Thrills in Tokyo !

Picopico is an artist and creator of what are known as “kaiju” monsters. The word “kaiju” comes from 17th and 18th century Japan, the Edo period, when it was used to refer to strange and fantastic animals with magical powers. Today “kaiju” is a term that tends to be used for imaginary, usually big, animals. The word came back into usage in modern Japan after the release of the first Godzilla film in 1954, followed by the TV series Ultraman at the end of the 1960s. In the 1970s there was a “kaiju boom” on television.

While a literature student, Picopico, almost by accident, started making little characters out of modelling clay. He then moved onto monsters with wigs that he showed at his first exhibition. He slid graually into this new activity rather than becoming obsessed all at once. The desire to make things he had never seen did eventually start to take him over however. Over the last 5 years, Picopico has consciously kept a sketchbook to record his “kaiju” each day, keeping his hand in and exercising his imagination.

Picopico’s monsters are earthlings, not extraterrestrials or fantasy figures. They each have their own characteristics or specificities. Take the monsters “Beckos” and “Neba” for example. Picopico says, “The name “Beckos” comes from a northern Japanese dialect and means “cow”. Beckos is a horned monster. He and I are very close. I like his colour, blue, and his shape, nothing special, rather standard actually. But he has a long tongue, like the gods in Papua New Guinea. “Nottokaiju Neba” stinks and sticks to you. That’s his particularity! That’s why he’s made of natto (fermented soya seeds)!”

Picopico’s “kaiju” aren’t nasty. They live beyond the manmade concepts of good and evil, justice and injustice. “A huge “kaiju” can crush furniture or people when he walks but he does it without realizing, just because he’s moving around,” Picopico explains. The monsters spark various reactions: fear among children and a cult for the strange among adults. But monsters amuse and intrigue everyone, don’t they. They have an incredible power just by dint of being!

© 2008 text: Franck Stofer, translation: Jack Sims, photo: Eric Bossick

Mambonsai is a new pop culture pastime that involves decorating bonsais with small plastic figurines. Bonsais, miniature trees, bound and cultivated in pots, are part of Japanese cultural heritage. No surprise then that Mambonsai is seen as heresy by the purists. But at the end of the day the activity is perhaps not all that absurd. Much in the way you might place little plastic people alongside model electric trains, Mambonsai requires a little scenographic imagination. The aim is to recreate a slice of life, ordinary or strange, inspired by the forms of dwarfed trees.

Mambonsai won the best new idea award at the Japan Hobby Association in 2001 and the number of adepts has been growing round the world ever since. As an activity, it lightens the weight of tradition in the art of bonsai. It appeals to all ages and only requires a good dose of humour. Invented in the fertile mind of Tokyo Panorama Mambo Boys percussionist, Paradise Yamamoto, Mambonsai is a portmanteau word that reflects his passion for two diametrically opposed worlds: the mambo and bonsais. A Master of Mambonsai, Paradise Yamamoto makes regular TV appearances in Japan to share his enthusiasm in public.

Paradise Yamamoto is an unusual character. Born in 1962 in Sapporo in Hokkaido in the north of Japan, he began his career as a car designer but quickly developed skills in half a dozen other disciplines. A great Mambonsai master of course but also an expert in bath salts, a critic of “luxury” eat-as-much-as-you-can buffets, a connoisseur of gyoza (Chinese ravioli) and, proudest of all, the first Santa in Japan to be accredited by the World Santa Claus Congress, based in Greenland. An atypical career that Paradise Yamamoto cultivates with natural good humour and aesthetic tastes.

Several works have been published on the elfish art of Mambonsai. Photos of these pastoral scenes are a real delight. Hole in One is of a group of golfers absorbed in the game on a carpet of moss, Capturing Bin Laden ~ Just Round the Corner shows the capture of public enemy number 1 at the summit of a miniature rock and in 2020 A Space Odyssey a team of scientists clad in anti-bacterial suits analyse huge extraterrestrial mushrooms.

© 2008 text: Franck Stofer, translation: Jack Sims, photo: Eric Bossick

“Seamoons” robot singers with paper lungs, "Ultra-folk" automatic guitars and "Koi-beat" mechanical rhythm box¸ the creative genius of Maywa Denki outs its efforts into paradoxes: passionate goldworking / off-the-wall public presentations; innovative artistic pretentions/assumed marketing strategy. Like Bruno Munari, Nobumichi Tosa breathes life into his resin and aluminium robots, irresistible and capricious machines, whose vain mechanical beauty are much vaunted by Tosa.

