernity, isolationism and globalism, real and virtual. Yoshida’s ingénue Miho Kaneko became Tabaimo’s muse through whom she explored ideas of loneliness, narcissism, and failure that she believes characterize the lives of her contemporaries.

Before its publication as a book in 2007, the wildly popular Akunin appeared in 2006 as a serialized novel in Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s five national newspapers, accompanied by ink drawings Tabaimo produced on scroll-like Japanese paper; details of what would eventually become the akunin drawings were reproduced alongside Yoshida’s narrative. Using hair and hands as repetitive elements, Tabaimo selected words and phrases from his deliberate and careful prose to create her fragmentary images. Sequenced to match the serialized installments, the drawings

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To create her richly layered animations, Tabaimo produces hundreds and sometimes thousands of drawings made with an automatic brush pen, which uses natural hair to dispel ink like a traditional Japanese calligraphy brush.

Her imagery, with its muted palette, linearity, and everyday subject matter, is inspired by nineteenth-century ukiyo-e (woodblock prints) by well-known artists such as Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) and Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849). She often scans reproductions of ukiyo-e into her computer and via Photoshop lifts colors and recognizable motifs like Mount Fuji to insert into her drawings, intentionally creating a hybrid mix of past and present and blending tradition with oblique references to manga (comics) and anime (animation). She is quick to note that though she may appear to be incorporating the history of animation into her art, “the colors, textures, and designs that cover the surface of Hokusai’s prints are more important.”7 danDAN

Hokusai’s colors fill the peculiar spaces of a danchi in the alluring three-channel video animation installation danDAN as Tabaimo speculated about what happens behind closed doors. Danchi were originally built as public housing for young families and today are home to employees of large corporations and young urbanites like those of Yoshida’s novel. Projected onto a threepaneled structure, Tabaimo’s cross-sectional view of a typical danchi unfurls like a hanging scroll. Glimpses into the compact units reveal behavior that ranges from mundane to disturbing: A woman takes out the trash while a man washes his face in the toilet. Another man exits the bathroom naked, walks into the kitchen, and enters

INSTALLATION VIEW OF THE EXHIBITION TABAIMO: HER ROOM AT THE SAN JOSE MUSUEM OF ART, FEBRUARY 6– AUGUST 21, 2016;

© Tabaimo. Photo by Benjamin Blackwell.

STILL FROM YUDANGAMI, 2009;

Four-channel video installation; Running time: 4 minutes 13 seconds; Courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo and James Cohan, New York. © Tabaimo.

: a couch pulsates with neon-colored blood and transforms into a beetle as a glowing brain slips off the edge of a table.

Similar to danDAN, yudangami ends with the overturned contents of an apartment, caused this time by hair churning like waves in a turbulent sea.

Tabaimo conceived yudangami as a series of connected yet distinct narratives, reflecting her perception of the “crosscut” generation as individuals linked by their own self-absorption. She advanced this idea by projecting her animations onto a concave wall, enveloping her viewers in an artificial world and fabricating a hallucinatory state of mind. The approach recalls late nineteenth-century Western visual technologies such as the cosmorama and moving scenic panorama (both precursors to early cinema), which immersed audiences in near 360-degree environments of historical scenes, famous places, and exotic landscapes. As Bruno observed, these spaces of public spectatorship altered perceptions of time and place through architectural forms of display: curved screens, moving walls, magic lantern shows and phantasmagorias, cabinets of curiosity, the camera obscura, vitrine and window displays, dioramic shows, and tableaux vivants.12 Turn-of-the-century audiences reacted with awe and amazement as the real and virtual collapsed before their eyes.

the refrigerator. Biofluorescent pigeons fly through broken windows and roam empty apartments. Blood splatter covers a bed. No interaction takes place among the residents: this is a sterile and lonely place to live. As the animation moves upward and then down, our perception of the building is altered in a way that recalls the flattened perspective and asymmetry of ukiyo-e. Tabaimo further referred to ukiyo-e—“pictures of the floating world”—by plunging viewers into a shifting visual environment that is both dreamlike and nightmarish.

