Last night I went into the Talion Gallery in Nishi-Nippori, where artist Taro Izumi is curating an exhibition. I pulled one of the paintings—a blue one with a metal grill—off the wall and violently dragged it across the gallery space. Then I seized another one and hurled it at the ceiling, then several times against a couple of walls, making a hanging sculpture swing precariously. I sawed one in half after battering it for a while with the handle of the saw. I smashed, sawed and peeled a hole in another one so it could be thrown quoits-style onto my outstretched arm. I span one which was made of differently shaped rock-like slabs of polystyrene until all the parts flew across the room. I soaked one with a mini-shower that I manufactured with a water bottle and an electric drill, drew a crude representation of another one on the wall with red marker pen, and bit and chewed another one to pieces.
Worst, or perhaps best of all, they were all my artworks.
Or rather, my character John Bose's artworks. You probably guessed that this was all part of the exhibition. Izumi was filming each of my actions, instigating them by giving me the instructions (eat, throw, etc). What impacted me most—apart from the adrenaline and ridiculousness, and the satisfaction at smashing up a gallery like a rockstar in a hotel room—was that the video, which will contain parallel works by the other "artists" featured at the exhibition, will be projected onto the wall at the gallery for a couple of days, culminating the exhibition which mostly consisted of its own constant state of advancing destruction. Just a couple of days. There will be no repeat projections, nor will it be posted online. The artist has no desire to do either. This rootless transient statement will be made and hang there, before evaporating into the memory like the drops of water on my showered painting.
I thought of starting a Tumblr blog, so I can easily upload pics and shorter comments—maybe a more dynamic way of blogging. I guess this has been a solution for a lot of people who have let their blogs slide but find FB too annoying. Yet soon the Tumbl weeds will rot unused in the far reaches of cyberspace, burned out planets, graveyards of unheard thought. Are the bits of data flying around conscious of these tracts of desolate urban decay, as we would be flying between ancient hulks of spaceships left by an unknown extinct civilisation?
The Taro Izumi exhibition (apart from its expressions concerning the nature of art) hit me for its fuck you to the universally permanent nature of online things. 80% of which don't deserve to be forever, always slabbed up for all to see—though few do see them. Not many people will see this exhibition either, relative to the number of eyes in the cosmos. Perhaps just the people who happen to surf that way (Nishi-Nippori), hit that site (physical place) and link to it (tell other people). Funny how I'm writing about it here, on this blog I have neglected for so long. My need to tack my bit of tacky permanence to the enterprise. Who am I telling?
