Fanta, Sprite and G.I. Joe: Depictions of Postwar American Military in Japanese Photography.
Presented at:
Radical Aesthetics and Politics: Intersections in Music, Art and Critical Social Theory Conference, Hunter College, City University of New York, New York City, December 9, 2011.
Since the end of World War II, the American military presence on Japanese soil has been a contentious, yet mandated component of Japan’s postwar political and economic landscape. Initiated and maintained through a series of treaties at the end of the war, large American military installations are concentrated on the islands of Okinawa and Honshu. Their presence is not a simple picture of occupier and occupied, but rather a controversial and complex issue in Japanese politics -- one that is complicated by a love-hate relationship in which both partners are responsible for the resulting tensions. As a layered subject that offers no easy answers, a number of Japanese postwar photographers have sought to unravel their often-conflicted feelings on the American military’s role in their country. Employing very different conceptual and visual approaches, their photographs and accompanying photobooks provide highly personal observations on this controversial topic.
Within the context of the multifaceted dialogue surrounding the American military presence in Japan, this paper will present three
distinctly personal aesthetic investigations by Shomei Tomatsu, Mao Ishikawa, and Miyako Ishiuchi. As the oldest, Tomatsu was a founding
member of the influential Vivo group and mentor to the successive generation that includes Ishikawa and Ishiuchi. His Chewing Gum and
Chocolate series (late 1950s-60s) presents the gaudy bars and lounges that surround the military bases. Fascinated by the informality of
the American military personnel, his images explore their subjects from a distance as they renounce photojournalism in favor of a more
expressive and intuitive approach. Mao Ishikawa, a student of Tomatsu and a dramatic and outspoken native Okinawan, embraces her subjects
full force from a position of central engagement. By joining the ranks of the “Kin-Town” women, the young women who “befriended” the soldiers
near the US base in Kin-Town, Okinawa, the photographs in her 1982 photobook Hot Days at Camp Hansen present a raw view from an interior
perspective. A bit more subdued and reflective of a conflicted identity, Miyako Ishiuchi’s Yokosuka Story (1978-79) explores her hometown
Yokosuka, a city southwest of Tokyo, which has hosted two large American naval bases since the late 1940s. Possessing a quiet power, her
images of deserted military base buildings and streets act as a container for her highly personal childhood memories of place as they also
hint at the wider conflicted national sentiment and the complex range of emotions associated with the American military presence in Japan.
“Shojo” and the Art of Resistance by Contemporary Japanese Women Photographers and Media Artists.
Presented at:
Critical Themes in Media Studies Conference, New School University, New York City, April 2010.
In this essay, I argue that the staged cos-play (costume play) inspired works of contemporary Japanese women photographers and media artists employ the trappings of
kawaii (cute) and shojo (girl) culture as a feminist strategy to exploit traditional gender stereotypes and gain a measure of personal freedom in the restrictive context
of Japanese culture. By combining critical theories about the primarily subversive origins of cute culture within the 1960/1970s Japanese resistance movements with examples
of sex and dissent portrayed in the works of Japanese male photographers such as Yoshiyuki Kohei, Watanabe Katsumi and Araki, an historical support can be found for the highly
sexualized masquerades now practiced by contemporary photographers Yanagi MIwa, Sawada Tomoko and Suzuki Ryoko, and performance artist Norico (Sunayama Noriko). It is at the
intersection of an inversion of kawaii shojo culture with the above mentioned historical precedence for sex as dissent that I analyze the distinctive type of agency enacted by
women media artists over the past 15 years -- one that explores a liminal and hybrid-gendered space that mixes subversion and consumerism.
Self-Commodification: Controlling the Body
Presented at:
Critical Themes in Media Studies Conference, New School University, New York City, April 2009.
The Body: Images, Perceptions, and Representations Conference, Western Illinois University, November 2008.Self-Commodification: Controlling the Body investigates contemporary female media and performance artists’ purposeful embrace of their bodies as a means of self-commodification. Through the use of networked and medical means, these artists present their dissected and indexed bodies as empowered parts along with the various brand name possessions that they consume and adorn themselves with – all of it for sale within a creative and social structure that easily acknowledges the role that contemporary commodity culture plays in their lives and art making. As artists, these women have arrived at a point where they don’t just comment on the commodification of their bodies, but actively engage in a process of self-commodification – willfully controlling and promoting it for their own profit.
Starting with the dada inspired street performances of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven,
this paper chronicles the artistic evolution and control of female
self-representation through the manipulation of various technologies and media,
i.e. print, performance, video, photography/montage, plastic surgery and fertility
treatments. Much self-imaging found in contemporary art presents the body mediated,
interpreted and reassembled through either a lens (camera) or screen (computer
monitor, TV) -- the resulting works celebrate a distracted and superficial “reality”
reconstructed from personal, cultural and representational dislocations reflective
of 20th century consumer practices. By referencing historical, theoretical and
social works by Walter Benjamin, Lizabeth Cohen, Susan Bordo and Laura Mulvey
and applying them to specific artworks by Hannah Wilke, Martha Rosler, Lynda
Benglis, Orlan and Chrissy Connant, this paper follows the progression
and normalization of self-commodification in the practices of several contemporary
female artists.
Immateriality and Open Access: Net Art in its Natural 'Habitat'
Presented at:
12th Biennial Symposium on Arts and Technology, Connecticut College, New London, CT, March 2010.
Critical Themes Conference, New School University, April 2008.Since its inception in the mid 1990’s, the collective or rather “connective”, non- object oriented and interactive practices of networked media art (a.k.a. web or internet art) has never fit smoothly into the existing art world structure of materiality. Instead, its inherent immateriality pushes the boundaries and definitions of art and its material- based presentation structure. By its very nature, its creation and dissemination are antithetical to the traditional hierarchy of the art world’s closed and tightly controlled system of rewards and gatekeepers. Using a production of culture perspective as outlined by Richard Peterson in his essay “Cultural Studies Through the Production of Culture Perspective: Progress and Prospects” which posits that the culture in which the cultural objects are created, distributed, evaluated and preserved will influence their content and the creation process, this paper explores the ill fitting relationship that net art has with the prevailing object-oriented art world production environment.
Examining net art examples on museum portal sites, in gallery and museum exhibitions, as well as artist created web sites, the DIY (“do-it-yourself”) practices of net artists and their audience are evaluated and compared to the material oriented practices of the current art world rewards system. In order for net art to maintain its very essence of open access, collaboration and interactivity and not be subsumed or converted into an appropriated material likeness of its “original” self, this paper suggests that net art needs to be available and exhibited within the environment in which it was created, a network, i.e. the web – thus, making the sanctioned art world portal sites just one avenue in the continuously expanding and inter-connected rhizomatic realm of online art viewing. As a result, alternative reward structures and gatekeepers are explored and suggested.