Wiggle – “Best of” USB Drive

Posted in Japan, music on January 2nd, 2024
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Wiggle “Best of” USB Drive
A USB drive disguised as a cassette tape created for the Berlin concert at Panke Gallery in 2023. Contains tracks selected from all of their releases to date (1996-2023) as well as a megamix of most of their songs.

Handmade by Gil Kuno using glitching techniques on a laser cutter.

Wiggle “Best of 1996-2023”

01 Boik
02 Warning
03 Daisuki Me (Alternative Mix featuring Sexy Funko)
04 Signal Fault (featuring Cristian Vogel)
05 Feedback
06 Headbash (featuring Ken Ishii)
07 Krictl
08 Wadjala Spirit (featuring Ken Ishii)
09 Pejuta (featuring Tatsuya Yoshida [Ruins])
10 Let It Wiggle (featuring Ken Ishii)
11 Fridgeon
12 Amphibian
13 Discoship
14 Megamix

Wiggle members (past and present): Gil Kuno, Simon Bennett, Brett Boyd, Tatsuya Oe, Linda, RinaRina, Murochin, Eiichiro Suzuki

Wiggle website: wiggle.band


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Parallel Post #001 Exhibition – Newspaper (collectible posters). Yuri Inoue, Nanako Uebo (Eds.). Parallel Post

Posted in graphic design, Japan, photography, travel on November 1st, 2023
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We have been traveling abroad together for over a decade. Last year (2022), for the first time since the pandemic, we toured several European countries in the summer and fall. It was also a good opportunity to visit two of the biggest art festivals of the year, Documenta 15 in the summer and the Venice Biennale in the fall. This exhibition is a compilation of the records of the journey. As graphic/book/editorial designers, we incorporated what we edited into printed materials under the slogan of “editing a journey”.
The fact that we were able to composite our job and hobby in this form further motivated us to continue traveling and learning about the world we have yet to see. We hope that visitors to the exhibition will be able to experience a little of the atmosphere of our travel.

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IWAKAN Volume 06 – The Masculinity Issue. Andromeda, Jeremy Benkemoun, Lana Kageyama, Yuri Abo (Eds.). Creative Studio REING

Posted in Gender, graphic design, Japan, magazines, photography, Uncategorized, writing on July 18th, 2023
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IWAKAN Volume 06: 

Masculinity — or perhaps our mistaken understanding of it — as an ideology has entrenched itself so deeply into every system that runs our society. These unequivocally male-dominated systems stare at us on a daily basis, represented by the patriarchy and misogyny we witness regularly in acts like men buying women drinks at the dinner table; reaffirming their unwavering presence and unforgiving rules. While some may find it easy to accept the system, others struggle to comply. We are those people who struggle. Those people who are tired of these outdated norms for masculinity, who are tired of it being understood solely through the lens of violence and dominance, and who are tired of the emptiness that comes from humans constantly being reduced to caricatures of themselves and forced to participate in this ludicrous system called patriarchy. Masculinity does not belong solely to those who have a penis, it is something that should be accessible to all. That is why, we want to find a new understanding of it, one that is fresh, revitalized, rich, inclusive, and diverse. It is time that masculinity changes, it is time that masculinity is liberated.

