Happy New Year
Prediction: This Year's Encounters
Artists in their 30s with a mental age of 13 and whose brain you'd want to examine, artists with beautiful, pure eyes who spend their entire savings on art projects and are always in debt, honest artists who only think and talk about girls, logically consistent and organized festivals, totally disorganized new festivals carried out by passionate and energetic staff, souls burning out, creative sweats on the other side of one's body, the grey crescent moon-like bags under one’s eyes, blue skies that link the whole wide world, various luscious lifestyles in front of our very eyes.
Kenji Ogawa will continually search for those imaginary horizons through the camera's viewfinder, and press the REC button in sync with the breaths of buildings and people. And when he presses the OFF button, we reporters hope that we will feel elated. We’d like to excel further this year in sharing our precious experiences with you.
And we'd also like to become more well-known. After all, it's our 2nd year.
Perhaps this is our most important goal.
We look forward to sharing another year with you.
Live in Berlin, Create in Berlin
In former East Berlin, many art spaces reuse old buildings. Radicalsystem, which we introduced in AAL016, is a remodeled and expanded water drainage factory. The communal atelier artist space, in which many artists and people working in art-related jobs own ateliers, is renown in united Berlin. ATELIERHAUS MENGERZEILE、Milchhof, etc. I don’t remember clearly but I had heard many of their names.
There are many reasons why artists flock to Berlin, but I sensed that it might be the anything-goes, avant-garde atmosphere that attracts them. So far we've been introducing places and buildings, but now we will show you artists who I'm sure you've never heard of.
By the way, apparently Berlin's population is decreasing right now, meaning lower land prices. Thus, it's easier to obtain a spacious atelier in the heart of the city at a low price. This is a very strange phenomenon for a country bumpkin like myself, who only knows the very expensive Tokyo. Anyway, I think that Berlin is the coolest place _ cooler than Paris, London, Rotterdam, and Barcelona. Those of you who live or have been to Berlin, you know what I'm talking about, right!
Guest: The Circle of Friends Resurrects!
The circle of friends was at a standstill after AAL011:sonar guest, Hitoshi Taguchi from Grinder-man. But at last, it's starting again! Today's guest is artist Ryota Kuwakubo, an older friend of Mr. Taguchi during university. Mr. Kuwakubo's pieces are always beautifully finished, and I love the way that there's always something exciting about their structure. Plus, I've known him through the program Digital Stadium, so it was a coincidental and familiar encounter. We were able to have a very relaxed conversation to start the year off. Great.
I really like the fact that Mr. Kuwakubo is soft-spoken and mumbles, but he's always making subtle jokes and trying to make you laugh. He's at it again this time too.
