cooking with park chan kook

The other day we had a lovely afternoon inventing new delicacies with artist Park Chan Kook, a Korean artist whose social practice often involves inviting local people to make a meal together using improvised ingredients and tools. Each participant brought an ingredient: a bunch of bananas, a big jar of miso, a bottle of rice wine vinegar, or several bunches of greens... and then we all worked together to make the meal. It really highlighted the differences between Korean and Japanese cooking and eating styles - whereas Koreans are very comfortable with big, shared meals and experimental dishes, the Japanese typically stick to specific traditional recipes... and shared food (especially food that everyone has been touching) is a little bit squeamish-making for people here.

Still, it was a pretty good time for all, involving a lot of giggling over what to roll up in the Vietnamese spring roll wrappers and Chan's bananas fried directly on the portable burner... and some interesting jellyfish sightings in the water next to the food prep area. Since most of the "cooks" involved were artists-in-residence at BankART, our collective meal wound up being quite a lovely spread, even if not all of it was eaten.

bus = bar

As I was first settling in at BankART, I remember being vaguely aware of the big run-down bus parked on the waterfront deck with the words “Nikka Whiskey Bus Restaurant” painted on the side. It wasn’t until a week into things that I found out there’s actually a fully-functioning, totally candlelit bar in there that’s only open late at night. The ceiling is plastered with hundreds of meishi from visitors over the years, and two small party rooms in the back. The price is steep – about $13 US for a single beer (!) though the owner did bring out small dishes of nuts, fresh fruit slices, and crackers periodically. Totally worth it once, for the atmosphere alone.

beating the heat in Yokohama

It has been a hot few months in most parts of the world this year. In Japan, it's been blindingly, gaspingly hot. Apparently this is fairly normal here. During the sweltering rainy season, I laughed when I was told that summer season wouldn't officially start until Marine Day on July 19th. But as the moisture cleared and was replaced by a relentless, beating sunshine starting at 4am every morning (meaning that by 9am it's about 98 degrees Fahrenheit outside) the reality of the situation began to sink in.

It's been this way every summer for centuries here, and given the necessity of leaving air-conditioned spaces the Japanese have figured out a lot of additional ways to deal with the hot summer sun - some very old and some new. I'm surprised more of these devices haven't caught on in the Southern U.S. Here are a few:

* futuristic-looking, mist-emitting architecture on my local outdoor shopping street
* hand fans, folding and otherwise. Traditional, practical and portable. Also sometimes free, when emblazoned with ads.
* umbrellas and parasols - using your umbrella on a dry day may sound silly, but it makes a lot of sense when the temperature difference between shade and sunshine is vast.
* neck-cooling collars
* restaurants and shops that blast the AC into the street through open doors (??)
* covered walkways and shopping arcades (also crucial during rainy season)
* mentholated cooling shirt spray (here's one user's review)
* ice-cold beverage vending machines on every corner. And I mean every. corner.
* soft-serve ice cream in every flavor and combination you can possibly imagine: canteloupe, green tea, ramune soda, apricot, black sesame, and apparently even cuttlefish. Check out the Japanese Ice Cream blog for more.
* arcwelder-style full-face sun visors
* elbow-length gloves -- okay, so on a comfort level this has always baffled me, but it does help prevent sunburn.

There's a nice Japan Times piece on some more of the more newfangled heat-beating products you can find at your local Japanese convenience store. As I sit here in my muggy apartment covered in sweat I'm rather excited to try some of these out.

rural towns + contemporary art in Japan

I was in the midst of another post about beating the heat in Yokohama when our friend Stanley Murashige passed along this New York Times article about a small Japanese village's attempts to attract tourism by combining its rice paddies with a little genetic modification. The story's quite bittersweet, though the end result is pretty arresting.