Features

The Masculinity Issue 06 違和感瞬間 男 14 Producing Sex: Images of Masculinity in the Gay Porn Industry/François Sagat 24 A Space for Men’s Confessions 32 Exploring Gender: What Can Masculinity Contribute to Being Non-binary?/Amity Miyabi 36 An Unwavering Heart Reaching for the Light/Sennosuke Kataoka 48 Imagining New Masculinities Through Music: an Interview with NoSo, Ichi Takashi, and Aisho Nakajima 52 PEOPLE VOICE OPINION Let the people speak! 60 The Unspoken Tenderness/Nelson Hor 66 Our Career Choices: A Message For the Future From a Parenting Adviser and an Obstetrician-Gynaecologist/Keito Kawanishi, Singh Ikebukuro 74 STUDY OUR ISSUE: Is “Masculinity” a Good Enough Excuse for Violence?/Noriko Yamaguchi 78 Pity for Men: the Agonies and Contradictions of Unpopular Boys./Kai Nishii 90 The Glass House of Adonis/Andromeda 92 Exploring The House of Gay Art: The Captivating Photographs of Junichi Enya/Mika Kobayashi 96 Is Coffee Masculine? A Conversation About Coffee and Masculinity/Keita Nakamura, Yuki Shibata, Mako 108 Redefining “Realness”: Exploring the Implications and Possibilities of “Male Genital” Prosthetics/Prosthesisman.Stp.Japan 112 Disobedience, Deconstruction, and Desire: Re-Defining Bodies Through Clothing and Art/Bárbara Sánchez-Kane 122 Decoding Performance and the Body Through the Works of Kento Terada and Sota Kodera/Mika Kobayashi 128 The Exquisite Corpse of Likeness/Yuki Kasaï-Paré 137 Recognising ‘Domination’: The Beginning of Resistance/Hanae Takahashi 138 Vol.4 IWAKAN OPEN ART CONTEST 141 Radically Moderate/Nonoka Sasaki 142 A Diary of Secret Dialogues/Mitsu Tachibana 144 My Incomplete Beauty Handbook/Yuri Abo 146 Asian Gaze/Yo Katami from loneliness books 148 Let’s Talk About Politics/Ana 150 Stopped Making Sense/Noemi Minami 152 Recommendations from Contributors Cover Design: 福岡南央子

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Blue Period / Last Summer (US Cover Edition). Nobuyoshi Araki. Session Press & Dashwood Books.

Posted in Japan, photography on December 30th, 2017
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Blue Period : Last Summer (US Cover Edition), Nobuyoshi Araki, Session Press & Dashwood Books, 9780996657419_Motto Books_1Blue Period : Last Summer (US Cover Edition), Nobuyoshi Araki, Session Press & Dashwood Books, 9780996657419_Motto Books_2Blue Period : Last Summer (US Cover Edition), Nobuyoshi Araki, Session Press & Dashwood Books, 9780996657419_Motto Books_3Blue Period : Last Summer (US Cover Edition), Nobuyoshi Araki, Session Press & Dashwood Books, 9780996657419_Motto Books_4Blue Period : Last Summer (US Cover Edition), Nobuyoshi Araki, Session Press & Dashwood Books, 9780996657419_Motto Books_5Blue Period : Last Summer (US Cover Edition), Nobuyoshi Araki, Session Press & Dashwood Books, 9780996657419_Motto Books_6Blue Period : Last Summer (US Cover Edition), Nobuyoshi Araki, Session Press & Dashwood Books, 9780996657419_Motto Books_7Blue Period : Last Summer (US Cover Edition), Nobuyoshi Araki, Session Press & Dashwood Books, 9780996657419_Motto Books_8

 

One of the most influential photographers of our time, Nobuyoshi Araki is known for his diaristic style or “shi-shashin” (I-photographs) through the publication of over 500 books throughout his career. His work has become practically synonymous with Japanese photography; closely associated with his work on bondage, his late wife, Yoko, as well as still lifes and nudes.

In 1986 at Cinema Rise in Tokyo, Araki staged a live performance entitled Tokyo Monogatari (Tokyo Story). Using two projectors, Araki and his assistants, Nobuhiko Tokyo Monogatari became the first in a series of live performances entitled Arakinema, which he staged until the mid-2000s in The majority of the work is derived from Shashin Jidai, the important underground sub culture magazine of the 1980s museums and art institutions around the world. in Japan.

As a special case excited about our film work. As Araki also explained at our initial meeting in Shinjuku last year, “The two films should be seen as a set, since Blue Period is about the past and This project is just (a future). It is an act of subtraction (past), whereas adding color to the images in the images in Last Summer is about an act of addition (future). like life itself. ”

Working directly from the 140 original slides used for both projections, the book successfully offers a fresh review of the photographer’s hidden oeuvre and regains the true spirit and atmosphere of the original Arakinema performances

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mean (analog + digital). Yoshinori Henguchi. Edition Nord

Posted in Japan, Motto Berlin store, photography on December 19th, 2017
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Composition No.1-10 and the derivatives, 2001-2016. Buku Akiyama. Rondade.

Posted in Editions, Japan, Motto Berlin store, photography on December 5th, 2017
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Installations and arrangements by Buku Akiyama.
Photographs by Buku Akiyama, Kiyotoshi Takashima, Masahito Yamamoto.
English translation by Yuki Okumura with Linda Dennis.

