TOKION CREATIVITY NOW TOKYO

HAPPENINGText: Yoshihiro Kanematsu

I found it was already a chilly day when “Tokion Creativity Now Tokyo” took place at Laforet Museum Harajuku on October 23rd. Last year, there were many interesting hosts and panelists, including, Yuuya Uchida, Hiroshi Fujiwara, Nagi Noda, and Terry Ito. This year, we had “Media Rapist” Naohiro Ukawa and an aggressive neuroscientist Kenichiro Shigeki as new hosts.

In addition, Itsuji Itao, Kazuo Umezu, Nameko Shinsan and Seiko Ito joined the panel this year, so we had no idea what would happen in the beginning of the conference. In fact, a creative director Adam pronounced “Let’s enjoy using our brains and have much more fun than any parties, and be cautious of teething fever!.” Well… it was such a dense day for me. My brain was actually burning with that fever! (More details will be covered in Tokion January Issue! Don’t miss it!)

An anxiously awaited opening panel was titled “Brain Safari Park.” An Ig Novel prize winner, a capping verse grand master, a video art pioneer and an electrifying manga artist gathered and talked on the stage for an hour. The tension of audiences could not stop rising.

Dr. Nakamatsu’s jokes were impossible to tell whether it is true or not, and Kazuo Umezu was bursting in on Nakamatsu’s talk with his familiar hand sign “Gwasi hand.” At the same time, there were Toshio Matsuokoa who was giving them a cold askance look with saying “It’s foolish to talk boring talks” and Itsuji Itao who got lots of laughs by minimum talks and gestures. The host Mr. Shigeki was almost helpless saying “I shouldn’t have accepted this host role.(laugh)” because when a simple question like “What is creativity” comes up, each of the four is totally different from other three and each has an astronomical contrast against the other. So, this opening panel made me to expect an intense day and my brain was getting ready for it.

Subsequently, the next session “Beyond Reality” took place and the panelists were Henrik Vibskov who is popular among fashion geeks, Motohiko Kotani who was a rep for Japan exhibition in Venice Bienniale. and Naohiro Ukawa who had cold that time and it was getting worse with the teething fever of the conference. One of them said “Ladies can fire laser beam and how we can think about aura in this context.”

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