Here my latest video a about a visit a doll museum in Kyoto, the home of SuperDollfie dolls owned and managed by the Japanese company Volks. The video is based on an actual special visit. It is called Visit to My Half-Blood Sisters and narrated by my own doll Zaphy, who belongs to the enemy brand Pullip (made in Korea).
japan
Earthy and Dirty
I just arrived in Beijing at Renmin University where I will give a talk about animation fans and how they use alter egos and virtual siblings, or even entire imagined clans and families. I want to find out how and why they fantasize about alternative families and how they deal with pressures of the bio-family.
But what are the first impressions of Beijing coming from Hong Kong? Beijing is earthy and dirty. Hong Kong seems to have lost its sweat glands and body odors. Maybe it is just a cliche that in Beijing one smells wafts of urine everywhere (comparable to those in Paris and Brussels.) But certainly it is true and brings relief to see that people look more relaxed and “healthy”, grubby and chubby, moist and tanned.
Then I also brought with me my pale Hermina, who is is named after the sister of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. She came with an electric guitar and I also got her a skate board. The doll brand is named Pullip and is made in South Korea as a competitor to the much bigger Japanese companyVolks or SD (Superdollfie) The CEO of Volks (A Japanese man taking on German features) launched the fad of ball-jointed dolls as virtual siblings about a decade ago. When assembling and buying a “daughter” from Volks, one can go pick her up in Kyoto and she will be handed over to you in a Christian-like ritual of baptism. Yes, these strange fashions are the spiritual and chaste version of the sex doll. Actually, one can see that many of those daughters live out the fetish dreams of their owners but the adult here is supposed to shut up and play.
So here she she is … my mean little Hermina. Yes, she does have an esoteric personality and those piercing blue eyes–that would a swift Korean business ideal.
Extraordinary Dresscode 8-9-10 december, CityU and Videotage
SYMPOSIUM
City University of Hong Kong 8-9-10 december
http://www.english.cityu.edu.hk/ExtraordinaryDressCode
The Extra / Ordinary Dress Code Symposium brings together scholars, writers and artists from diverse nationalities and disciplines to address the subject of fashion in its aesthetic, cultural, ritual, social, performative and historical dimensions.
(Photo: cross-dresser Maggie Leung and friend)
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EXHIBITION The Rest of Us – December 10 to December 24, 2009
Videotage, Ma Tau Kok Road, Kowloon.
Opening December 10 at 6 pm
http://extraordinarydresscode.blogspot.com
The Rest of Us is a visual exhibition and an opening night cabaret presenting everyday fashions direct from the streets of Hong Kong, along with queer masquerades derived from Cosplay and its various sub-cultural tangents. Photographs by Andrew Guthrie and Cosplay Costumes.
+++++FLASH CABARET++++++++++
Videotage, Ma Tau Kok Road, Kowloon.
Opening December 10 at 6 pm
INFORMATION
http://extraordinarydresscode.blogspot.com
Hosted by M/C extraordinaire–Diane To, this upbeat evening will show live performance art, video screenings, refreshments, and costuming games involving Hong Kong uniforms. Hong Kong artist Movana Chen will do a live performance session to demonstrate how she knits books into fabrics in her newest project, Traveling Into My Bookshelf. Toronto-based artist/sexpert Louise Bak will dig and scratch underneath layers of doll costume to reveal a bodily essence. Hong Kong artist Him Lo will enact Leave Me + Build Me, a project in which he covers himself with an uncanny body suit to test how people gaze and react. Austrian artist Nino Jaeger will give a performance lecture about gender and clothing through the sculpture Pipistrello: Dolce Vita, based on the lyrics of Mozart’s Le Nozze Di Figaro. Evening meal and refreshments will be provided together with new video art by Mia Chen and Robert Iolini. Free of Charge for those wearing any type of clothes. Extra Special Bonus For Dressing Harmoniously.
Reunion with Friends, Maids, Dolls in Japan
I just returned from Tokyo and Kyoto where I took hundreds of photographs and shot about 5 hours of video. You can access the photo galleries by clicking on the links in the text. First of all the trip was a reunion with my friends from Boston, Shujen Wang and Chris Fujiwara–and their super cute kids, Maya and Ken-Ken, whom I had not seen before (Maya was born right before I moved to Hong Kong and Ken-Ken was born in Tokyo. They are not brother and sister but like to hang out with each other).
Despite the Japanese government warnings about the swine flu pandemic, we all decided to take a tiny risk and meet in Tokyo. Chris actually lives in Tokyo now and had recommended a great inn called Ryokan Sawanyao (near Ueno Station) where we stayed to catch up and explore the city. Chris, Shujen and myself also had to give a talk at the Society for Cinema and Media and were all asked to signs a variety of forms and wear surgical masks anywhere inside the university buildings.
Then a few days into the trip, I met up with Anne Peirson-Smith and Andrew Guthrie (yes the one) and we visited one of the maids cafes near Akihabara. (even though the maids suck in Fujiwara’s opinion). Those cafes have a very strict “no photography” policy as they try to sell their own polaroid photographs to customers. The girls are dressed in very beautiful and elaborate uniforms–taking on submissive positions and whimpering with high-pitched voices–but they totally rule the scene and concoct many rules and games for their patrons. These maid cafes are totally non-sexual and patrons are not allowed to even touch them, though they make great efforts to chat and stimulate their clients by serving food and playing games. The central concept of experiencing this kind of fantasy zone would be expressed by the Japanese word ‘moe’ –which is a word derived from the ‘otaku’ culture (geek or nerd culture) and means that one is passionately and happily-deeply involved in activities or hobbies.
One Sunday afternoon we visited the district of Harajuku whare several Cosplayers and fans of Visual Kei had gathered to pay tribute to one of the rock bands and to show off their fantastic alter egos and costumes. We were lucky because it was the birthday of a famous rock star (darn…I forgot his name) and hordes of Cosplayers and rockstar impersonators showed up on the Harajuku bridge. (and here are the photos by Andrew Guthrie)
Then Anne and myself took the bullet train to Kyoto and headed towards the Superdollfie museum, owned by the company Volks, where we managed to interview two of the curators and took lots of photographs of the famous (and super expensive) ball-jointed dolls and the doll owners. When entering the museum, visitors are greeted by a Madonna statue carrying a doll and surrounded by angels. According to the curators, the Madonna with child is not a Christian symbol. She is to be seen as a universally benign source of love and power to all people who wish to have a child in the guise of a Superdollfie doll. (He he… maybe my very last option) . The angels who surround the Madonna are gender-neutral beings and will later turn into males or females. The doll museum also performs ceremonies in front of the Madonna, in which customers gather and formally receive their brand-new dolls. The dolls can be ordered online or inside the Kyoto “laboratory” store and they are carefully assembles and customized according to a “full choice system.” There are a variety of head molds, limbs, hands, feet, eyeballs and hairstyles for people to choose from so that each customer can create (and endlessly recreate) a perfect doll as “fantasy offspring.”
We ended our visit in the museum garden, where we unpacked our Korean ball-jointed dolls Zaphy and Delphine, , made by the rival company Pullip. We shot a few cosy scenes celebrating the love between Zaphy (male) and Delphine (female). We ended out trip to Kyoto with a visit to the Inari Fox Shrine, which is a must-see for every Japan traveler, normal or otaku alike. We took a few hours climbing the hill and saw hundreds of historical fox statues and wandered through thousands of orange poles forming a unique gate. Moe!