“Art created and presented so keenly that one is seized momentarily by the impression there is nothing there at all.”

The concept behind the title of the project series relates to artistic trends represented in two seminal exhibitions of the past, The Art of the Real (MOMA, NY 1968) and Anti – Illusion: Procedures and Materials (The Whitney Museum of American Art, 1969). The former gave a comprehensive overview of the impact of the ‘art of the real”, and the latter illustrated in concrete terms the various possibilities for contemporary art after minimalism, the movement that was both a product and a critical end point of modernism. This project series is closely related to both the ‘real’/ Social / COM / concept and the ‘modern’/ Concrete / OBJECT / Sculpture, and its title could also be Trans / Modern Communication / Object. The prefix trans – includes the meaning ‘beyond’ and can thus imply after (post-) as well, meaning that Post / Real would also have been a valid title. Arrange the elements of these potential alternate titles further and you get Post / Modern, a familiar phrase and a latent sub – theme of this series.

Building on this foundation, trans / Real: The Potential of Intangible Art explores the potential of art after modernism (for which the self- containment of vision and the collapse of the definition “space” act as critical transition points), defining this potential as “Intangible” and applying to it seven key words with the prefix trans -. It questions what “medium”, a topic of frequent debate during the modernist period, means in the context of a wide range of contemporary Japanese art encompassing painting, sculpture, installation, photography, video, and sound. In this sense it advances the discussion of “post-medium” (Rosalind Krauss) from “un-medium” (art media in which material, format, and work are in an undifferentiated state) to use “trans – medium”.

The concept of this series also expands the discussion that unfolds in Edward Strickland’s Minimalism: Origins (1993). This discussion is organized around terms Paint, Sound, and Space (Paint, Sound referring to painting and music respectively). Trans / Real adds four more terms, Surface, Information, Line, and Perception, and pairs each of the seven terms with a word prefixed by trans – to arrive at the titles for each of the seven stages of the exhibition / Project series.

These shows featuring a selection of Japanese contemporary artists is sure to carry out a fresh and engaging investigation of the Trans / Real theme. In doing so, it will be necessary to explore the wide – ranging potential of Trans / Medium with a view to both vertical plumbing of modernism’s depths (exploration that transcends the possibilities and limitations of a single medium) and horizontal surveying across its borders (of trends in use of multiple media). In other words, to interpret these two approaches to medium not as diametrically opposed but as coexisting equally on the same plane requires apprehending the concept of Trans / Medium with emphasis on the tangibility vs. intangibility of the experience of the work, more than the materiality vs. immateriality of the work itself. Rather than dwelling narrowly on theories of medium, this exhibition series will seek to interpret the entire process by which art is created as a ‘device’ or ‘circuit’ that generates creative expression, and shed light on the theme of trans / Real while exploring the limitless potential of intangible art.

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The New is New only when its New

In the work of a number of Japanese Contemporary artists there is a fascination and recurring appearance of the moving artwork – powered by small machines. In several works that will be discussed in this essay, the artists take highly aesthetic functional objects and render them as humorous interpretations of the ‘Ready-made’. What differs the artist’s work here from the historical president of the ready-made, namely those of Duchamp, American Minimalists and later the Post – Pop minimalism of say Jeff Koons is the unique approach towards moving mechanics and the eroticization of objects and machines.

Commodity Fetishism is not a new concept, complex or social crisis, MARX TURNS TO FETISHISM to make sense of the apparently magical quality of the commodity: "A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties". Fetishism in anthropology. In Karl Marx's critique of political economy, commodity fetishism is the perception of the social relationships involved in production, not as relationships among people, but as economic relationships among the money and commodities exchanged in market trade.

To evaluate this perception of relationships today in Japan some 150 years later requires a swift adjustment in understanding Marx’s political and social critique of Commodity Fetishism…And replacing the idea of commodity with the mechanisms of mobile objects and aesthetics machines / replacing fetishism with Eroticism or (Eros) an actually affection and love of the Mechanic.

That inimitable attentiveness of your Japanese interlocutor who suddenly makes you feel worthy of consideration and induces you into the mimetic temptation – irresistible, though hopeless – of understanding the other from a viewpoint imbued with a new sensitivity. Felix Guattari ‘Tokyo, The Proud”.

During the 1980’s - Félix Guattari visited Japan on a number of occasions - during the 1980s. These visits consisted of invited lectures and a series of conversations and collaborations with Japanese intellectuals, artists, and architects. During those visits, Felix Guattari created in his Tokyo Machine Tour of the 1980’s in which he wrote ‘Tokyo, the Proud’ and ‘Mechanic Eros’. Engaging in its energetic capitalist overflow, the pulsating rhythm of his text tried to capture the social mechanics of the city, its complexities, characters and psychological landscape. How has the acceleration of this Machine Eros depicted by Guattari impacted on today’s generation of art producers? This question incites an approach to understanding and critically evaluating the work of a generation of new Japanese Art which both embodies the ‘mimetic excess’ (Hal Foster) of a capitalist society and that which attempts to reject and operate in opposition to it. Dealing with this multiplex of media and forms these artists engage with, we can also see how micro media is implemented in the artists’ works and how these works negotiate various formalist structures from the main canon of post-modernism and contemporary art outside Japan. The Formalist Structure in question here is an inherit legacy of Minimalism or to be precise that which for many decades now displaced Minimalism, namely ‘Post Minimalism’.