Old Tosa created Maywa Denki in 1969. One of the multitude of small businesses that used their flexibility for the benefit of the major Japanese companies and that formed the basis of Japan’s growth and dynamism during the Sixties. Unfortunately, like many others, Maywa Denki suffered a downturn in fortunes and closed its doors in 1979. In 1993, Mr Tosa’s two rejects, Masamichi and Nobumichi, created the artistic group known as Maywa Denki.

Initially performing in the shopping malls of Tokyo, after a few appearances on television, Maywa Denki become an unmissable artistic machine. They use business words and images to disseminate their work. On the one hand, the uniform reassures the Japanese, but, on the other, the effect produced by a team of blue men wearing caps who struggle to present cranky creations is simply irresistible.

In 2001, there was an internal reorganization : big brother Masamichi, a little cranky, retired at the age of 35. Nobumichi Tosa, the hard-working and applied younger brother, was then, naturally and officially, appointed President of Maywa Denki. In fact, the concept was born out of Nobumichi Tosa’s end of study project. He created a series of instruments of absurd, fish-like design that he presented, wrapped up, to the July. Since then, he has kept his hand on the tiller and steers a course between creative work and public presentations: the Grand-Guignol aspect.

These objects are manufactured in single copies. Doomed to remain prototypes, their usage is very limited, almost nil. Nobumichi Tosa works with gold in his workshop, where he lauds the mechanical beauty of his creations that are the result of fusion between resin and aluminium. Some machines are sometimes reproduced in small production series, simplified and purified versions of the prototypes. A third level of objects is marketed commercially, signature Maywa Denki gadgets: electrical extensions in the shape of a fin, small plastic men who tap their head...

Maywa Denki’s work fall into one of three classifications : Naki, Tsukuba and Edelweiss. Although these series are distinct from each other, there are points of connection between them. Naki is the first series to be developed by Nobumichi Tosa on the theme of Who am I ? 26 objects in the shape of a fish focus on him and his relationship with the world. The Naki series comprises some of Maywa Denki’s emblematic instruments Denki with the Koi-beat, a portable rhythm box in the shape of a carp with incorporated electrical switches, or the famous Pachi-moku, a type of two-tone marimba worn on the back like two metallic wings and played by clicking one’s fingers.

© 2006 text: Franck Stofer, photo: Albane Laure

Yae Akaiwa and Kensuke Sembo meet during college, she studying sculpture and he studying design. They start working on projects together after graduation. The word "Exonemo" is entirely made-up and meaningless : not betraying its creators' country of origin it avoids any narrow-minded reading of their work through the filter of "Japaneseness". It also stays completely open and allows the artists to make it evolve without having to observe an underlying agenda. Finally, its pure artificial nature unsures that all searches on the Internet link to the duo's website.

The Internet is indeed their first and main instrument, as Akaiwa and Sembo chose from the very beginning to make the Web both their art gallery (exonemo.com) and main creative tool, for its easy access and quick sharing qualities. The question of how the Internet and computers change our perception of the world naturally becomes the focus of Exonemo's interactive, fun, immediately comprehensible and strangely poetical works.

In addition to works displayed on the Internet, since 2000 the duo has also participated in more than 40 festivals and exhibitions worldwide. The installations created for those events also require the public's participation and play around the space in which they are presented. In "Shi Ka Ku No Mu Kou" ("on the other side of the square") a graphic tablet is left at the visitor's disposal in a room which lights turn out as soon as someone picks up the stylus. One must then draw in the dark and the results are showed on the walls of an adjacent room. Exonemo have also performed on stage improvising visual and sound pieces with circuit-bent toys. They have also organized circuit-bending workshops and improvisation jam sessions with children.

Far from the dryness of conceptual art, Exonemo focuses above all things on fun and communication, as proves the Japanese edition of the Dorkbot festival which the duo curates, getting together a heterogeneous bunch of musicians, artists and handymen, "anyone willing to show something funny with electricity".

Exonemo's work allows the public to take some sort of revenge at technologies that are increasingly complex and important in our daily life, demystifying it through destruction, error and mutation processes before eventually reappropriating it in a creative way. Akaiwa and Sembo never consider progress an end in itself, but as an ever changing tool retaining the power to break the conscience of both the artist and public, increasing it tenfold with a heavy dose of unexpected and creating a new beauty.

© 2006 text: Franck Stofer, photo: Albane Laure