Tokyo a la Mode. Web Magazine for Japanese Fashion and Urban Culture

Design Festa 07

By Bobby /Jul 09, 2007
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Wall painters at Design Festa

Creators (クリエイタ) everywhere, that’s Tokyo. It’s no accident that creative Japan cool is at a peak all over the world, when this city overflows with the young and talented celebrating its distinctive visual arts and street style. Since 1994, the twice-a-year Design Festa convention has given them all an event in which to come together: a weekend where artists, animators, clothes and jewellery designers, toy and doll makers, performers, musicians, whoever and whatever, have a place to exhibit. It was founded by fashion stylist Kunie Usuki when she was asked to launch a young designers’ fashion show and decided that there should be no limits to the art and design shown. Design Festa is huge, but it has always been – and remains – a distinctly DIY underground event, planned and coordinated by a small, dedicated team of 15 full and part time workers out of their HQ café/gallery in the backstreets of Harajuku.

The Design Festa philosophy is simple: anything goes, there are no limits or rules to what counts as art, you pay for your cubicle, and you show your stuff. The idea is to encourage anyone to have a go, that talent is democratic, but also that putting everyone together in one big place and one moment multiplies the creative possibilities for everyone. There’s no room here for art world snobbery. DF doesn’t choose or edit out the show—every visitor has to choose what is good and what is bad. It works. The Festa just had its 25th edition, and has grown to a two day festival with 2,900 booths, 6,000 artists and 50-60,000 visitors, with increasing numbers from America, Europe and across Asia.

I spent an exhausting two days trying to check everything out, spread through five football field sized halls. Taking in the sights, chatting to as many artists and designers as possible. It’s impossible to catalogue all the good things going on, the mind spinning number of kawaii illustrations, bizarre postcards, cool t-shirts and to-die-for mobile phone accessories. As expected lots of manga style work, some surprisingly professional looking toys and gadgets, plenty of plain weird things.

Robot guy and co-pilot

Technology has made creation and craft much easier. This is the Flash Design and Adobe Photo Shop generation, everybody wants to be an artist these days; it’s the new rock ‘n’ roll. Most amusing? Probably the cute keitai (mobile phone) bondage dolls being sold by Kitanya design factory. Weirdest? Undoubtedly the gothic doll makers, clustered in a series of increasingly bizarre installations upstairs. The dolls sit and watch everyone silently. Wall painters at every corner draw big crowds, there’s an occasional burst of noise from live music shows, DJ sets or video installations. Random performance artists roamed the aisles, from a duo of masked dancing anime schoolgirls called Kamenbox, to a mad scientist robot inventor giving cyborg lessons to allcomers.

Dolls

It’s hard to tell the crowd from the exhibitors, and the art from pure exhibitionism, and that’s the point. Visitors come dressed up too for the show, Harajuku streets relocated for the day to the spaceship like Big Sight expo site out in Tokyo bay. Head hunters from graphic design companies are rumoured to roam the show, signing up talent, and some now famous folks such as LA’s own Tokidoki (Simone Legno) and Kozyndan (Kozue and Dan Kitchens) have shown their wares at Design Festa before their commercial/artistic breakthroughs. But organiser/PR man Shotaro is adamant this is not the point. He stresses that Design Festa refuses commercial sponsors, and keeps the rules the same despite the blind eye they receive from Tokyo art elites. The goal is to make a grass roots movement of spontaneous DIY art and design all over the world, people who’ve never shown before, to show they can do original work too. His colleague Nigel agrees. His well worn Sex Pistols’ “Never Mind the Bollocks” t-shirt recalls the origins of this philosophy.

Alice in Wonderland print by Isa Kawashima

Dream Tapir by Itsumi Matsuhashi

Among the most talented younger artists I met, Itsumi Matsuhashi’s booth, Tainai-sen (“internal ship”), is full of dark brooding paintings of monstrous animal bodies, inspired she says by David Lynch. Video artist Takorasu was doing going good business showing his animated clockwork video worlds with an electronica soundtrack. I catch Hiroki Mori’s Hergé and Monty Python inspired cartoons, and like the cute flat graphic cityscapes by Yayoi Sekiguchi and Akkomon. I really like the Alice in Wonderland prints by Atman (Isa Kawashima), combining sweetbox gothic Victoriana with disturbing mid-century European fascist imagery. From Kobe, Maki Hoshi no Sumika was showing off her squad of cartoon fashion show alter egos, while from Korea, already established DIY companies Studio April and 25Plan (Sung-Jae Kim) were making fun t-shirts and wacky animals respectively. Everyone is just so thrilled to be here, and that you are spending a few minutes at their booth.

Maki Hoshi no Sumika and her alter-egos

Design Festa holds its next event in November, and is open for bookings now. They are also planning their first venture overseas, with an event lined up in a couple of years in New York. They are hoping to tap into the hordes of deviantart bloggers who regularly crowd out the big anime conventions, as well as creating a meeting place for the many young Japanese creators living and working abroad. Southern California should also be on their horizon, given it has the biggest base of J-fans and contemporary art and design schools in the States. If you make it to Tokyo, meanwhile, be sure to visit the Design Festa gallery in Harajuku. Just look out for the bombed out, multicolored building covered in scaffolding and hidden away in the backstreets of Ura-Hara. If you are an artist you can even ask for a floor to kip on if you are homeless overnight. Like at Design Festa, you’ll be dreaming of neo-Tokyo while sleepwalking right through the middle of it.

adrian, Tokyo