Zuzushi Art Laboratory

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March 17, 2011

Be Prepared: 5 must haves for any Emergency

Posted by gaijinass under Earthquake 2011, Gaijin, Zuzushi Art Laboratory | Tags: Be prepared, Earthquake 2011, Tokyo Radiation |
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Be Prepared: 5 must haves for any Emergency

“Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.”
Bill Cosby

Japan is still, by and large, way up shit creek and nobody seems to know exactly where the paddle is. The Kanto area is still getting small to medium size earthquakes everyday. The situation with the Nuclear power plant in Fukushima has not improved and resources are depleted all over the country while aid workers and the military push on non-stop to find survivors and help the displaced in Northern Japan, the area most hard hit by the initial quake and tsunami.

What this means for normal people in Tokyo and other areas where radiation is or could potentially become a problem and the earth under our feet is still swaying and rolling is the onset of compounded stress, tension and anxiety. It gets hard to sleep when, just before bed, everything starts rumbling. When every news report in the world has a title that begins with the words “DIRE” or “POTENTIAL CATACLYSM” one loses the ole’ appetite.

But as in the iconic words of Cypress Hill: When the Shit goes down, you better be ready…when the shit goes down!

In situations like this, it is important to do two things.

First, you need to prepare for tough times if you haven’t already. Getting the essentials is a big step toward finding the second necessary point. That secondary point is to RELAX.

It might sound like a tough thing to do, but you need to relax. When you relax you can make decisions more fluidly, considering all the angles and options. You can sift through the hype, which there are cargo planes full of, and find the straight facts.

One fantastic way to relax is to know that you’ve prepared as well as can be expected, the other way is to crack a smile and laugh. These two points are what this list is all about.

5. Hydrate!

I can hear it now…

“Come on, all that booze just for you?”

No, although that’s not a bad idea really.

These are some of the empty bottles I had in my home. Yes, several weeks of recycling left undone has come to good use. Wine and Vodka bottles rinsed out and filled with clean water. The bottles are fairly sturdy, not a single one broke during the big shake on Friday, and somehow I feel comforted by them being full and…wine bottles. Although potential house guests might get the wrong idea, if the tap water goes out or gets murky I will remain fully hydrated and ready for action.

Point? You need water.

4. People start screaming in the dark

People really DO start screaming in the dark. I know, because I am one of them. I have a beautiful, bass speaking voice that becomes distinctly shrieky and panic-inducing among small animals and certain children, when the lights go off whilst I am on the toilet.

With Power plants shutting down and roaming blackouts a reality, having easy access to light sources is essential. A flashlight nearby is a good idea. Candles are very useful, but due to the potentiality of further fun-fun earthquakes, it might be best for you to keep that lovely, 2 foot Gothic-black gargoyle candle you got yourself for Christmas in the closet and opt for smaller, survival style emergency candles. Also, the small tin based candles one uses for aroma therapy are found in loads of shops and are essentially the same thing.

Point? You need light.

3. Chow

During a black out or say, the apocalypse, it’s unlikely that Dominoes will be delivering or that Kentucky Fried chicken will be open and serving piping hot 4 piece meals and ice-cold 40′s. But you still need to eat.

Now, although Japan is the hometown of rice (Ninjas invented it), and most of my Japanese friends can exist on a diet of exclusively rice, seaweed and soup for decades on end, this is not the case for some of us.

Because I’m a maniac, I have a case, correct, yes a case, of military MRE’s or Meal Ready to Eat in my closet. Each prepackaged meal has about 1200 calories. Although some of them taste like standard microwave meals from 7/11, others taste more like prison rape. For this reason, it’s a good idea to have food stuffs from other sources.

Although the markets and stores in Tokyo are largely out of bread, rice and instant noodles within minutes of opening at the moment, things like pasta, canned tuna fish and fresh fruits are still available. As are canned fruits, which are not so popular here.

If you avoid the bigger markets and look for corner family owned stores and back road discount markets, you’ll likely find much more variety. I have been listening to Pavarotti and eating like I moved to the Tuscan coast, and have even had a couple of bottles of wine in order to make way for more water bottling.

