Japan: Design Festa Fall 2013, Part 03

Design Festa is a massive, multi-media event that engulfs the Tokyo Big Sight twice a year for several days each time, gathering some of the greatest creative talents and artists from the world over.  It's seriously so massive that I had to divide a single day's visit into three different blog posts! You can catch up on those here and here. While their main focus is on giving local artists and artists from the nearby regions a platform to mingle and network along with a space to share their various creations, whether they be dancers, seamstresses, special effects artists, illustrators, print-makers, mask-makers, leather-crafters, etc. etc. The point is, all forms of creative expression are welcome, and so this massive space near Odaiba is transformed twice a year into a surreal, sensory-overload of creative output. It's pretty incredible, and an awesome experience if you ever get the chance to attend! It's Asia's largest art festival! Given that it is twice a year, you get the chance to attend in either their Spring or Summer sessions, and each of those generally extends throughout the weekend so you can try to make it for one day if not all. 

The live acts, from dancing ninja schoolgirls to live rope-bondage demonstrations, do change from day to day, so if you find out about a particular act that you're dead-set on seeing, plan accordingly. Also, tickets are CHEAP! Considering how Tokyo is typically viewed as a high-ticket city to live in or visit, the admission cost of ¥800 in advance or ¥1,000 at the door are really quite reasonable, only amounting to about $8-10US respectively. You can also opt for the two-day passes for ¥1,500 (in advance) or ¥1,800 (at the door) for a single or two-day ticket, which amounts to about $15-$18US for two days of entertainment. Trust me, you'll likely need both days to really take in everything the Festa has to offer. If you can read Japanese, you can order your tickets for the Spring Session of 2019 on May 18th and 19th here, with 0 fees, but you can also pre-order your tickets at any Japanese 711, Circle K Sunkus convenience store, or Ticket Pia! There's plenty more ticketing information available on their website, too!

Japan: Design Festa Fall 2013, part 2

Design Festa is one of those experiences that is so surreal, so sensory-overwhelming by its very design and nature that you might have to stop and wonder if someone might have spiked that water somehow. You can explore a labyrinthine space filled with dwarves, nightmare-faced visions, sexy girls in scanty-clothes, murals unfolding in real time and way, WAY more! Design Festa is a twice-annual event where artists from all over the world, though predominantly Asia, come together to showcase their talents and rub-elbows together. As you might imagine, this leads to some incredible collaborative experiences as well as some rather unusual neighbors, like my multi-eyed friend here who was seated near a caricature artist. As the caricature artist was drawing, I watched our friend here hover and observe, making the artist and his model both squirm a bit. Good times, I assure you! Where else would you find a caricature artist from South Korea hanging out and interacting with a special effects artist from Japan? Well, maybe a movie set, but for the rest of us this is the place to meet and mingle!

You don't have to be into large-scale formats to be well-received, nor does your art necessarily have to make sense or even comply with general standards of decency to gain an audience here. Luckily, most of the creators are exceptionally talented at what they do, whether it's manufacturing tiny robots and dioramas or drawing girls shooting rockets out of their genitals. The world is a very big and multi-faceted place, and there's room for everyone's creativity here, or at least that's the attitude the team behind Design Festa tries to bring to the table, and I can most certainly respect that. There's a little something for everyone to be found here, whether you're into decorating your phone cases to look like tasty desserts, punny t-shirts, nightmarish masks, fur-suits, or good old fashioned rope bondage, it's a well-rounded showcase.

There's really only so much I can say about the experience, after all... this is the kind of thing that requires you to bring all your senses to the table, but since you couldn't physically be there with me these photos will have to suffice. Enjoy!

Japan: Design Festa Fall 2013, part one

What do you get when you combine some of Asia's most creative artistic minds together twice a year at Tokyo Big Sight? You get a wildly inventive, incredibly diverse array of outstanding talents and creations mingling together, sharing their crafts and selling their wares as part of the ongoing Design Festa Series! As mentioned above, it's a twice-annual festival, occurring in the spring and again in the fall, allowing artisans from across the land (along with nearby countries) to come and share their passion with each other. Meet and greet many of the creative minds themselves, live and in the flesh! Most of who and what I encountered during my visit to the Fall Design Festa of 2013 was thoroughly awe-inspiring, for the precision and sheer imagination or dedication that went into it, while sometimes it was more confounding or awkward, like school girls with fabulously voluminous hair getting railed by a faceless man who appears to be wearing a device intended to, I think, uhh, collect her fluids? 

