Arty-choke

The bi-annual Design Festa at the Tokyo Big Site Centre in sunny Odaiba is the biggest art & design festival in South East Asia. Kudos to Hayley for getting involved as a photographer and interviewer of some of the thousands of artists showcased last weekend. There was so much to see, possibly too much, hence the frankly unforgiveable title of this entry.

The first day kicked off with a performance by Kogakusyu-sho whose combination of piano, Taiko and some other drum (creating a sound reminiscent of The Bad Plus) thundered through the Asgardian acoustics of the Big Site (described by Brian, who joined us for the second day as "an utterly wanton waste of vertical space"), like a troupe of concrete rhinos in a rush. I was a hairs breadth away from buying a CD, so impressed was I by the sonic onslaught...but then they reminded me why I'm turned off a great deal of Japanese pop...to call upon an earlier entry, Japanese pop is, by and large, a saccharine tapestary of unremitting cheese.



Disciplines were many, from pottery to painting, design, music, dance, fashion, crafts, make-up, digital projections, performance art...too much. By the end of the second day I was still coming across new things to see, and I spent about sixteen hours wandering around.

Some work was, sadly, unphotographable, due in part to my skills as a photographer, but also display space. I wish, for example, that I'd managed to get a photo of this delightful womans' work, but the weekend wasn't without its' gems.



The Design Festa Gallary in sunny Harajuku will display anybodys' work, so the Festa was mostly made up of independant artists, but organisations such as Digital Hollywood, apparently, a famous graphics school and representatives of sundry studios were present, but the stars of the whole event, as far as I was concerned, were Hanakengo. Click the picture and follow the directions to see them in all their glory.

For those of you as perplexed as I, their website might provide some invaluable insights...but then again, it may not.



For those of you who don't recognise him, that's Taiwans' Mr Eyeball (possibly related to The Residents), momentarily caught off-guard before his performance...



...which made about as much sense as Hanakengo, but was very entertaining non the less.

Too much to see, too much to write about, like giant bubble making machines...



...sinister Finnish jewellery...



...sentient spermatozoa...



...apples with faces...



...old men carving...



...puppets of old men drawing...



...forbidden Library books...



...green fabric boxes on wheels that lure children into some unexpected peril...



...it's enough to make you just...



...and who can blame them? They must have been dancing for about sixteen hours.