Hyperculture Happy Fun Time Extravangaza Yay February 13
Japanese Culture + Hyperculture is the exhibit at the Kennedy Center about… Japanese culture.
It’s still there this weekend, so go see it if you’re interested. I took pictures, but I can’t figure out how to upload them right now, so just look at these until I can upload my crappy ones.
Started out looking at the “Koi Currents” Textile Installation, which was basically crazy textiles in the shape of headless koi all leading to a wall behind which a koi pond was projected on the ground and examples of the textiles were hung on a clothesline so you could feel them. It was pretty impressive. Also impressive was the extremely cool Yayoi Kusama rooms, one black dots on yellow (Dots Obsession - Day) and the other yellow dots on black (Dots Obsession - Night). The black dots on yellow was actually somewhat painful to my eyes, but I really wanted to see her work, as I have made myself familiar with her for the past sevenish years, due to Superchunk’s Art Class (Song for Yayoi Kusama) (and note that I was at that show in the front row and had to constantly adjust to see around the camera guy) and then because her stuff is just so awesome and insane (literally, as she does sort of live in a mental institution).
The folding screens and lacquer sculptures were nice, and the Manga just really made me want to go spend hundreds of dollars on the Miyazaki books and DVDs. I almost picked up the Densha Otoko DVD, but that was $30. Next to that was the robot area, with some cool robots, moving around, an Aibo, and this, quite possibly the most impressive thing there. I have never seen so many robots in one place, and there were even ones I’d heard of, like Voltron. Just really really awesome.
I then went on to a robot lecture, which was a horrible mistake. Dr. Yoshikazu Suematsu talked about Karakuri dolls, which were pretty neat, as long as you ignored him reading the text from the powerpoint slides. Of course, I still almost fell asleep multiple times in it, because he wasn’t really a great speaker in English, and I wasn’t the only one falling asleep around me. That said, I didn’t know about them, and I used to read about the European versions when I was younger, so it was cool to get a different side of the story.
In brief: robots awesome, art installations awesome, collection of manga awesome, robot lecture horribly, painfully boring.
Matthew Barney Gumble Feb 14
“Next to that was the robot area, with some cool robots, moving around, an Aibo, and this, quite possibly the most impressive thing there. I have never seen so many robots in one place, and there were even ones I’d heard of, like Voltron. Just really really awesome.”
9th circle of hell, more like it. A haunting presaging of our horrible future.
Jessica Feb 16
I think this is probably an embarrassing thing to admit, but I swear it’s true: When I read “I then went on to a robot lecture,” for just the tiniest split second I was picturing an old-fashioned boxy shiny 50s-era robot at a lecturn. I thought, “Whoa! What did he talk ab-” and then I stopped. And felt bad about myself.
Mayor Mark Mallory Feb 18
Ironically enough, the day before you posted this, I received from Amazon a bunch of Miyazaki DVDs…and believe it or not, Densha Otoko, too.
Caseus Velox Feb 19
I probably should actually respond now:
1) I knew you’d hate the robots.
2) I wish it had been a lecture by a robot. Would have been far more interesting.
3) I keep putting off the purchasing of all the Miyazaki films, probably until they put out a ridiculously large box set, including the other Ghibli films. Densha Otoko is crazy fun. Yay for (I hope) more reasonably priced import DVDs.