Huh. But hey, just because it might not necessarily be my cup of tea doesn't mean it isn't a well-crafted piece of art that will titillate someone else! 

But anyway, here are some sweet elephants, in case you're feeling a little disturbed by the blatant hentai above. Remember, though, that these pieces were all publicly displayed for all to see inside of Tokyo Big Sight, so the artist wasn't trying to hide their creation from curious eyes. In fact, completely the opposite! This event is all about getting your work seen and sharing it with others. One of the coolest things about Design Festa is that it's not limited to one particular type of artistry- if you're into cosplay, there were many people milling about in costumes, from furry to space alien, steampunk pirates to mohawk and studded leather sporting punks. All are welcome, and all art is respected. It's a wild experience, and pretty psychedelic when you stumble down some of the more performance arts-oriented groups laden corridors, but do your best to keep your wits. I know it can be hard with the Japanese rope bondage demonstration in one corner, and the friendly lolitas in the other, but there's a lot to see here!

Given just how much there actually is to see here, I've broken this post into several different posts, and it's still pretty photo heavy. I didn't want to exclude any of it, though, because it's all so fabulous!

I hope you enjoy~

Vegas: Huntridge Tavern show

Oddity and the city of Las Vegas are awkwardly close friends, the kind you might half expect to find sloppily making out as a drunken mess in an alleyway or find together in a bathroom stall halfway through the evening's festivities, before encountering them again pounding more shots and taking turns holding each other's hair back during the ensuing vomit parade.  Weird and Vegas go together like peanut butter and jelly, Catholicism and pedophiles, strippers and glitter...  Between the excessive heat that blisters and peels most reasonable soft people into bitter withered husks, the constant flow of starry-eyed tourists looking to get riggity-riggity-wrecked and perpetual creation of shiny new entertainments, the weirdness permeates and sinks in deep like the tobacco smoke stench in old hotel rooms wallpaper. Vegas and weird, you know, they're real tight besties. For that, we should all be incredibly thankful. 

Without this deep-seated weirdness Vegas might not be half as fun or half as interesting, and likely would have followed the countless other ghost towns nearby and shriveled into a brittle husk eon ago, forgotten amongst the sands of the desert that surrounds it. Luckily for us, the city continues it's undulating growth, sending paroxysmal tendrils out into new corners of the valley and sending a healthy flow of humans to fill the new appendages. More humans mingling and cohabiting means more weirdos crawling out of the woodworks, more eccentrics and worst of all, artists. The most insidious of weirdos, artists, and musicians seem drawn to the city like moths to an oh-so-beautiful light. Maybe it's all that neon blinking it's beacon out into the night, like a Bat-signal for the abnormal among us. All this means is that it should come as no surprise to you fine folks reading this blog here that we happen to know, and sometimes even rub elbows with, some musicians and their ilk from time to time. As creative types ourselves, we try to support our fellow makers when given the chance. After all, we're pretty weird, too...

So, if you find yourself out walking around Vegas, especially near the Arts District or Downtown (or, in this special case the Huntridge Tavern off Charleston) and hear some odd, eclectic mix of sounds that may or may not be a nightmarish hellscape, and a man in a dress covered in (fake?) blood tumbles out, don't be afraid. It's probably just Aaron. He's cool, albeit a little weird...but, hey, who you are you to judge?

Photos in this post were not provided by this handsome dude above, but he is a friend and long-time badass. Photos were taken by Antho. Enjoy!

Japan: Fune party 2012-10-19

For many years the Tokyo branch of the Arribas company threw holiday parties for their employees. In a rare meeting of upper management and makers, artists and their handlers were welcome to join the managerial staff in an evening out together sponsored by the bosses. This was the first, and last, holiday party I attended with the company in my three winters with them, as the tradition seemed to die shortly after.

Oh well. The times, they are a'changin.

I'd covered this evening in a previous post, but now I can go a bit more into detail and provide more photos.

Seoul: Gallery Woo Fun Art

After my visit to Hongdae, I met with some fellow artists at Gallery Woo. 

There are prints from a wide array of caricaturists with differing styles throughout the gallery, and the building itself had a quirky and inviting interior. The location serves as a meeting spot and classroom throughout the month with various lessons offered from art to English, and their cafe serves delicious coffee on top of all the ample fodder for creativity.