08.11.2009 oooo 8

Today I went to Roppongi. They have this "art triangle" which is basically three museums that generally form a geographic triangle. I didn't know where to start since they all seemed equally far so I picked the National Art Center.

This was on the way and it was pretty cool so I was pretty excited to get there until... I saw the sign saying CLOSED TUESDAYS. > : (


So I headed for the Mori Art Museum at Roppongi.

The museum is on the 28th floor or so and with your ticket you can also view the city from their skydeck.

1. Tokyo tower 2. the cluster of buildings look like they have collapsed, but if you look carefully, you can see that it is because the roof is slanted to one side.

The exhibition at Mori Art Museum was on Ai WeiWei. The designer behind China's Olympic bird's nest stadium (and Herzog & de Meuron).

And here I must say that I don't think I am a fan of this guy. He seems to have an obsession with the number 1, and mathematics, basic forms, volume, clean, caluclated things, order from disorder, and breaking things down and rebuilding to change the viewers perspective. Not that there's anything particularly wrong with his views it's just that the way he portrays them is so matter of fact that the artist's message is somehow lost. Does that make any sense? Not only that but viewing his works made me feel like he was a. wasting material, and b. crazy, and not in the cool way, and c. possibly mo liu.

1. Things in ones. 1 tonne of tea in 1 cubic meter. 1 cubic meter of wood, 1 cubic meter tables. 2. a "Tea house" literally and I suppose, figuratively too (how creative.)

Two large bowls of pearls represent not only prosperity and ?? but also how mass production ruins the special meaning of having just one. Ai WeiWei says that having one pearl is a treasure but when you have this many pearls, the volume changes the worth of a single pearl.

backpacks in the form of a snake representing all the children lost in Sichuan.

1. Wood taken from old temples put together to make the shape of china. 2. same thing but differently

A tang dynasty courtesian in an Absolut Vodka bottle. A "juxatoposition of east and west, traditional crafts and mass produced objects, and the past and the present"

This was neat. The old bicycles in China are made from a company named Forever and so he linked them together as a circle. It is also representative of the China's history as supposedly everyone drives a car nowadays.


So after that exhibit I went to find Design Sight 21_21 (the third museum). I've been looking forward to it since July. But guess what, it's CLOSED ON TUESDAYS TOO. > : ( So I went back to roppongi hills since it's the closest to the subway entrance.

I'm not really clear as to what the name of the place is but I think it is Roppongi Hills... although the area is also calld Roppongi Hills (hence the confusion) The heading of this post 0000 8 is the Roppongi hills logo. Can you see all the o's? I've been counting the o's in roppongi all morning until I saw this sign.

Mori building? Roppongi Building? Planet 66? (Murakami)

And look who I found! Maman! She's apparently worth billions. When I get back to Ottawa I'm going to hug her leg.

TV Asahi also had a commemorative 3o year anniversay exhibition on Doraemon ... on the weekend. But the gift store was still open!

Sigh, you don't want to know the number of really good events/exhibitions I've missed out on this weekend... I want to kick myself! The more I look, the more I find, and the more disappointed I get. lol


Also, as an update, I still have a cough ish. It's dry but I am starting to get a sore throat again... That and the earthquake and typhoon have passed. Other than a slight flooding at the temple, there has been nothing major. The earthquake hit the hardest in Northern Japan and Tokyo only got a bit of the jitters, so I'm OK!