TAB Talks #2 "Blah Art Blah Blah?"
at Gotanda Sonic
in the Nakameguro area
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A young artist Ryo Morimoto, who has spent the last four years producing 10 minute live broadcast spots on the local NHK with another young artist Yoshiaki Kuribara, kicked off the evening introducing himself and his works on a series of slides. Carefully choosing words, he explained his work, sometimes talking about personal experience, such as falling in love with a woman during creating one of the works shown on slide.
After the presentation, Hiromi Yoshii, a prominent gallery owner who is active in the Tokyo art scene, and Darryl Jingwen Wee, a writer and frequent contributor for TABlog, took the stage to discuss their perspective on the topic.
Yoshii brought up a talk given by Richard Serra twelve years ago in Germany which the artist, instead of explaining his work, spent good amount of time complaining to the Mayor of the city where his work was installed. “The way artist communicate should take many forms and it is not the first priority for them to explain their works like a critic.” Expounding further, Yoshii said that ideally an artist should use multiple mediums to express his “speech.”
From the writer’s perspective, Darryl brought up the point that there is a constant danger for artists’ work to be “misinterpreted” by critics. A member of the audience said “I would still love to go see Pollack’s talk if he was still alive. I love his work, and I want to know what kind of person he is”.
Morimoto, quietly listening to the conversation in the back, was asked to do another talk with the feedbacks from the discussion to wrap up the evening. To the audience’s surprise, Morimoto began to apologize. The works he had earlier presented as his own were in fact of fellow artist, Kuribara’s and on more than one occasion he had “stolen” ideas from him. “As a matter of fact, the entire speech had been his idea” he said. Earlier in the evening, Kuribara was handing out popcorn to the audience at the entrance and did not take any part in the discussion. Surprised, the audience suddenly realized that the entire talk had been Kuribara’s “artist’s talk”.
“None of you probably know who I am and what my art work is. But I am hoping that you will like me, so that you want to get to know me, my work, and that is how I could best explain my work”, said Morimoto as the audience clapped.
The next TAB Talks will take place on March 25. Paul Baron will host an evening with an exciting group of French artists and designers. We hope you all will join us for this very special evening.
here we go again
2008-03-20
Backing up a moment before Morimoto said these last prophetic words he also CONFESSED, “Sometimes I see something made by someone else and I wish it was made by me so i make it again and pretend it is mine. I pretend so hard that i even begin to think it was my idea. BUT IT WAS NOT! I am a Fraud!” then he goes on to say that he just wants people to like and admire him. This was an amazing truth that naively escaped his lips. Most of the “artists” today in Tokyo are mere copying thieves. People are noticing… People are getting fed up… How foolish do you all take the visitors to be?
here we go again
2008-03-20
The problem with this talk was the assumptions made.
First I question is there anything wrong with artists’talks? I hardly believe so. complaining about Richard Serra’s Talk 10 years ago, if one were to find out, first if it was indeed an artist’s talk and not a Symposium with government representatives and curators/critics and moderators… secondly, what was the topic? was it public reaction? was it what to do with art that the public fights? was it what rights do artists have over the removal of their works? None of this was credited. Then I have seen many artists talks, The onus is upon the artist their representative. If the artist cannot speak well publicly they need to decline. This is a system of KNOW your OWN STRENGTHS and WEAKNESSES. Moreover what i have noticed is that those artists who are actually creating something of substance tend to be excellent speakers and those who are trying to bamboozle the audience into buying the emperor’s new clothes tend to fail miserably because many people in the audience know that Rikrit Tiravanija and Tetsuo Orimoto have worked this food generosity angle longer and deeper than Kuribara. So in the prophetic explanation of morimoto neither could really discuss this work becasue they know it is not their own! It was simply ripped off of some other artists who just so happen to be rather well known!