And, why minimalism we may ask, or what has minimalism got to do with the artist’s production in terms of Mechanic Eros? That is something of course with a multiplicity of complicated reasons, and only some of which will be explored here. Perhaps because of the residual effects of Modernism of Japan's highly industrialized Technological landscape there are some logical reasons why Minimalism as an artistic style, genre and conceptual practice has had an influential position for both the Fine Arts and Design systems in Japan. Its reflection of the industrial landscape, the coldness of its materiality, the repetition and reproduction of the functional and luxury object which is mimetic of capitalist societies engagement which the human body as user / consumer. All which have been masterfully incorporated in the social landscape of post war Japan, and in the entertainment luxury industry of the contemporary electronic age. Also that factory produced items where Labor is invisible and the trace or mark of the makers hand is un identifiable is highly adorned in Japan as in most of the rest of the world. In Japan however, the miraculous existence of the commodity in such abundance and the exact opposite to everything valued in Japanese traditional culture where the uniqueness of the artisan's hand was the previous measure of aesthetic values.  

Before considering how micro media operates in the context of these artists’ production and everyday engagements, we must rewind to critical arguments surrounding art in the west in the early 20^th Century. In Walter Benjamin's 1935 essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, not only was the artist’s mode of production assessed in view of emerging Technology and mechanical apparatus but so too were the questions of authorship, authenticity and originality.  Benjamin not only discusses the effects of technology and mechanical apparatus throughout art history but importantly leads us into a critical analysis on the development of Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Surrealism. It is in that historical moment and in relation to the Political theories presented by Karl Marx some 40 years earlier that the true bases of contemporary art practices emerges. That basis which will be discussed in direct relation to the art that is being made by today’s generation of Japanese (young) artists discussed in this essay; Marcel Duchamp, The Ready-made and minimalism.

NOW, Media too is Ready Made. PC’s, smart phones, touch screens, Internet resources, images, videos and music but also the user systems and applications themselves which make the kind of Micro media platforms possible. “The work of art,” says André Breton, “is valuable only insofar as it is vibrated by the reflexes of the future.” Indeed, every developed art form intersects three lines of development. Technology works toward a certain form of art.  

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Hardness and softness

In a statement written by Yasuaki Hamada explaining the production and core basis of his works the artist refers to Ernst Mach 's one-way argument, that color, sound, temperature, pressure, time, all others are all tied together in many different ways. Those elements will cooperate with emotion, sensibility, and even intention. Among the fabrics consisting of this element, relatively fixed and more permanent standing up to the front, scoring in their memory and expressing in the language. Hamada is interested in the Body (its touch) and body / Object relationships.  He investigates how bodies both human and concrete express physical and chemical elements and functions like language. “First, a person with a relatively strong persistence shows herself as a complex of color, acoustic, temperature, pressure, is concluded in space and time, gets a special name, the body (Object). It is said that there is no complex that perpetuates perfectly. In other words, by acquiring a special name, obtaining a body (object), and by increasing its intensity, the content of expression is limited more”.

Guattari’s references to micromedia are also rich with contemporary implications. As media can now be produced by virtually anyone, there’s infinite potential for them to — in Guattarian terms — not only “cybernetically enslave,” but also convey a multitude of languages and effects. 2

Hamada explains, "I think that my work is close to "symbolic language" of the monolithic Orikuchi Nobuo. "Symbolic linguistics" is the one that captures the bonds of elements and replaces them with languages in a world that is connected in a variety of ways, such as color, sound, temperature, pressure, time, etc. It encompasses every element, it becomes ambiguous and almost unnecessary, and conversely it can express various symbols (elements) implicitly and symbolically.

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Mechanic Eros

Objects > Activated by a Mechanic Apparatus. Between the artists and like the trend in much recent Japanese Art, there is a tendency to ‘make it move’. Basically and conceptually speaking there seems to be not a significant difference between each art and the artistic output – from Artwork to Artwork. The priority in gaining appraisal from their peers is ‘making it move’, imbuing something with an automated electronic function. Mechanical and electronic know how – ‘exerts a high level of respect and appreciated value.

Emotional content relating to the Objects; is imbued in order to differentiate each other – the artists search for their own personal motif. Objects which signify and represent a personal connotation, A memory or a meaning which can often be the trigger or source to create or impart a personal narrative, an anecdote or to demonstrate their knowledge on the subject.

What brings these artists together into a kind of identifiable group is the use of mechanics and movement with a formalism akin to late and post-minimalism but with a kind of visible fetishism, sexual objectification and eroticism towards the art object. All these artists embody their sculptures or processes with some element of Mechanic Eros.