TOKYO GO!

Out of time and place…

We left Heathrow early on the morning of the 29th Feb and arrived in Tokyo on the morning of the 1st – but if it was in the UK it would have been the middle of the night on the 29th. I don’t even know if that makes sense. The time difference between here and the UK is 9 hours and boy does it turn you inside out. None of us managed to really sleep on the plane (as it was only UK afternoon time) but I tried to trick myself by putting my watch into Tokyo time straight away. This had limited effectiveness! Most of the flight I was practising silent concentratedness on not giving in to motion sickness and did really well until the descent. Made it to landing, and even off the plane, and then was promptly sick in the Narita airport toilets. Konicaiwh Japan!

We arrived at Tokyo Wonder Site full of the desire of hot baths and sound sleeps, and instead ended up in a succession of meetings, which stretched all the way into the evening. Desperate not to offend our hosts and concious of the famous japanese culture of politeness we all struggled through. By the end of day I worked out I had only slept 7 hours in the last 48. Extreme tiredness is like drunkness, but a lot cheaper. We were all stumbling around, slurring our words and having slightly hysterical outbursts…

We are staying at Tokyo Wonder Site Aoyama – which is their Creator in Residence space. It’s 3 floors of a converted office block in the centre of one of the most expensive districts in Tokyo. It’s a bit like landing in London for the first time in Sloane Square. A slightly distorted first impression perhaps!

Off, off and away….

I fly out tomorrow to Tokyo. Early.

There’s 10 of us going in total, me from Chelsea, 4 from Camberwell and 5 from Wimbledon. We’re a mix of disciplines – designer makers, fine artists, illustrators, graphic designers… and we will be doing our own research projects and then an intensive 7 day collaborative project with about 20 other artists invited by Tokyo Wonder Site.

My research is about information excess and overload. Last night I watched Tokyo-GA again. It’s the Wim Wender’s documentary which tracks his fascination with the disentegration of meaning within the torrent of images, embodied by Tokyo in the 80s. The opportunity to visit Tokyo is so perfectly aligned with my interests at the moment. I am really excited about what it might hold for my work.

However, I’m not a great traveller – I can get terrible motion sickness. So immediate thoughts are focused on actually landing in Japan.

Whilst we are there it is the first anniversary of March 11 – one year on from the terrible earthquake, tsumani and resultant nuclear power station melt down. It looks like we may travel to the north of Japan to the area near (though not in) the 20km exclusion zone.

I hope we will be able to step out of the tourist role, side-step the ethnographic pit falls, and into a real dialogue with other artists.