Additionally, Tabaimo’s presentation of danDAN recalls Hungarian-born Bauhaus experimental artist László Moholy-Nagy’s theory of the screen as a spatially constructed environment capable of embodying the experience of the modern-day metropolis. For Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), the screen could play host to a number of planes offering various vistas and viewpoints.8 According to visual culture scholar Giuliana Bruno, he insisted on a screen with “multiple projections and magnification” that articulated an “array of sounds” typical of urban life.9 In Tabaimo’s danDAN, acoustical reverberations of a guitar (played by the artist) and a spine-tingling bass haunt the passageways of the danchi. Finally, the contents of the entire apartment complex disappear into an endless void—an apt metaphor for the uneasiness and instability felt by the “crosscut” generation, observed the artist’s sister and studio manager Imoimo.10 Yet, a note of hope persists: as the building disappears into darkness, a fanciful, classic arcade game tune plays, evoking the excitement of falling “into an unseen world,”11 like Alice plummeting down the rabbit hole to Wonderland.

YUDANGAMI

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From near total darkness emerges a curtain of black hair, its fringes swaying hypnotically to cacophonous sound: arcade game tunes, mumbled chatter, electroacoustic riffs, and the ticking of a time bomb. In yudangami, Tabaimo imagined details of Miho Kaneko’s life left out of Yoshida’s story. Reminiscent of classic Japanese horror films, disembodied hands and limbs appear from the stringy, snakelike mane, snipping and parting to reveal chilling vignettes: A lamp dangling from the lobe of a mangled ear lights a table set for two. Index fingers bathe under a shower. A heart on

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Today’s global audiences are accustomed to multisensory devices and screens displaying interactive 3D simulated realities. The virtual is no longer terrifying, but part of everyday life, often exceeding actual lived experience.

Nowhere is this more true than in urban Japan, where media and technology overwhelm the senses. Yet, cultural traditions remain woven into the fabric of everyday life, while tradition and modernity can be at odds.

AITAISEI-JOSEI

In aitaisei-josei, Tabaimo considered how conflict between social obligation (tradition) and personal desire (modernity) can lead to unwelcome and dangerous results. Coined by

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AITAISEI-JOSEI, 2015;

Single-channel video installation; Running time: 5 minutes 33 seconds; Courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo and James Cohan, New York. Š Tabaimo. Photo by Kazuto Kakurai.

: AKUNIN, 2006–2007;

Ink on Japanese paper; 50 parts, each 13 5/8 x 53 ½ inches. Courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo and James Cohan, New York. © Tabaimo.

the artist, aitaisei-josei translates as “the relativity of two women” and was inspired by the mistranslation of the “theory of relativity” (sotai) during the Taisho period (1912–26) as “the relationship between a man and a woman” (aitai). Because aitai can also mean a “double suicide,” the theory of relativity became bemusingly associated with this fatal act.

Tabaimo’s outlandish narrative connects the troubled affair between Miho Kaneko and Yuichi Shimizu with that of the beautiful courtesan Ohatsu and the young merchant Tokubei from Sonezaki Shinju (The Love Suicides at Sonezaki), a famous eighteenthcentury bunraku (puppet theater) play written by Monzaemon Chikamatsu (1653– 1752). In Kaneko’s apartment, a sofa personifies Ohatsu and Kaneko and a table embodies the spirits of Tokubei and Shimizu. As Kaneko’s apparition shuffles around the interior space, her activities trigger bizarre events and bring inanimate objects to life: A hanging lamp morphs into a full moon that transforms into a well in the floor. A bottle exhales a plume of smoke. A tree emerges from behind the apartment and unleashes a violent lock of hair. Eventually, a viscous white substance fills the apartment and wipes away its contents.

