INTERVIEW: Chim↑Pom on their New Garter Gallery | Artinfo
BY Darryl Wee | November 03, 2015

Installation view: Sion Sono solo show “The Whispering Star,” Garter, Tokyo, 2015 © Sion Sono
(Courtesy of Garter)
Formed in 2005 in Tokyo, Japanese art collective Chim↑Pom are Ryuta Ushiro, Yasutaka Hayashi, Ellie, Masataka Okada, Motomu
Inaoka, and Toshinori Mizuno. They are known for their provocative video installations and documentations of actions that straddle aﬁne line between social satire, obnoxious prank playing, and mordant humor.
Chim↑Pom have been claiming a fair share of attention this year, after winning this year’s Prudential Eye Awards in Singapore andwinning the right to hold a solo exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London this September. And now, they’ve turned their most recent

ﬀeorts to opening their own modest space, called Garter Gallery, in Tokyo’s Koenji district. Housed in little more than a rickety shackthat dates from before World War II, Garter opened earlier this summer with an inaugural exhibition devoted to cult ﬁlmmaker SonoSion.

Before Chim↑Pom took over the space, this shambolic, makeshift structure, called the Kitakore building, actually ﬁrst became known asa cult fashion destination that attracted lots of well‒known foreign visitors and style icons like Pharrell Williams, Jeremy Scott, andCourtney Love. “Our friend, the fashion designer Koshiro Ebata, moved in here ﬁrst, taking up residence here when it was still derelict

ﬀand abandoned,” says Ryuta Ushiro. “Because this building is located some distance othe main shopping street, everyone started

making additions and modiﬁcations as they saw ﬁt, which resulted in this Kowloon Walled City‒like structure.”“Koshiro was making these radical, way‒out clothes, and running his own store. Then other extreme fashion designers followed, moving
in to open their own studios, ateliers, and shops. And that’s how Kitakore Building gradually evolved to become something of anunderground Tokyo fashion spot,” explains Ushiro.

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Why Koenji? Ushiro and the rest of Chim↑Pom have a long connection with this obeat area, located just ten minutes west of Shinjuku

by train, and long established as a rather rough‒and‒tumble district of vintage and secondhand stores, live music videos, and small,quaint eateries and bars. “Our gallery Mujinto Production used to be located in Koenji. We would go drinking with Koshiro and hang out
here, as well as other people in this same neighborhood,” Ushiro recalls.

But Koenji also retains something of a village charm that dates from an earlier time. “Recently, the number of places and districts inTokyo with a free, underground atmosphere that haven’t been overly packaged has been decreasing,” he notes. “Koenji is rather uniquein this respect: there’s no big mall in front of the station, and there are still many small shopping streets and arcades remaining.”“This street that Kitakore Building is on is also where the collective Shiroto no Ran (an anarchist collective) is located. There aren’t anygalleries or museums around, but everyone here respects each other, but my sense is that we can all coexist here and make extreme,
radical things happen,” muses Ushiro. “There has been one particular local resident just in front of the building who’s been complaininga lot about our activities, though. We have no idea how long we can be here. Maybe not for very much longer!” he laughs.
Following their presentation at Tokyo’s Watari Museum of Contemporary Art earlier this autumn, Chim↑Pom have been attracting quite
a bit of attention with a more site‒speciﬁc project dealing with Fukushima, called “Don't Follow the Wind.” The artists, along with thecuratorial team of Kenji Kubota, Eva and Franco Mattes, and Jason Waite, invited 12 international artists to install their work in theuninhabited radioactive exlcusion zone in Fukushima, surrounding the site of the nuclear accidents of 2011.

Ushiro describes “Don’t Follow the Wind” more as a conceptual proposition, rather than an actual display that is designed to receivevisitors. “Until the blockades are lifted nobody can go and actually see these works. And so we’re currently planning a sort of satelliteexhibition of ‘Don’t Follow the Wind’ that will extend the conversation on Fukushima, including new related works by the artists thatfunction as 'interpretations' of the works in the zones, as well as documents and voices of the displaced residents, that will start at theWatari Museum. The intention is to have it travel to museums abroad as well,” he explains.

In terms of the concept, Ushiro calls it a “non‒visitor center”. “Typically with a nuclear plant, for instance, it’s not open to the public. But
just next to or outside it there will be a visitor center. And you ﬁnd the same thing outside a nature reserve or protected zone, forexample. With Fukushima the no‒go directive is so strong that we decided to make it a ‘non‒visitor center’.”“Our intention with ‘Don't Follow the Wind’ is for audiences to be aware of this giant, empty no‒go zone that suddenly opened up inJapan, displacing the residents, and which is constantly transmitting a message about this reality,” Ushiro explains. “You don’texperience the works or exhibition visually, let alone in person, but through your imagination. So we’re targeting both a present audienceand a future one. For the present audience, I think this is an experiment in whether audiences actually make an imaginative attempt toengage with, or recall, the energy produced by the exhibition. It’s not really a question of our audience wanting or not wanting to go toFukushima to see for themselves, but how they use the ‘non‒visitor center’ as a mechanism for engaging with its reality,” he says.

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Although Chim↑Pom’s work is often seen as verging on political activism, Ushiro begs to dier. “We don’t really see it that way. Of

course, our lives are controlled by the politics to a certain extent. There are six of us in Chim↑Pom, so whenever we get together todiscuss work, there’s a sense in which we function as a microcosm of society. So I would understand, actually, if people said that the art
we make is ‘social.’“Unlike activists who work to realize a particular political agenda or objective, we have more abstract ends. Rather, I would say that ourworks are a record of how we try and make sport of society, to triﬂe with it — how individuals living in a particular society and politicalsystem stage all manner of pranks with rats, crows, living together with garbage. It’s just a reﬂection of living within society.”

Garter Gallery is located in the Kitakore Building, 3‒4‒13 Koenji Kita, Suginami‒ku, Tokyo.