Point? Get non perishable foods, and try to get a bit of a variety.

2. The Bug-out-Bag

Who the hell just said “Cute Purse…Homo.” ?!

This is my “Bug-out-Bag”. The BoB as I like to call it, is a satchel type bag I have with two separate compartments. Its pretty heavy-duty, won’t break if I pack it to the gills and the strap is also heavy-duty, allowing me to use it in the strangulation of flesh-eating zombies if that becomes part of this scenario.

Contents of the BoB are as follows:

2 stripped down MREs. Removed unnecessary packaging and junk to save room. Both are the flavors and meals that I can hardly stomach. This is a good way to insure you won’t eat them unless absolutely necessary.
My Passport. In case you need to get into your embassy or just prove who you are in a foreign country.
My wallet, foreign registration card, bank cards etc.
Cash. One envelope with some Yen, another with some USD incase I find myself on a US military base.
Immediate hygiene gear. This is the stuff that you need to keep yourself from falling apart. For example I have low-level eczema. If I can’t shower or wash properly it will crack and then bleed without lotion within a couple days.
Medication. If you have a prescription make sure it is in the bag. I do not, but I have a bottle of Advil and some antibiotics just in case.
Cold weather gear. It is very cold in Tokyo at night now and it gets worse the further north you are. Gloves, a beanie, thermal under shirt and another pair of good socks.
Lighters and waterproof matches. Also with these in a baggy, two tampons. These are really handy for starting fires. Don’t ask where I got these.
Flashlight. I have a mini-mag.
All purpose knife/tool. I have a leatherman. Multi-tool and knife. This along with my cash, passport, wallet and the next item would go on my person once I am outside the building.
Cellphones and charger. I have two phones. One I leave fully charged, battery taped to the outside of the phone. This is my back up. I can switch my sim cards if my first phone dies out.
Water. I have two 500 millilitre bottles in the bag.

This Bug-out-Bag is not big and that is a conscious decision. When I put it together I was thinking earthquake. If I was displaced, I would have to almost immediately find more water as the two bottles in the bag are not enough when one is running for one’s life while nursing a hangover.

Weight is a consideration because you have to carry whatever you pack. Keep it in mind when you put one together. Another good move is to waterproof the bag with a couple big zip-lock backs inside. Keep anything that might be affected by water in those bags and keep them closed up tight. If you’re really motivated and have time, you can further re-enforce the zip-lock bags inside by layering the exterior of each bag in duct tape. It helps protect the bags and hence your necessities by defending against punctures and tears in the plastic.

Point? Don’t forget your “Bob”.

1. Attitude

Two hours into the future: I have survived another big earthquake, grabbed my “Bob” and escaped two separate groups of zombies. But as I walk down the road, cross-bow in hand, samurai sword lashed to my belt, Nike cross trains muddied from my travels and suffering, up rolls a group of anarchy spreading, cannibalistic, rape loving Mad-Max-type bikers.

My grip on my crossbow tightens, as the bikers fan out to form a line with their “easy riders” and side cars in front of me, blocking the road I am destined to travel.

The wind blows, one particularly ugly biker snarls, an ugly little woman in his side car snarls along with him. Another one takes out a flask and guzzles from it greedily, wiping away the leakage onto his scruffy fat chin with the back of his gloved hand as he giggles in sick, high-pitched staccato. All of them stare at me.

The wind blows again, a wolf in the distance howls and I pull back my hood and look up, revealing my ORIGINAL EDITION, THIS IS IT, MICHAEL JACKSON WORLD TOUR RED AND BLACK BALL CAP to them!

“WHO’S BAD”

It says so much…without saying anything at all.

The bikers flinch, then look at each other, then look at me….then they all start-up their choppers, turn around and ride off. I remain on the road motionless in the wind. The wolf howls yet again. A solitary snowflake falls.

That’s Attitude.

