R
E
V N
E
X
T
Clockwise from left: Chim↑Pom members Masataka Okada, Motomu Inaoka, Toshinori Mizuno, Yasutaka Hayashi, Ryuta Ushiro and Ellie. Photo by Makoto Aida. Courtesy the artists and MUJIN-TO Production, Tokyo.
For the past ten years, Chim↑Pom has been staging performances and making videos that reflect their unapologetic views on taboo sociopolitical issues and sensitive current affairs in Japan. Widely touted as artist Makoto Aida’s protégés, Ryuta Ushiro, Yasutaka Hayashi, Masataka Okada, Toshinori Mizuno, Motomu Inaoka and Ellie form Japan’s foremost contemporary artist-activist collective practicing today.
Chim↑Pom has come a long way since their formation in 2005, having first gained notoriety nation-wide for their “Super Rat” project started in 2006. As part of the project they caught a number of wild rodents from the streets of Tokyo’s urban districts, such as Shibuya, and transformed them into taxidermied neon-yellow Pikachu sculptures. With their subsequent work, the group has gone on to tackle even more uncomfortable aspects of Japan’s underbelly, raising questions and fostering awareness of the country’s traumas and disgraces.
Earlier this month, two Chim↑Pom members, Inaoka and Okada, came to Hong Kong at the invitation of The Mills Gallery—a defunct spinning-mill factory in Tsuen Wan, which is to be converted into a nonprofit art complex by Hong Kong property developer Nan Fung Group. The gallery’s pre-opening programme will begin later this year in December and its permanent space, part of the developer’s heritage conservation project, is slated to open in 2018. There in the Tsuen Wan warehouse, the two artists contributed to the group’s ongoing performative work It’s the Wall World (2014– ) by cutting out three jigsaw-puzzle-shaped fragments of the old factory’s wall and replacing it with pieces from a white wall of another art space. In extracting these sections, Chim↑Pom intends to preserve a piece of Hong Kong’s history—an action in tribute to the city’s once-booming textile industry during the 1950s.
Initiated on the occasion of Chim↑Pom’s solo exhibition “YAJIRUSHI SOVIETORU,” at MUJIN-TO Production in Tokyo less than a year ago, It’s the Wall World will ultimately combine various wall pieces that the group has collected from sites around the world—among which include an alternative art space in Hiroshima and a garment factory in Dhaka—to stitch together a global narrative. The most updated version of this ongoing work, comprising the many different pieces that the group has collected thus far, will be displayed at London’s Saatchi Gallery in September, as part of the collective’s solo exhibition in the United Kingdom. During their short trip to Hong Kong, ArtAsiaPacific managed to pry Inaoka and Okada away from their tasks at The Mills Gallery to talk about recent happenings, issues of censorship and Chim↑Pom’s “favorite” restaurant.
Quite a few things have been happening in Japan lately: the restarting of the nuclear plant in Fukushima, the 70th anniversary of the 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and the mass protests against Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s war reforms. Japanese students have flooded their local streets because they want their voices heard: is this the sort of movement you’ve been calling for in your art?
We were among the early demonstrators to protest Abe’s proposal of amending the Constitution—to allow Japan to exercise the right to “collective self-defense,” which many believe will empower the Japanese defense force and put the country’s long-protected peace in great jeopardy, if it is accepted by congress. At that stage, when we were [demonstrating], we didn’t see many young people. It was only after the media broadcast the news [of the protest] that the situation morphed into a social trend and a massive group of people, including many students, flooded the streets. At that point, we were thinking to ourselves, “Isn’t it a bit late?” That said, we appreciate that the movement has grown tremendously in scale and that many more people are speaking out, involving themselves and keeping the Japanese leadership in check.
Do these events compel you to make more work?
Of course! We already have. We used material from a protest banner to make one of the jigsaw pieces for It’s the Wall World.
Ever since Shinzō Abe became prime minister [in 2012], we feel that the control on freedom of speech has grown tighter. If exhibitions we participate in are sponsored by the Japanese government, we tend to be asked—though not pressured—to not show works that feature words or current issues that are considered “taboo.”
Can you provide some examples of when and where this type of censorship has happened?
