Wow, Space for Your Future was amazing. It's a temporary exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) that's going on right now. I couldn't take any pictures, so I actually bought a book about the exhibit, because wow...I really wish you all could see it. Amaaazing. I originally wanted to go to see Ninagawa Mika's section of the exhibit. (She's a photographer whose work I really admire.) But it turns out that her section of the exhibit wasn't even the best part.
I started out by sitting in these bubbly chairs that appeared white, but lit up a neon color once I sat down. Then there was a piece that was huge scrolls of tissue paper hanging from the ceiling that had been cut with an xacto knife to make designs that I thought Steph would have really liked. Really beautiful. I also tried out this beanbag suit-chair. There's a flap for your arms and head to go through that attaches you to the rest of the beanbag that's hanging behind you. Then you sit down and you can lay back. It's a really strange chair because you can't get into it by yourself, but once you put it on, it's really comfortable.
A surprising amount of the exhibits were interactive. Well..I guess it isn't that surprising since it is about 'space', but they were interactive in ways I didn't expect. My absolute favorite part of the entire exhibit was the Disco Phonebooth. From the outside, it looks like an empty booth with a disco ball hanging from the top and headphones to put on. If someone goes in, you can see them in their mini disco. The catch is that the person inside can't see outside. When I went in, it was all me. The inside of the booth is covered with mirrors, so it really feels like a private disco booth, and makes you want to dance. The thing is that if you dance, everyone outside can see you. Really fun and funny.
There was jewelry, photographs, Ninagawa Mika's room, movies, lighting devices... I can't really go through it all, but I must say, the most impressive thing was the 4 story tall square balloon. Yup, square balloon. It was floating in the middle of the building. It's so confusing because 1) it's gigantic, 2) it's just floating there, 3) it's square, 4) it's made out of metal, 5) it distorts your image in the reflection, 6) what the heck?!?!?!
It's hands down the best museum exhibit I've seen in my life. It makes me really excited to go to the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi because it has a similar take on mixing genres and media. They have a sort of partnership where if you go see one and show your ticket, you get a discount at the other. The exhibit is called Roppongi Crossing: Future Beats in Contemporary Art. I missed the Future Beats in Music and Moving Images event where Shinichi Osawa DJed and I also missed this interactive sculpture/music workshop with Ogai Takeharu. (Ryuichi Sakamoto composed the music for it. Augh.) Booo. Anyway, I'm still looking forward to it.
Iloveart.