Texts by Koichi Munakata, Koki Tanaka, Lei Yamabe, Tami Yanagisawa, Tohru Horiguchi.

Design by Shin Akiyama /edition.nord.
Edited printed and bound by Buku Akiyama.

“Publishing as an Artistic Toolbox: 1989 – 2017” extended version of 6 / second edition of 100.

 

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The Deconstruction of My Suntopia. Katsunobu Yaguchi. Keiko Ogane.

Posted in Japan, photography on August 24th, 2016
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This book series brings documentation of the numerous activities carried out by Katsunobu Yaguchi over the past seven years at “Cafe Snack Washingtown” (2008-2013) and “The Site of Washingtown” (2013-2015).
In the autumn of 2008, Katsunobu Yaguchi encountered an empty house when strolling around the town of Mito. Hearing that it may be demolished soon, he decided to reinstall water and electricity to the ground floor of the house to celebrate the time that was still left to it. He named the place “Café Snack Washingtown” and embarked on his new calling. Although the atmosphere of the house was obviously shadowy, curious eccentrics stopped by cautiously and the house awoke from its deep sleep. This caused a small neighborhood movement to arise around the house. Consequently, the original demolition was postponed for another five years.

In 2013, The Washintown finally faced its demolition at the hands of Yaguchi himself. Two and half years have gone by since then. The ‘late’ Café snack Washingtown skeleton is still standing. With bamboo scaffolding and part of the outer wall remaining, the house gives off a murky aura. At the entrance, the travelers’ guardian deity of megalopenis stands inconspicuously. This bizarre atmosphere seems to have surrendered to its fate that at any moment the house will make way for a new building. Yet the “old Washingtown site” continues to ignite neighborhood movements. “Washingtown Documentaries 2008-2015” contains cutting-edge images that were lovingly taken over the past seven and “on-the-edgy” years.

 

€30.00

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Landscape in Modern Architecture. Tamami Iinuma(ed.)

Posted in Events, Japan, Motto Berlin store on May 30th, 2016
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Landscape in Modern Architecture.  Tamami Iinuma(ed.)

Landscape in Modern Architecture.  Tamami Iinuma(ed.). self-published 3Landscape in Modern Architecture.  Tamami Iinuma(ed.). self-published 2Landscape in Modern Architecture.  Tamami Iinuma(ed.). self-published 1Landscape in Modern Architecture.  Tamami Iinuma(ed.) 1

Landscape in Modern Architecture

The color palette-like geometric patterns in the images of the “Landscape in Modern Architecture” series were shot in the Dessau Master’s Houses, where Bauhaus masters such as Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee lived, and the Bauhaus Building, where the same masters taught courses on color theory in the early 20th Century. In this series Iinuma takes “corners of a room” as the smallest compositional unit of an urban landscape and combines snapshots with images of corners of rooms, which she shot at Bauhaus. To produce her first artist book “schwarzschild” in 2012, she confronted the approximately 100,000 photographs she had shot in the past eight years and hypothesized that the collection of room corners constitutes a building, and the street running between buildings constitute urban space, the stage of everyday events. She explains that she was concious of Japanese poetry when she selected the images based on the concept explained above. In Hyakuninisshu (100 Poems by 100 Poets), poem that share keywords such as “mountain”, “river”, or “cherry” are juxtaposed to create a grid 10 cards wide and 10 cards high. “Landscape in Modern Architecture”, which takes framed world as “keywords” and connects them to produce an expansive space in nothing less than an attempt to redefine landscape photography.

30 x 21 cm
Signed
Edition of 100
Self Published

40 €
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Tamami Iinuma. Japan in der DDR. Opening 28.05.16 @ Motto Berlin at 6pm.

Posted in Events, Exhibitions, Japan, Motto Berlin event, Motto Berlin store, Motto Books, Uncategorized on May 24th, 2016
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There is a strikingly conspicuous high-rise building behind the Leipzig Central Station that contrasts with the city horizon. The 96 meters high tower, in a dignified shining pearl color, was first called Interhotel Merkur and is now The Westin Leipzig. With 27 floors it hosts more that 400 rooms with event and seminar spaces on separate floors, shops, restaurants. It’s a little city within the city.