See, that’s attitude. You can’t buy that, not without an e-bay account anyway. That is telling people you’re OK. The shit is going down right here, right now and you’re just fine with it. You aren’t laughing at death per se, but you’re aware that everyone has a time, and you’re not laying down and curling up in a ball waiting for “The Nothing” to come eat you up. You are prepared to stand tall, look tough times in the teeth, and smile a big “KISS MY ASS” type grin because guess what?

You can handle it.

I know most of you don’t have a REAL Michael Jackson tour cap like this to convey your badassery (and amazing fashion sense) with no words to aggresive biker gangs. But, you can say a lot with your own actions and bearing. How you remain calm and you support others around you with your composure and “can do” attitude. When things slow down you can go back to being a whiny little fairy like I will, but during the tough times….

COWBOY THE HELL UP.

Point? Attitude.

0. Your Secret Weapon against shitty things.

As much as I wish it was, the secret weapon sadly isn’t necromancy. And, it’s not this totally horrific mannequin standing in your upstairs window to scare looters away ala Zuzushii laboratory.

The secret weapon is a sense of humor.

I know a lot of people will read this and say that this is “inappropriate” or it is “callous” or it is “insane” or “deranged”. But it’s none of those things. These things might apply to me, but not to this post.

Sometimes, things get so bad, that all you can do is turn into the wind and cackle at the top of your crazy-god-damned lungs like a raving lunatic. The most crucial thing for everyone to do now is support your loved ones, friends and neighbors. Nothing will help other people more than seeing you smile and offer to lend a helping hand.

At the worst times in my life, the best things anyone have given me were jokes and good news.

When none of the latter is available, lay it on heavy with the former.

Laughing is medicine for your soul, particularly during the bad.

You can read more about the Earthquake in Japan in On Fidelity and 5 things the Earthquake in Japan taught me.

March 3, 2011

The Junk Junkies

Posted by gaijinass under Art, Culture, Gaijin, Guest posts, Rico Trout, Zuzushi Art Laboratory | Tags: Art Tokyo, Tim Can, Zuzushi art Laboratory |
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The Junk Junkies

guest post by: Rico Trout

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.

Pablo Picasso

There’s a corner of Tokyo that was born in Spain, standing out between the houses, between cultures, on a journey.

The ZUZUSHII ART LABORATORY.

It’s down a narrow street, across the road from the Kishibo temple and with an imposing red flag boasting a large, white Z, it’s a difficult place to miss; a dated, two storey building, formally a shop selling ornamental owls. Behind those glass doors now is a different world altogether, here you enter the land of Fumico Azuma and Tim Can.

They first met and started working together more than a decade ago in Barcelona, since then they have produced literally thousands of items, from things that had already existed.

For many, rubbish is purely rubbish.

For these two creators rubbish is something else entirely. We’re talking about art scavengers, not scavenging for art but re-using, re-cycling and re-creating from the debris of this disposable society we all seem to be a part of.

Sometimes the end results are functional, they’re usually peculiar and depending on your taste, even decorative. Much of the work is box art, that is to say, three dimensional, encased behind glass. Mixed-media compositions of torn photographs. Sheets of rusted metal. An old kitchen knife. Dead insects, broken scissors, a child’s toy, barbed wire. It feels as if they could be illustrations from a grim story or a cruel dream. They are not pretty, though sometimes the sinister or unattractive can be well lit. There’s a toilet seat illumination, a lamp made from a bath tap, others made from tin buckets and diving goggles. A triangular array of medicine bottles, each individually lit from within. They cast an eerie light of theatre and coloured shadows around this already atmospheric space. A CCTV security camera, it’s electrical innards hanging out, no longer doing what it did, now playing a clockwork tune from a music box.

There are global concerns behind their work, the history and hazards of nuclear energy are on ongoing theme. It’s a topic covered in the news at this very moment and also in the laboratory. Albert Einstein’s face appears with solar driven, spiralling eyes. Atomic bomb blasts, Madam Curie looks through between encyclopaedic images of mankind and that kitchen knife.

The environmental message shows through in some pieces more than others but there’s more to it than that. Even if the subject matter has no connection with green issues, the actual physical existence of the work communicates.

