Saki Tominaga is a Japanese painter, hairstylist and make-up artist. We wanted to learn more about her awesome art, so we asked her to do a short interview with us.
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Nepantla: Hi! You’re a hairstylist, make-up artist and also visual artist. How do you combine those different activities?
Saki: The purpose is not to combine them, but just to make art. Whatever the form, if the situation and feeling at that moment and the movement of the hand match, I can come out with something.
N: How did you start making art?
S: I’ve been drawing only girls since I was little. I was painting every day, but when l was a junior high school student, l started going to an art school. I majored in oil painting until high school and 1st year in college, and then majored in printmaking.
N: Your art deals with inorganic forms: water, stones, dry flowers. Why are you interested in that?
S: l think that now it is time to revisit nature. In my work human beings are represented as natural beings. Beautiful things are born from nature, also human beings. l also think that ideas come from visual information. My work is made of wildflowers and grass. But wild grasses are discarded if they grow too much. There is a green that no one can see. Instead of disregarding those leafes I like to use them to my make-up and showing myself a little more pretty. It’s done to satisfy others, but also to satisfy myself.
N: How did the virus affect your activity?
S: l was able to face myself. To be honest, I think l have discovered new aspects of my work thanks to the virus. I wouldn’t have noticed wild grass if l just worked as usual.
N: What are your nexts projects?
S: l have not decided yet. It’s still about making beautiful things.
N: What artist inspires you? Do you want to recommend some book/song/artist?
S: One person I respect is Katsuya Kamo. I especially like the sound of hang drums. I would therefore recommend Hang Massive’s MV.
The role of photography in the construction of identity. An encounter between observing and being observed; detailed colored large-scaled depictions...
Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives Cynthia Enloe University of California Press, 2000, 437 pages. ISBN: 9780520220713 Traducción...
I’m sitting at the kaiten-sushi restaurant. Spring has just begun and I decided to stop after work here since it’s been a while since I had sushi last time. The sushi plates rotate around me, or I rotate around the plates….I don’t know. It’s a colourful spectacle. This dance combines sensuality and death. As any dance. The smell of fresh fish and green tea. I place my selection on the screen and a gentle computer-voice confirms my order. If I had a girlfriend, I would like her to have that robotic voice. There is much to choose. I’m lost. What should I have today? Kani (crab)? Hirame (flatfish)? Anago (conger)? Ikura (red caviar)? I keep ordering and ordering. I can’t have enough of these sushi-girls. I’ve even got a discount today, 10% off. When I start to feel lucky, suddenly, I realize that they are aware of me and I feel observed. Now it’s me who rotates. It’s me who is dancing. Now it’s me who is going to end up covered with wasabi and soy-sauce.
We couldn’t resist it. Frau Katzenfisch drawings are too…cute?….sexy?….tasty?…don’t you think so?
If you didn’t read yet, check out our mini-interview with her.
The role of photography in the construction of identity. An encounter between observing and being observed; detailed colored large-scaled depictions...
Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives Cynthia Enloe University of California Press, 2000, 437 pages. ISBN: 9780520220713 Traducción...
Heidegger se mudó de Freiburg a Marburg aproximadamente al mismo tiempo que yo me mudé a Marburg desde Heidelberg. Yo había ido allí para escuchar sus lecciones. Poco después de llegar a Marburg, visité al Sr. Heidegger sin ninguna referencia previa. Las clases no habían comenzado, Heideegger recién se había mudado y había alquilado un cuarto, donde lo visité. Me preguntó qué iba a estudiar, y respondí que pensaba estudiar a Aristóteles, pero que durante mi tiempo en Japón me había interesado por la filosofía de la historia y que tenía pensado continuar mi investigación en esa dirección. Le pregunté qué me recomendaba leer. Entonces el profesor Heidegger respondió que si quería estudiar Aristóteles, estudiar Aristóteles significa ya estudiar filosofía de la historia. En aquel momento, realmente no entendí las palabras del profesor, sólo después de asistir a sus conferencias su sentido se volvió más claro. En otras palabras, según él, dado que la filosofía de la historia no es más que hermenéutica, uno puede aprender qué es la hermenéutica a partir de leer por sí mismo a los clásicos. Sus conferencias en la universidad se centraban en la interpretación de textos, traía una gruesa colección de obras completas como las de Aristóteles, Agustín, Santo Tomás y Descartes al aula y la abría, la clase avanzaba mientras él interpretaba los pasajes de manera extremadamente creativa. Tal vez pueda decirse que aprendí a leer libros gracias a Heidegger.
Ocasionalmente visitaba la casa del profesor localizada en la Schwan–Allee, y lo que particularmente me llamó la atención fue la colección completa de literatura clásica alemana que estaba alineada en su biblioteca. Contemplé aquello de manera extrañada, pero cuando leí su artículo “Hölderlin y la esencia de la poesía” el año pasado, la relación se hizo evidente. Últimamente en sus conferencias el tema de la filosofía del arte se encuentra muy presente. En ocasión de ser nombrado rector de la Universidad de Freiburg escribió su discurso “La autoafirmación de la Universidad Alemana”, pero probablemente debido a su relación con los nazis, su nuevo puesto no funcionó muy bien y lo abandonó en seguida. Se dice que en ese momento se retiró y principalmente dictó conferencias sobre filosofía del arte. Al recordar que en Japón, cuando se intensificó la represión contra el marxismo, muchas personas habían escapado a la teoría del arte, pensé en el estado mental actual del profesor Heidegger, y me hizo pensar en general sobre la relación entre política y filosofía.
