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Pirated: a post asian perspective
SCOTT TSUCHITANI
Bio
I'm interested in visual culture as dynamic process: how people are
represented, how it shapes public perception, and in turn, the impact
it has on individual subjective experience. It's empowering to approach
art as a process of cultural production: I'm participating in creating
the culture we live in, and insofar as meaning is a function of cultural
context, in my own small way through my art, I can create social change.
Through the use of humor, storytelling, and playing with stereotypes,
I try to make the invisible visible, to expose the structures of domination
behind the apparent naturalness of social relations. My work is, in
part, about creating space from the margins in the mainstream, creating
space in the culture, whether it be that of family, community, or mass
media, for all of us to be just as we are, rather than how the dominant
culture tells us to be.
Click here to read Annie Nakao, "Memoirs of a Geisha Guerrilla" San Francisco Chronicle 5 December 2004.
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Project Statement
Throughout the summer of 2004, the city's visual landscape was
blanketed
with advertisements for the Asian Art
Museum's “Geisha: Beyond the Painted Smile” exhibit, images which annoyed me
to no end. So I pirated their poster image, turning it into my own in response.
On the closing weekend
of the “Geisha” show, my friend S. and I plastered Japantown with dozens of mini-posters,
and then proceeded to plant five dozen glossy inserts in the information booth
inside the Asian Art Museum itself. Various sources noted the wide-ranging impact
of the small, simple action: in Japantown, in the museum, in academic discourse,
and in public consciousness through the media. The San Francisco Chronicle allocated
nearly a full page, giving
last word to a U.C. art history professor: "To the extent that museums assert
authority to speak for culture, they open themselves up for critique, and they
should engage that critique." |
My Geisha Fantasy #1: Billboard Liberation,
from Memoirs of a Sansei Geisha: Snapshots of Cultural Resistance,
2004-2005,
installation,
dimensions
variable.
Images: © S. Tsuchitani
2004.
Click thumbnail to view larger image. |
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