invigilator: tokyo

more people; affecting more space

probably the most difficult thing about the event was trying to find an equivalent for “invigilator” in Japanese. We trawled the dictionary but so many watching/guardian type words seem to come with a lot of baggage through association with being told what to do by a person of higher rank. Nothing seemed to have the feeling of benevolence we wanted.

We

In the end we settled for “kizuiteimasu” – I am noticing/aware of things.

Whilst waiting for invigilator #3 at the station we realised we could be using the time as an aquivalent to the 30 mins delay I experienced on my way to work. (incidentally, we did our invigilation in the evening – taking into account the time differences we reckoned we’d be starting out at about the same time as I would bnormally leave home…)

Rather than just hanging around we put up our signs and started invigilating.

Many people swerved to read our signs announcing that we were noting varous things in the area, not many went so far as to make eye contact. When they did we smiled and wished them a good evening.

After meeting our third team member we moved on to Nishi-Shinjuku to find a good starting point. We selected a huge office block building (I think it was an insurance company) where we found a doorway with a stream of office workers leaving (at that time it was probably about 8 pm)

….to be continued next time I go to an internet cafe – time’s up for now…

room with a view

found an interesting view from my ryokan room after all…

asakusa

For the last few days I’ve been staying in a ryokan in Asakusa: somewhere my friends tell me is very old style Japan.

I don’t think much of the view from my room.

However, on the plus side I’m about 20 seconds’ walk from Kaminari dori and Sensoji temple. I battled the crowds on Sunday morning, but by far prefer the place at night when it has room to breathe.

yaribi

After some serious Googling for artist-led projects in and around Tokyo, I ended up following a link to the Yaribi gallery. As is often the case in these situations, I’m following a link from an English-language site to a Japanese one, so I tend to get most of my information from the link rather than the site itself. In this case:

Yaribi is a little wooden hut constructed illegally on the roof of the painting department of Tama University by a number of students. They organise exhibitions in it. …The structure will stay on the roof for a while, and has the support of a number of professors. I suggested they perhaps involve curating and critical studies students as well as artists, to try create a broader public platform. Anyway, it is wonderful to see such initiatives in the normally rather quiet and reserved spaces of art schools.

All the universities here are just closing down for their Summer vacation so I thought I’d missed an opportunity to visit Yaribi, but fortunately they had two Open Campus days just at the time when I was staying at a friend’s house close by.

The campus is on a hillside on what I assume is the edge of Hashimoto. The buildings are that Eastern Asian concrete type of institutional architecture that I somehow simultaneously find quite uplifting but also incredibly bland. Hmmm.

Anyway, I finally tracked down the East painting building and the Yaribi rooftop.

Thanks to the language barrier again, I’m really not in a position to be able to say much about either the show or the organisational set-up but as far as I can make out there was previously a more ramshackle construction on the site that was made more solid in the early months of this year.

Thanks to some sheets of hardboard, some scaffolding, a website and a few judiciously placed tarpaulins, Yaribi seemed to me to be a really viable exhibition space. There are quite a large number of staff (a mix of current and graduated students?) and, judging from their website, a busy programme.

I’m really excited that something like this is happening, although I’m not really sure how autonomous it is and it’s still very much within the ‘safe zone’ of an art university (and probably within the students’ own department at that). I’d love to see more of this Outside, both in Japan and in Brum.

Could the use of scaffolding lend itself to a modular approach and a space that could be quite mobile? …or is it the semblance of something permanent that gives this project its strength?

sandwiched

Over the last week I’ve been able to cobble together a couple of fairly respectable sandwichboards that I intend to use to mark out an area under the watchful eye of a group invigilation.

It required an interesting combination of tools and materials from Meg’s studio and things like tweezers and a compass that I have in my rucksack.

(just to put things to scale, the table is about a foot high…)

Finding people to work with for the invigilation is proving much more difficult so, for the time being, the boards remain blank and the red t-shirts un-worn.

Friday round-up

A quick round-up of what I’ve done this week because I seem to have been too busy to either take many photos or add posts to this blog…

Saturday:
Arrive, go to Yokosuka, rest of day spent crashed out on sofa with the Polish cold I caught on the plane.

Sunday:
More crashing and then racing against the incoming typhoon with a quick dash to the shops to sort out telephones. Dashing back home for my passport, dashing back to the shops, dashing back to crash.

Monday:
2 hour commute to Joshibi University to help Toshino prepare some works for an up-coming exhibition submission deadline. My inept felt-making skills became a part of the open campus skills as they tried to explain what a gaijin who didn’t really speak Japanese was doing working there.

Tuesday:
Now based near Hashimoto, a day at Meg’s studio.

Wednesday:
Journey into around Tokyo for a gallery marathon

Thursday:
Back to Joshibi to catch up with the people who weren’t in before for Open Campus. Over to the 100yen shop to stock up on materials for Invigilator etc.

Friday:
Over to the fairly local (1 hour walk) Tama Art Uni to have a look at the student/graduate run gallery-on-a-roof Yaribi. A good mooch around the rest of the uni too because it was open campus. Hopefully more to follow on this soon if I get the chance…

13 galleries

18/07/2007

Takashima, Sato, Yamamoto Gendai, Kodama, SCAI the Bath House, Muramatsu, Nantenshi, Yamaguchi, INAX, Humanite, Koyanagi, Natsuka, Grafica.

My feet hurt.

arrival and getting started

I arrived in Japan shortly before a typhoon and a large earthquake although fortunately did not feel the effects of either (though by the time we saw a patch of blue sky on Monday morning it was notable enough to take a photo of it!)

Having sorted out communications I’m now in the slow process of sussing out how what I want to do fits in and around what everyone else here is doing. The schedule’s having to be quite flexible, but that’s fine ‘cos there’s always something interesting to do.

Yesterday I went to Megumi’s studio where she’s helping Linda produce a large fibre-glass sculpture made from mouldings of a classin Celica car they negotiated access to.

Needless to say I wasn’t really prepared for a day grinding glass fibres so me and my t-shirt and shorts were entrusted with documentation duties. I also had a chance to start making some props for a planned invigilation I’m hoping to do.

So, Meg and Linda were all togged-up with safety gear and trying not to inhale or wear too many nasty substances and all I had to do was figure out how the hand saw worked…

私は覗きますYO!

わたしはmad-glassから覗くYO
いつでもどこでも　
覗けない物は何も無い
心の中だってお見通し
Be carefuuuuuuuuuuuul!

Twenty Jaffa Cakes

A 6 stanza themed renga form collaboratively written with Paul Conneally.

Form devised by poet Gary Gay.

Twenty Jaffa Cakes

a rengay

twenty jaffa cakes
a mistake to try and take
in her hand luggage

a slow and silent pat down
from the woman on gate one

stilettoes x-rayed
but her carbon footprint is
not for scrutiny

a hugely fat man
asks for the front port aisle seat
to rest his bad leg

smile and permanent jetlag
slept in uniform again

deep into morning
i finish my book somewhere
over africa

paul conneally and nikki pugh
July 12th 2007

My plane leaves at 8.30 tomorrow morning. I arrive at Narita on Saturday morning and from there I have to negotiate my way to Yokosuka. After a week or so in various locations around Kanagawa-ken I dive into Tokyo for about a fortnight.