In 2008, shortly after starting to study at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, I learnt that it is one of the few buildings that a Japanese construction company has build in German Democratic Republic in the late 1970s (there is two other constructions to be find in Dresden and Berlin). Something around and in this building triggered me to feel at home. When I saw it, I thought of the World Trade Center in Tokyo, from the top of which I enjoyed the Summer Festival of fireworks one day before my departure to Leipzig. So at that time I started to project my personal conflicts of a stranger in a new city on this huge building which became both a symbol of my hometown (even if, to be honest, there is nothing Japanese in its architecture) and of my frustrations.

With the celebrations of the 25 year of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of GDR, I wanted to know more about this building. Until then I had just looked at it from a distance and I finally decided to enter the Interhotel Merkur after 6 years of observation. I booked a room for one night there, took my camera and opened the door.

The Four-star hotel was deserted. Its Japanese restaurant which was once the best in Leipzig had no guests. And a cleaning man said to me: « I have been working here since the opening of the hotel, it was full of business people from all over the world in the 1980s ». He also explained me that the hotel was a hotbed of “illegal” prostitution (however this prostitution took roll as the espionage). I went to the reception and asked: « I heard that this hotel was build by a Japanese company. Is that right ? » A young man answered: « never heard about that » but the next morning I found a letter in my room with that simple sentence : This hotel was built by the Kajima Corporation.

In the summer 2014 I visited the library of Kajima Corporation in Tokyo. The librarian, Ms. Oda, prepared for me archive photos of construction, company’s monthly report, and even confidential documents. She also introduced me to Mr. Shimazu who was in charge of the architectural design team and lived in Leipzig from 1978 to 1981. I got the opportunity to hear their anecdotes, like the event that happened on January 12th, 1979 when the construction office was robed and all the money (GDR-Mark) from the safe was stolen. Additionally one roll of 35mm film that was in the camera of Mr. Sako, a colleague of Mr. Shimazu, had been gone as well. The camera was still in the office, but it had been opened and the negative had vanished. What was photographed in Mr. Sako’s camera must be normally the hotel’s construction process but that disparition had something from a spy movie. They went to the police but neither cash nor the film have ever been back.

I have been photographing modern architecture in Germany since 2008 and I am continuing to shoot similar buildings depending on my trips. In the process of creation, there is always a logical decision on positioning three bodies: the architectural body, the machinal body (camera) and my own body (photographer). But with Interhotel Merkur, I was strangely so excited that I could not measure the distances between the different « actors ». This architecture has, for me, the presence of a real and existing body that contains its story and its emotion. The building has its own life (which I am probably projecting on it) and, therefore, is reluctant to my photographs. But, for the History it represents, for its architecture (between classical Plattenbau and Japanese brutalism), for its role in my personal life, I decided to give it a try, again and again, until I obtain the right portrait of that motionless character of concrete.

When I left the archive of Kajima Corporation after my third visit, the librarian said to me: « Thank you, you shed light on our work, which has been forgotten ». This made me understand the real meaning of my obsession for the Interhotel Merkur: I sensed a Japanese spirit (or a soul?) in Leipzig. And I need to follow it before it flies too far away.

*This essay was originally written by the artist, and edited by Thibaut de Ruyter, for the publication「Stadt Bild / Image of City」(Cooperation by Berlinische Galerie, Deusche Bank Kunsthalle, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Nationalgalerie-Staatlische Museen zu Berlin)

Japan in der DDR – Tamami Iinuma – Exhibition Opening 28.05.16 @ Motto Berlin at 6pm.

foundprints books 002 (set). Soichi Suzuki

Posted in Japan on November 3rd, 2015
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foundprints_books_002_Set_Soichi_Suzuki_motto_distribution_1  foundprints_books_002_Set_Soichi_Suzuki_motto_distribution_2 foundprints_books_002_Set_Soichi_Suzuki_motto_distribution_3 foundprints_books_002_Set_Soichi_Suzuki_motto_distribution_4 foundprints_books_002_Set_Soichi_Suzuki_motto_distribution_5 foundprints_books_002_Set_Soichi_Suzuki_motto_distribution_6 foundprints_books_002_Set_Soichi_Suzuki_motto_distribution_7 foundprints_books_002_Set_Soichi_Suzuki_motto_distribution_8 foundprints_books_002_Set_Soichi_Suzuki_motto_distribution_9

A set of four leporellos by Soichi Suzuki

10 x 8 x 3.8 cm

 

€18.00

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