This tends to happen when an art event—for example, a biennale—is sponsored by the Japanese government. The Japan Foundation was the organizer of the country’s official participation in one such biennale that we were selected to exhibit in. In anticipation of the event, we had to submit a proposal of what we were going to show. The Foundation gave us feedback in terms of what they’d prefer us not to exhibit, so we just replaced those works with other ones.
For Chim↑Pom’s 10th anniversary exhibition, which we just held at our newly opened artist-run space Garter [in Tokyo], we showed all the works that have previously been “censored” at one point or another, both as a confession and an apology—[as a way of saying] “Yes we lost! We relented!” These works included: Real Times (2011), a video of Chim↑Pom members in hazmat suits trying to inch as close as they can to the destroyed Fukushima nuclear reactors; another video piece called KI-AI 100 (2011), which translates to “100 cheers,” and features Chim↑Pom members and some local youth from the devastated fishing village Soma City, also in Fukushima, shouting motivational words and inspirational phrases; and works from the group’s 2008 solo show at Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art, which was cancelled in the aftermath of our controversial performance Making the sky of Hiroshima “PIKA!” (2009), where a plane spelled out “Pika!” (an onomatopoeic word in Japan that portrays the bursting of light) in the sky as a blatant allusion to the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima.
Recently Makoto Aida was asked to remove two of his politically sensitive works from the group exhibition “An Art Exhibition for Children — Whose Place is this?” at Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. What are your thoughts on this?
A large part of our motivation to realize our 10th anniversary exhibition at Garter was the occurrence of this incident. We’ve always had the idea of doing a 10th anniversary show. When this piece of news about Aida came out, we became much more resolved [in our decision to hold the anniversary exhibition]. We went ahead and made it happen. We were thinking about Aida the whole time we were preparing for and putting together the show.
Chim↑Pom was formed on August 7, 2005, so the starting date of this 10th anniversary exhibition fell on August 7, 2015. The closing date, August 15, 2015, marked the 70th anniversary of Japan’s unconditional surrender that ended World War II.
CHIM↑POM, SUPER RAT, 2011, still from video. Courtesy the artists and MUJIN-TO Production, Tokyo.
It’s been ten years since Chim↑Pom first came together. How have you evolved as a group?
In the beginning, we would hang out late into the night and come up with ideas [for art projects], most of the time while inebriated! A lot of those ideas were horrible and the execution or presentation was so unpolished. Now that ten years have passed, we have become much more thoughtful. We really think about what we want to do with our ideas, what we want to say and, hopefully, our works have become more sophisticated.
An important aspect of your collective’s vision is to reach audiences beyond the art world. How’s progress?
“Progress,” to us, suggests a gradual, increasing trend over time. From this perspective, we don’t think we need to make any progress because we have already managed to reach an extremely wide audience since the onset of our career. As a result of such projects like “Super Rat,” many, many Japanese people have heard about us and have gathered an idea of what we’re trying to do!
Last but not least, what is a typical “work day” like for Chim↑Pom? How do the six of you discuss and collaborate?
All six of us try to meet at least once a week. These are our “Chim↑Pom meetings” and they are often held at a café or a restaurant. If we run out of time, and our ideas need to be further developed, three or four of us might try to get together again before the following week’s meeting. Then there’s “Chim↑Pom recreation,” a less frequent gathering that we hold to have fun, perhaps even with friends. We have drinks, gather at Ellie’s house for barbeque dinners or go to hot springs, and we just chat.
What’s Chim↑Pom’s favorite restaurant?
Chim↑Pom’s "favorite restaurant” is probably just “Okada’s favorite restaurant,” which happens to be the Japanese-Italian franchise restaurant Saizeriya. Somehow we end up going there a lot because it’s cheap. Okada always suggests Saizeriya—to all the other members’ dismay—so it’s not really our “favorite” restaurant, but I suppose that’s the best answer!
Installation view of It’s the Wall World (2014– ) at Asian Art Biennale 2014, held at the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka. Courtesy the artists and MUJIN-TO Production, Tokyo.
Chim↑Pom’s solo exhibition will be on view at Saatchi Gallery, London, starting September 2015.
Denise Chu is managing editor at ArtAsiaPacific.