Japan in May is a very wet affair, however this didn’t stop Tokyo urbanites from stepping into the twisted portals of Aqui Uzumaki. The show was a multi-media installation by artists Friends With You, Mumbleboy and Gaga Inc., held at the Hanna Gallery in Tokyo on May 23rd, 2004. Roughly translated from Spanish & Japanese, Aqui Uzumaki is a verbal concoction meaning "Here is the Vortex." The show featured a wall-to-wall installation of drawings, visual & motion graphics and an oversized tornado of plush dolls handmade for the event. All of this brilliant, visual chaos was set in motion to the aural background of the Sonido Uzumaki soundtrack, a music compilation made specifically for the show. I sat down with these conjurers of cutie chaos, and asked them for secrets to their special plush magic:
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How did the idea of Aqui Uzumaki come together?Mumbleboy: Originally the idea started with Sam and me talking about it when we met last Summer. I think the uzumaki/vortex idea came up naturally as we talked about doing things with a whole bunch of dolls. Friends With You: Personally, I love how we all came together. I’m such a fan of Mumble’s and Gaga’s I was excited when all of us working together became a reality. It just happened naturally and I could tell that this was going to be perfect from the moment we all attacked the same piece of paper. It was great to not be premeditative about the details. The Uzumaki explosion of color and dolls made such lovely chaos. Aqui Uzumaki was billed as a culture clash of sorts. Yet somehow, everyone met in the middle. What are your aesthetic similarities?
Gaga Inc: The way that each of us approaches the work makes the mixture interesting. I see us sharing more of a similar background in the sense of visual imagery but quite a different sense of aesthetics. Many people approached us during the show and were able to recognize whose doll was whose. The drawings were more difficult to tell simply because we were working much closer. How do you work through the collaborative process?
M: For this show, we worked really well together. It can be difficult when we have difference of opinions, but I think it forces you to think differently and try out things which you might not do by yourself. It's very dynamic. GI: I don’t usually work this way so this was a great experience for me. You’re sometimes forced to do things that you wouldn’t do on your own, you find surprises and very interesting accidents.
There are very different elements within the drawings. Some are joyful, featuring rainbows and ice cream; others are much darker, with tears and vomit. Where do you find the balance between such opposite emotions?
GI: The balance comes from collaborating. After a while of working together, certain mechanisms begin to act, usually unnoticeable. I guess we were aware of these contrasts and worked to make good use of them. MB: I’m not so sure if we were trying to achieve a good balance or not. I think it was more that we just let it all out. Just as in life, it’s hard to find balance. FWY: I think one of our main concepts was to open up people’s minds through acceptance of all of our qualities: good and bad, righteous and evil, and everything in between. What inspires you to draw and make dolls? Do you admire particular artists and their work, or is it drawn from the world around you?
GI: The dolls I made for the show are reminiscent of a certain way of doing things, a certain nostalgia for this aesthetic from my childhood. Lately, I’ve been paying attention to printed ephemera that largely goes unnoticed, like candy wrappers or ice-cream napkins. FWY: Personally, I think that Friends With You is very congruent with nature. Like I said before, it can have both characteristics of good and evil. Inspiration for us comes from an impossibly unquenchable force that makes us want to create so bad it makes us anxious. We get a real satisfaction from working constantly. MB: I just think that making stuff yourself is fun. I do like some artists’ work, definitely. But I try not to draw from other people’s work as much.
Where do you see yourselves in the context of this movement of character creations and doll-making? How do you explain the current move towards the more hands-on experience?
MB: I don’t really. When I started making the dolls it was just to amuse myself and make some pocket money. I kind of feel detached from all of this. I just like to keep making stuff whether they are dolls or not. FWY: I tend to think that as people get more and more disconnected from society, characters fuel our life with happiness and emotional identification. I never wanted to make art to match the couches of rich people. I want to make stuff that everyone can touch and play with and feel good about. GI: I think it’s all about cycles. One thing reacts against its precedent and you learn from all of them and eventually, hopefully, you create your own thing. There was a soundtrack CD compiled specifically for the show. Was the music a direct reflection of the work that resulted at Aqui Uzumaki?
FWY: The music created on the compilation fit the show almost perfectly. All the artists on the CD are amazing! MB: I think if I wasn’t a visual artist, I might’ve been a musician although I realized early on that I’m not very good at making music. GI: To me, music is very inspiring, very suggestive, in ways an image will never be. The music doesn’t relate directly to the work that we did but when it all came together they worked very closely.
Are you surprised by how well the show was received?
FWY: I was really surprised at how many people showed up, especially when I realized how hard it is to find things in Tokyo. The first floor of a building could be a girl’s purse shop, the second floor could be a silky sexy store with a giant crow in a cage, the third could be a gay men’s warehouse and the fourth could be a pencil sharpener emporium. With all that in mind, the place was filled with super smiling faces and friendly people. Any future plans for collaboration?
MB: We haven’t really talked about it but first I think we’ll take time to appreciate everything that happened, not just with the show but with this trip and everything we did together. I’m sure if there is another opportunity in the future, it would be really great and fun. We could do even crazier things now that we’ve done this.
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Aqui Uzumaki is currently running at the Hanna Gallery in Tokyo from May 23 - August 31, 2004. Sonido Uzumaki can be purchased directly from Music Related Records at www.musicrelated.net.
artist links:
www.friendswithyou.com
www.mumbleboy.com
www.gagainc.com