Inakadate's plight is part of a larger national trend of rural depopulation as birthrates decline and young people flock to bigger cities for job opportunities. The interesting side of this otherwise unfortunate situation is that small towns have become the new alternative spaces for contemporary art, with residency programs and site-specific projects popping up all over the place. Japan's commercial gallery system - which usually requires artists to pay gallery rent and watch over the space during visiting hours - is too expensive for many artists here, and many are heading for the hills (literally) to make art where space is more plentiful, cost of living is cheap, and the towns are rich in local tradition and ancient history. Arts tourism has become the new hope for many small towns, even if terms like "sound art" or "social engagement" aren't part of the local vocabulary. One great example of this phenomenon is the Echigo-Tsumari Triennial, which features installation by a host of internationally-acclaimed artists every three years, accompanied by experiential art hotels and innovative eateries that incorporate the talents and tastes of local residents. I really hope to get to visit one of these years. It's also the idea behind the Setouchi Art Festival I just returned from, which launched this year to much fanfare, and rightly so.

Will contemporary art help preserve rural Japan? Only time will tell. Either way, here's hoping that the village of Inakada manages to continue supporting its residents, with or without the rice-paddy graphics.

Inakadate image (above) borrowed from the NY Times; photo of Sue Pedley installation at Setouchi Festival (at right) taken by me.

artists you should know about part II: Yumiku Utsu

I stumbled across Yumiku Utsu's photography three times tonight during a visit to the excellent art bookstore/gallery Nadiff in Tokyo, and I'm so glad I did.

First I noticed her visceral depictions of eroticized shellfish and walnuts in the Australian food-as-art mag Condiment, which is well worth a look in and of itself.

Then I noticed a poster hanging near the gallery entrance of the eerie-looking cat photograph below (spoiler: not the cat's real eyes).

Finally I came across her totally sexy full-color book Out of the Ark, which accompanied her solo show at Nadiff's G/P gallery in 2009. The catalogue contains hundreds of the most drippingly graphic combinations of insects, toys, seafood, chocolate, and found photography you can imagine - funny and gorgeous and disturbing all at once. What I really enjoy about her work is how skillfully she manages to merge two- and three-dimensional images with her camera, something I've been particularly interested in these days.

Thus far it looks like Out of the Ark is only available in Japan, but here's hoping that it - and Utsu's work- finds itself overseas soon. Thus far Utsu has had shows in Budapest, Korea, China and her native Japan, but no U.S. appearances to date. Curators take note!

fish food

a few images here of a project that Andy's up to, which I helped him document the other day: he's been cutting jellyfish and stingrays - local wildlife in the river here - out of konjac / konnyaku, a jellylike food made from a sort of potato-starch that's very good for your health. At first it just looks like something out of a strange cooking show (of which there are many here), but then we set off for the river's edge, to encourage some cross-cultural exchange between the artificial konnyaku creatures and the ones in the water.

communication

Well, time is flying over here, and I've gotten behind on posting as I try to make a lot of art and get out to see events into the evening. Since my last post I met Kione, a rather brilliant bilingual teenager here who, like me, happens to be very passionate about zines. She helped me translate and launch a mini interview-based zine project about communicating with others when language is an obstacle (which it surely is for me here). It's hard anywhere to get strangers to stop and talk with you, but difficulties with language and etiquette make that ten times more so. It was a lot of fun, though, especially when we managed to snag a whole group of uniformed schoolgirls on their lunch break.

I've also discovered a really nice stand making fresh, delicious, fish-shaped taiyaki cakes near the train station, went for a muddy mountain hike in Kamakura, made plans to go to the Tanabata festival with friends tomorrow, and spent some solid studio time working on drawings and animation that I promise to post photos of soon. This Friday I'll give an artist talk with Andy Yang about a collaborative video we're working on together, so that will be a good excuse to get some images together.

funwari cheese dog

Yesterday I didn't have time to pack myself lunch, so I walked over to a Daily convenience store around 1pm to get something to eat. Normally these shops are chock full of fish+rice balls, cheap bento boxes, and sealed off little pocket sandwiches full of peanut fluffernutter, but arriving after the lunch rush in downtown Yokohama meant that the place was picked CLEAN. As such, my options were limited. I found some snap pea crisps, my favorite bottled milk tea, and an intriguing snack food that looked like a cross between a waffle and a hot dog. It came in double-packs in one of two flavors: caramel or cheese. I went with the latter out of curiosity and a desperate craving for something cheddar-related, and found myself with a dense, sweet, mapley waffle thing with a core of some mild yellow stuff. Huh. I decided to start with that for my daily drawing. Why not? Here's a photo of the thing, and of the small cutout drawings I started working on. I hope to have a whole wall of such things by the end of the month. Itadakimasu!