Their method of working is a message, the environment provides them with the materials. It’s the same pattern wherever they are, whether in Barcelona, Bali, London or Tokyo. Their creations have left a trail across the globe, they live, make and move on. In one sense another message is written, why use money unnecessarily? The economical benefits of utilizing waste was probably one of the first steps they took. This is a labour of love, it’s not a big earner and understanding that started early.

Tim explained that as a child, money was not there to be wasted on the extravagancies of new toys. A new toy was something that you made yourself from whatever was in the ’bits bag’. This, quite literally was a bag of bits, bottle tops, old pens, used paper cups, stuff. It was a utilitarian upbringing, maybe it didn’t seem so good at the time but it was a piece in the educational life-puzzle that stayed around far after long lost long-division and the happily forgotten possessive pronouns. Don’t discard what you can still use, it is a waste, pure and simple.

It’s not possible to be perfect but think for a moment. Over the last week how many things have you used just one time and then thrown away? A plastic bag or bottle? In a year, how many things have you got rid of purely because you have something else of a similar nature that looks or does something better? It almost seems inconceivable that we lived without the aid of cell phones and the internet, but we did and it wasn’t a long time ago.

Technological advances race forward at a frightening pace, obsolescence occurs almost in an instant. That can only mean an accumulation of the unwanted, it’s a poison we pump into the system on a daily basis and we are the system, we poison ourselves. Fumico and Tim are not fighting a war against technology, they’ll agree that the wheel has proved to be quite useful over the years, but that doesn’t mean that what went before it is somehow redundant, void of use. But do we have to live at this rate of speed if it means throwing off yesterdays trinkets left, right and centre? It works in some areas, we still use books and bicycles, we still have candle lit dinners.

So what’s the problem?

Does the world suddenly have more money than sense? Yes, is the blunt answer. Take a look around and you’ll see a lot, if you are actually looking. Electrical appliances, maybe outdated but they work fine. Pieces of furniture, a little battered, but not beyond repair. Everyday trappings, perhaps neglected, but not useless. There’s also the more personal possessions, photograph albums and CD’s, letters and postcards. Things that maybe even meant something to someone at some point in time. For whatever reason, no longer required. When objects from the street are not brought in, things can work just as well outside. From time to time a location is chosen, fairly casually, the last station on a metro line is a common one. They’ll go there, find whatever rubbish there is and make mini installations in whatever space allows. It’s improvisation, no prior knowledge of any kind beyond knowing where they’re going. Photographs will be taken and then they go, they’ve never returned to any place twice.

The entrance to the laboratory is the show space, upstairs is the studio, the centre of operations. Odds and ends, on shelves, in corners, waiting to be used. A shop dummy gazes out the window, there’s wigs, hair dryers, a box of broken sunglasses, skeletons of abandoned umbrellas. Even in this setting of semi disarray with some of it fresh from the street, these things are already transformed. As soon as anything enters it becomes part of the larger picture, the whole space can appear as one piece of work. One point that’s not to be overlooked is the dual nationality, Fumico from Tokyo, Tim from London. In actual fact, Fumico was born and brought up in the house next door. There’s no line of meridian here but this is the point where East and West really meet. The respective influences are evident. As well as everything else, you can find minimal, you can find abstract anarchy, there’s Buddhist prayers and modernism.

As I look, hear and think about it, the ZUZUSHII activities are like tentacles, stretching out, exploring. Collective skills touch and have touched many areas. Photography, all manner of design work, painting and drawing and also the teaching of art. But wait, there’s something else. The music. As the art deals with the visual side of collage, ZUZUSHIIMONKEY is the audible. It’s not easy to pin down in words, beyond that of experimental, it’s something you have to hear. As for the instruments they play, if it makes a noise, then it’s an instrument. They do have keyboards and a slightly industrial looking guitar, but there convention stops. There are other guitars, if that’s what you want to call them, made from biscuit tins and boxes. They use a small, plastic record player, but not like any DJ you’ve heard. Tape recorders, big glasses of water, children’s toys, typewriters, radios, practically anything you can hear in one way or another. As well as all this, they have the Theremins, each uniquely crafted and capable of making those tones that don’t only belong to science fiction. As well as playing live and producing CD’s, sound tracks have been recorded for documentaries and short films, other collaborations have had them with Butoh dancers and playing thematic music for live radio theatre. I think it’s fare to say that humour is not neglected, especially if you can see them perform.

