Muting The Noise

We are proud to present the next collaboration with Y-3. The shirt was designed for our event at the Oukan shop this March 2012. And in case you wonder what "ューティング・ザ・ノイズ" means - it is "Muting The Noise" written in japanese letters.

As being not a big fan of Mr. Wenders ouevre I had little expectations, but this documentary was quite a big surprise when it came out, more than an ordinary get-together of two well respected artists. Looking behind the scenes of Yohji Yamamoto's working style combined with the great pictures from Tokyo make this film very special.

I was probably too young when I first saw this film but it stayed in my mind and became one of my all-time favourite movies. A surrealistic cyberpunk meets David Cronenberg plot which established Tsukamoto's worldwide reputation. Intense and mindblowing the same time.

Lady Snowblood is a Japanese film classic which inspired many other films like Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. A flamboyantly blood-spattered samurai revenge picture with a twist: Born in prison, Snowblood is raised by a martial priest and trained to fulfill a single purpose: tracking down, and dismembering (or bisecting), the four cackling fiends who killed her father and persecuted her mother to an early grave. Adapted from another manga comic book written by Kasuo Koike, whose most famous work became the legendary Lone Wolf and Cub film series, this 1973 programmer stays close to its pulp-paper roots: images from the comics are deployed in a couple of montage sequences, and the story is divided into four chapters drawn from the monthly manga installments.

When we thought about introducing Japanese film history to you, we decided to select one masterpiece by the most acclaimed Japanese director in history. To experience a Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963) film is to immerse in the reserved, quiet grace of a disappearing traditional culture. Through Ozu's filmic oeuvre we can get to know and understand Japanese culture, history, society, conflicts between generations and traditions better by identifying with the characters, ordinary people, out of the every day, ordinary life. Tokyo Story is a languidly paced, subtly poignant, and exquisitely realized story of the Hirayamas, an aging couple from the provincial town of Onomichi who travel to post-war reconstructed Tokyo in order to visit their children, who, in turn, seem to have little interest or time to be with them. Their son Koichi and his wife soon tire of them and send them to stay with their daughter Shige. Shige packs them off to a hot spring in Atami. However, the resort is full of boisterous guests and the Hirayamas cannot relax. So they return to Tokyo to find somewhere to spend the night. The only person who shows them kindness and hospitality is their daughter-in-law Noriko, whose husband (their son) has gone missing during the war. On their way back, Tomi falls ill and shortly after they return to Onomichi, she passes away. There are no external catalysts in the film, no psychological deconstruction of a dysfunctional family. It is a story about generational fractures - culture, tradition, and people - left in the wake of modernization and consuming self-absorption. Ozu uses low camera height and breaks the rules of conventional cinema using 360° space, creating an intimate, familial atmosphere, to draw us into the lives of the Hirayama family - through subtle gestures and mannerisms, mundane conversations, daily rituals, and simple acts of kindness. Throughout the film, there is a pervasive sound of movement: ticking clocks, churning steamboats, passing trains. Yet within each framed composition, Ozu's camera does not move (there is only one tracking shot as the camera moves from a brick wall to the image of the evicted elderly couple). It is a figurative reminder that modern life is in perpetual motion, and that the beauty of life is often found in standing still. Tokyo Story demands little from the viewer, except to sit back and absorb the sweeping, beautiful images that gradually unfold before us towards its muted, heartbreaking conclusion, and from it, derive meaning for our own frenetic existence. But, in the culture of fast cars, internet access, and prescription panaceas, that is, perhaps, too much to ask.

"Proto Anime Cut" was an interesting exhibition in Berlin's Künstlerhaus Bethanien, where Les Jardins des Pilotes (Berlin) and 2dK (Tokyo) presented original drawings of the protagonists of the Japanese anime culture. The action-packed hero stories and the visionary science fiction of Japanese Anime are set in impressive worlds that are constructed in painstaking detail. Looking at the creative processes, the filmmakers appear as architectural dreamers who operate with virtuosity at the borders of credibility, fiction and utopia. Numerous background paintings, storyboards, drafts, sources of inspiration and film excerpts provide insight into the working methods of the most successful animation artists of the last two decades. Proto Anime Cut presents them for the first time in Europe. The exhibition book includes work by Hideaki Anno (director, Neon Genesis Evangelion), Haruhiko Higami (photographer), Koji Morimoto (director, Dimension Bomb), Hiromasa Ogura (art director), Mamoru Oshii (director, Patlabor, Ghost in the Shell) and Takashi Watabe (layout). The presented artists have played key roles in the development of Anime. By cooperating closely in different production studios in Tokyo they gave their distinctive signatures to many films and developed the prototypical Anime style.

The title stands for itself. Bruno Taut the legendary architect and visionary from Berlin went to Japan after being displaced by the nationsocialistic regime. He was so impressed by the whole culture and especially by the royal Katsura villa in which he saw a prototype in modern architecture. This book is a collection of essays and writings edited by Manfred Speidel. (200 pages, German)

Description to follow. (German, Hardcover, 96 pages)

Description to follow. (German, Hardcover, 96 pages)

Description to follow. (German, Hardcover, 144 pages)

Takehito Koganezawa (*1974) is a Japanese artist who is shaping the art discourse in Berlin and exhibited or performed in the last decade in institutions such as Deutsche Guggenheim, Kunstwerke e.V., Martin Gropius Bau, NGBK, Berlinische Galerie or at Haus deer Kulturen der Welt. As much as becoming an acclaimed artist in contemporary art internationally he is working in the fields of drawing, video, installation and performance. Koganezawa aims for "nothingness in an exact way. But what I can find has always meaning. So I try to wash out the meaning from an object," says the artist." His oeuvre communicates rather quietly, but contemplating in his own view on our world deeply. Drawing with coloured pencils in a manner like children usually do he is creating surreal worlds by the most minimal composition of a few lines, creating figures, moments and spaces which carry his poetic thought into our perception by narration. The exceptional catalogue DRAWING, which was published in 2003, features a broadband collection of Koganezawa's "mental dreamworld" with texts by Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Ralf Christofori and Maïté Vissault. (176 pages.)

A fondly created catalogue which is accompanying a wonderful exhibition! In accordance to Takehito Koganezawa's (*1974) current exhibition at Haus am Waldsee, Berlin, running until May 20, 2012 the new catalogue LUFTLINIEN was published by Walter König Verlag. Takehito Koganezawa (*1974) is a japanese artist who is shaping the art discourse in Berlin and exhibited or performed in the last decade in institutions such as Deutsche Guggenheim, Kunstwerke e.V., Martin Gropius Bau, NGBK, Berlinische Galerie or at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. As much as becoming an acclaimed artist in contemporary art internationally he is working in the fields of drawing, video, installation and performance. Koganezawa aims "nothingness in an exact way. But what I can find has always meaning. So I try to wash out the meaning from an object," says the artist." His Oeuvre communicates rather quietly, but contemplating in his own view on our world deeply. Drawing with coloured pencils in a manner like children usually do he is creating surreal worlds by the most minimal composition of a few lines, creating figures, moments and spaces which carry his poetic thought into our perception by narration. (83 pages)