Friday, November 28, 2008
ULTRA, day 2
10/29
So the second day of ULTRA, Wednesday, was my first day working there. Above is a picture from the opening, with a reference arrow pointing to my station. Staff members took turns helping out and on the first day it was open to the public it was me, Alida, and Yaegashi-san working together. The artist Nina was working on two projects for gallery.sora's empty space. One project involved finding a person who once considered herself/himself a poet but no longer did, having their poetry transcribed into roman letters, and then Nina typing those letters onto a typewriter without knowing the translation. Her other project was to plant the seeds of a plant that would grow the size of the building if allowed to grow fully, but they inevitably would be covered by the new gallery building planned for roughly 2010. So that day Alida had to come late because she needed to meet with gardeners and hunt for former poets!
I mean I was sitting in a hallway on a cardboard box for hours and hours, but it was actually interesting people-watching. People in Omotesando are usually very well-dressed and the sort of people that come to Spiral tend to be interested in art so have either terrible fashion, artist fashion, or rich people fashion. I was telling Alida that if you know fashion, you can tell by the shoes if the people are potentially collectors or not. It's the shape and quality of materials that cannot be faked. I was saying in particular that there was a really famous pair of Tabi shoes by Martin Margiela, who has a store in Omotesando at the GYRE (yes dad it's actually called that), and lo and behold, a very beautiful and elegant older woman walked in that day wearing a pair of the thousand something shoes.
The lights in this building in Omotesando change color slowly at night.
When the day was done, we went down to Cosmic Wonder (Yukinori Maeda's store) to see Ken Kagami's new t-shirts with a bunch of the gallery staff (let me summarize: there kittens involved. lots). Along the way we picked up Naoko Tamura (the photographer whose works we were showing at ULTRA) and author Pierre Bayard who wrote a book that will be "the last book you'll ever read" (it's about why reading is a waste of time).
Here's Kano-san outside of Cosmic Wonder! If there is another human being in this world cuter than her, I ask you to give me proof now.
Afterwards we went for celebratory champagne and eats at a restaurant in Harajuku (or Aoyama?)
Here's a really really blurry picture of the other table with Ken Kagami, Kano, Kikutake, and Kuropi.
I sat between Ishii-san and Alida.
My hair was a mess after a long day. I don't remember, but we probably went home by the last train.
So the second day of ULTRA, Wednesday, was my first day working there. Above is a picture from the opening, with a reference arrow pointing to my station. Staff members took turns helping out and on the first day it was open to the public it was me, Alida, and Yaegashi-san working together. The artist Nina was working on two projects for gallery.sora's empty space. One project involved finding a person who once considered herself/himself a poet but no longer did, having their poetry transcribed into roman letters, and then Nina typing those letters onto a typewriter without knowing the translation. Her other project was to plant the seeds of a plant that would grow the size of the building if allowed to grow fully, but they inevitably would be covered by the new gallery building planned for roughly 2010. So that day Alida had to come late because she needed to meet with gardeners and hunt for former poets!
I mean I was sitting in a hallway on a cardboard box for hours and hours, but it was actually interesting people-watching. People in Omotesando are usually very well-dressed and the sort of people that come to Spiral tend to be interested in art so have either terrible fashion, artist fashion, or rich people fashion. I was telling Alida that if you know fashion, you can tell by the shoes if the people are potentially collectors or not. It's the shape and quality of materials that cannot be faked. I was saying in particular that there was a really famous pair of Tabi shoes by Martin Margiela, who has a store in Omotesando at the GYRE (yes dad it's actually called that), and lo and behold, a very beautiful and elegant older woman walked in that day wearing a pair of the thousand something shoes.
The lights in this building in Omotesando change color slowly at night.
When the day was done, we went down to Cosmic Wonder (Yukinori Maeda's store) to see Ken Kagami's new t-shirts with a bunch of the gallery staff (let me summarize: there kittens involved. lots). Along the way we picked up Naoko Tamura (the photographer whose works we were showing at ULTRA) and author Pierre Bayard who wrote a book that will be "the last book you'll ever read" (it's about why reading is a waste of time).
Here's Kano-san outside of Cosmic Wonder! If there is another human being in this world cuter than her, I ask you to give me proof now.
Afterwards we went for celebratory champagne and eats at a restaurant in Harajuku (or Aoyama?)
Here's a really really blurry picture of the other table with Ken Kagami, Kano, Kikutake, and Kuropi.
I sat between Ishii-san and Alida.
My hair was a mess after a long day. I don't remember, but we probably went home by the last train.
Labels: aoyama, omotesando
¶ 3:18 AM