As artists who can build and exhibit within their own four walls, they are self-sufficient. In Barcelona they had the Tienda Primera, a forerunner of what they have now, but this has never dissuaded them from having many shows away from home. Since first being in Spain they’ve had residences in Lapland, Finland, with the Oranki arts group, another residency at the Design Festa Gallery in Tokyo. There’s been many exhibitions, tours and performances throughout Europe, their last in England being at the South London Gallery. The ZUZUSHII ART LABORATORY has also recently given birth to ZAG (Zuzushii Art Guerrilla), a collective of artists, dancers, performers and whoever else comes along. All are welcome so long ascute or kawaii is not on their agenda. In October last year they organized a　week of art, music and photography in the grounds of the nearby temple. Other events are currently in the pipeline for 2011.

All of this ZUZUSHII world is a curious blend, there’s darkness and light, there are messages and sometimes there are no apparent messages where you think there should be. They are cynical, they are critical, and some might say a little crazy. That’s not so much a bad mix, when you have the willingness to laugh as well. So, what happens next? Any plans? Well, they’re currently waiting to hear news about a project in Taiwan and a period in Berlin is being pieced together. For the time being, Tokyo is home.

Contact info.

The Zuzushii Art Laboratory.

3-14-9 Zoshigaya. Toshima-Ku. Tokyo-To. 171-0032 Japan.

Search for ZUZUSHIIMONKEY, and ZUZUSHII MONKEY on www.youtube.com

www.spooneye.com

Zuzushii Art Laboratory blog. Search on Google for zuzushii art lab.

azumafumico@hotmail.com

timcan100@yahoo.co.uk

ricotrout@yahoo.com

Must See: Zuzushi Art Laboratory

Posted by gaijinass under Art, Gaijin, Photos, Zuzushi Art Laboratory | Tags: Art in Tokyo, Fumico Azuma, gaijinass, Japanese culture, Modern Art, Neo-Tokyo, Teach in Japan, Tim Can, Zuzushi art Laboratory, Zuzushi monkey |
[3] Comments

Must See: Zuzushi Art Laboratory

So, let me know if you think it’s shit or not, and I’ll be seeing you soon. I think it’s time for a drink.
Adios for now, Tim. Tim Can

Thus far we here at Gaijinass have at least attempted to promote any form of ex-pat creativity and activity via what meager means we have at our disposal i.e. this fantastic blog.

Danny Katz and his album Japanese Satellites, all Le Tigers Posts, Batemen and his Haunted Tokyo post and the stuff from Kei at Wakarahen are some examples of foreigners here in Japan and us being awesome and generous by promoting them.

The point of all this self horn blowery is not so clear, however once again Gaijinass is here to bombard your dull alcohol numbed senses with stimuli of the intense variety. With that having been said, I give you Tim, Fumico and the general antics of The Zuzushi Art Laboratory.

Fumico and Tim’s creative avenues first met in 1999 in the Catalan capital of Barcelona in Spain. Fumico, from Tokyo and a background in public art and teaching art, was then moving into working with metal and light. Tim, from London, producing 2 and 3D collage, photography, performance and music. After four years in Spain, a spell in Bali, a return to Spain, and then a few years in London, they are now based at the Zuzushii Art Laboratory, Zoshigaya, Tokyo.
Utilitarian and champions of the home made, they are scavengers and together with their musical arm ZUZUSHIIMONKEY, they use a combination of technologies, disciplines and languages.

Their path is environmental, personal and public. ZUZUSHIIMONKEY have performed throughout Europe, recorded numerous CDs and DVDs, performed on radio, produced music for films and documentaries, as well as creating sound sculptures for various events.

Gaijinass

Zuzushi Art Laboratory