Otra cosa que noté en el estudio del profesor Heidegger en Marburg fue un escritorio alto donde podía leer y escribir mientras estaba parado como un predicador de iglesia en el centro de la sala. A veces me acuerdo de ese escritorio y me dan ganas de poseer uno igual, aunque hasta el momento no he sido capaz de construirlo.
The role of photography in the construction of identity. An encounter between observing and being observed; detailed colored large-scaled depictions...
Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives Cynthia Enloe University of California Press, 2000, 437 pages. ISBN: 9780520220713 Traducción...
Disclaimer: This is a raw translation of Jun Fujita Hirose’s article “Los furiosos japoneses en alianza con el corona”, published in Lobosuelto.
During the last two months, many Japanese have been living an ambivalent relationship with the corona-virus. It is true that it scares them, but at the same time they secretly begun to work in alliance with it. That secret alliance occurs under the current Japanese government, almost unanimously considered to be the most corrupt and harmful government in Japanese history since the end of the World War II.
In September 2013 in Buenos Aires, in his speech addressed to the members of the international Olympic committee who were going to vote the host city of the 2020 Olympic games, Shinzo Abe, current Japanese prime minister reelected at the end of the previous year, stated: “The situation is under control. There is no health problem of any kind for the present or for the future. Nowadays under the blue sky of Fukushima children play soccer”. He said this when all the inhabitants of Japan knew very well that the reality was something else and that the Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company) Fukushima nuclear power plant would not stop emitting an enormous amount of radioactivity for many years, affecting the earth, the air and the water. For them, the organization of the Olympics in Tokyo in 2020 was nothing more than an offensive denial of the real situation in which they lived, a denial forcefully orchestrated by the Abe government in complicity with the global economic power. Thus, a powerful feeling of rejection of the so-called “Tokyo 2020” was installed and immediately spread among the Japanese population.
The reality that the Japanese government wants to deny and suppress under the hallucinating effect of entertainment is not only that of constant radioactive contamination but also that of the irreversible decline of Japan as an economic superpower. Many Japanese, and young people in particular, are creating new ways of life, different from those of thirty years ago. The ongoing Fukushima accident itself only speeds up as a result of this. In Japan, nobody or quasi nobody is excited today, not even with a mega event like the Olympics powered by the electricity produced by the reopened nuclear reactors, nor with a mega construction like the one of the High-speed rail network between Tokyo and Nagoya. All of these mega projects are bad and anachronistic simulations of the glorious Japanese post-war period.
During its first two years (2013-2015), the Abe government sparked two particularly massive popular protest movements: first, against the hastily drafted secrets protection bill, and then, against the government’s decision to change the constitutional interpretation and the consequent new legislation on the Armed Forces of Self-defense. In both cases, the Japanese ended up facing their own political powerlessness in the face of a quasi-openly fascist government. This explains the fact that after the defeat of the protests against militarization in 2015, no mass mobilization took place in Japan despite a series of corruptions by Shinzo Abe himself that were revealed. In these past five years, popular disagreement against the Prime Minister and his coalition government of the Liberal Democratic Party and Kōmeito was expressed only in a discursive way, in particular on Twitter.
In this desperate political context the corona-virus appeared. Abe’s government seems to have understood from the initial stages that the virus could constitute a serious threat to his beloved Tokyo 2020. Thus began his battle against the virus, a battle that consisted mainly of deliberately underestimating the effect of the epidemic on Japanese territory, minimizing the number of PCR tests, and avoiding adopting any drastic preventive measure. Abe’s government, as well as the international and Japanese Olympic committee, absolutely wanted to maintain the image of a Japan corona free when Covid-19 was becoming a global pandemic. And this new government refusal of the real situation is what led many Japanese to enter into a clandestine alliance with the corona-virus.
On March 24, the Japanese government, together with the International Olympic Committee, publicly announced the one-year postponement of Tokyo 2020. And with this, the Abe government suddenly allowed itself to speak of the possible declaration of a state of emergency and the possible taking of a containment measure for the city of Tokyo. Did the corona win? Only partially from the point of view of the furious Japanese citizens. It is true that we celebrate the appearance, so desired for many years, of a real threat to the neoliberal fascist power, but what we wanted and want is an immediate cancellation and not at all a postponement, which means only a prolonged purgatory time, in that Abe’s government will reorganize its postponed Olympics as a “testimonial event of humanity’s victory over the new corona-virus” (Abe dixit).
Many Japanese are already ready to become infected and even die by overthrowing the government of Shinzo Abe and by permanently burying this abominable Tokyo 2020. It is a new form of armed struggle that is being born here in a corner of the Far East. The Japanese rebels identify with the corona-virus, which moves in turn identifying itself with the great movements of absolute deterritorialization of the Earth. In an armed struggle, is it not always Earth which provides us with weapons?
The role of photography in the construction of identity. An encounter between observing and being observed; detailed colored large-scaled depictions...
Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives Cynthia Enloe University of California Press, 2000, 437 pages. ISBN: 9780520220713 Traducción...