Tabaimo’s use of props (a sofa arm and table leg) and stage design elements (translucent plastic and paint) extend the visual field of her projections into the space of spectatorship, creating a hyperreal environment that takes on a physical as well as virtual dimension. This is symptomatic of a “new spatial order,” noted art historian David Joselit, “in which the virtual and the physical are absolutely coextensive, allowing a person to travel in one direction through sound or image while proceeding

elsewhere physically.”13 In the video animation, the table twists, bends, and stretches, rubbing itself against the sofa—a metaphor for young love. The literal translation of aitai is “I want to meet”; it is often used as an expression of longing, as in “I miss you.” Tabaimo’s sofa and table “meet” in virtual space like many young adults who browse online in search of friendship and love.

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The world we inhabit today is essentially different from anything we have known. The pace, extent, and very nature of change present fundamentally new challenges.

As technological advances are made, connections with the past are lost; miscommunication between generations increases; the world becomes an abstracted reality. And yet, opportunities are boundless as pathways are opened to unimagined possibilities. In Japan, where reverence for the past directly abuts an uncharted future, the turmoil is intense. One result is anxiety—the ground itself seems shaky as everything is in continual transition. Tabaimo imagines a world where social constraints are loosened and traditional boundaries expanded—a fantastical “floating world” where one is free to drift endlessly without regret.

Rory Padeken, Assistant Curator

NOTES

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INSTALLATION VIEW OF THE EXHIBITION TABAIMO: HER ROOM AT THE SAN JOSE MUSUEM OF ART, FEBRUARY 6– AUGUST 21, 2016;

© Tabaimo. Photo by Benjamin Blackwell.

Yuka Uematsu, “Tabaimo: Outside-In,” in Tabaimo: Danmen (Kyoto: Seigensha Art Publishing, 2009), 107.

Shuichi Yoshida, Villain, trans. Philip Gabriel (New York: Vintage Books, 2010). Originally published as Akunin (Tokyo: Asahi Shimbun Publications, 2007).

Rachel Kent, “Unique Waters: Tabaimo’s Immersive Art,” in Tabaimo: Mekurumeku, ed. Rachel Kent (Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, 2014), 15.

Tabaimo, “DANMEN,” in Tabaimo: Danmen, 3.

Roland Kelts, “The Satori Generation,” Adbusters, last modified: May 7, 2014, https:// www.adbusters.org/article/the-satorigeneration/.

Ashley Rawlings, “All That Creeps Beneath the Surface: Tabaimo,” artasiapacific, November/ December 2010, http://images.jamescohan.com/www_ jamescohan_com/1d60201f.pdf.

Kent, 13.

Giuliana Bruno, Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 112.

Ibid., 113.

Imoimo quoted in Rawlings.

Ibid.

Bruno, 152.

David Joselit, “Navigating the new territory: art, avatars, and the contemporary mediascape,” Artforum, June 2005, 276.

TABAIMO: HER ROOM, on view at the San Jose Museum of Art, February 6–August 21, 2016, is the third exhibition in SJMA’s ongoing series “New Stories from the Edge of Asia,” which features work by artists from Pacific Rim countries and cultures who push the boundaries of narrative using experimental animation, video, film, gaming, and interactive technologies.

New Stories from the Edge of Asia / Tabaimo: Her Room is sponsored by the Richard A. Karp Charitable Foundation, Applied Materials Foundation, the Myra Reinhard Family Foundation, the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, and Tad and Jackson Freese.

The exhibition is made possible also by the support of the Japan Foundation, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Lucia Cha and Dr. Jerrold Hiura, Olivia Padeken-Kenolio and David Kenolio, and the Consulate of Japan in San Francisco. In-kind support for equipment is provided by James Cohan, New York, NEC Display Solutions, and Genelec.

Edited by Terry Ann R. Neff Designed by Connie Hwang Design

SAN JOSE MUSEUM OF ART

110 South Market Street, San Jose, California 95113 www.sjmusart.org