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ADAPTER: a design group renovates Tokyo

25 Sep 2006 Category: Events & Exhibitions, Graphics, Japan

ADAPTER: a design group renovates Tokyo

detail of big print © Adapter

Now is the age of Web 2.0 which makes sharing every little bit of information on earth even more effective. Considering that even your bedroom is wired and you can travel the world within seconds on Google Earth without even getting up, it makes it almost seem ridiculous to think about a visual language of tiny city patches such as “Tokyo”! And yet, I will introduce this young creator group called ADAPTER today because in all this whirling and whizzing of data, they manage to stop, watch and catalyze this very moment of “Tokyo Now”.

Written by Yuki Harada
Translated by Mie Hashizume

I talked to Kenji Harigai of ADAPTER about their solo exhibition titled “Memai” (Giddiness) held at Nanzuka Underground in Shibuya, Tokyo this month. Enjoy this splash of color!

Kenji, you are an art director and graphic designer of ADAPTER. Could you quickly introduce what you are mainly involoved in?

Other than overall designing, I do the planning and management for our visual label and free magazine “Public/image”, handle the creative direction of Vermilion, which is an art project focusing on apparel, as well working on an exhibition titled NWBA.

A scene from “60 Football Visions Exhibition,” an exhibition with “Public/image.magazine Vol.3/Football Liberated” held at the KDDI DESIGNING STUDIO in Harajuku. In this exhibition, 60 creators were challenged to design footballs. © Adapter

Art project “Vermilion” by ADAPTER © Adapter

It has been a while since your last exhibitin in Japan, am I right?

Kind of. We had a small exhibition titled “More than human” at SURFACE TO AIR in Paris one year ago, but the last time we had a solo exhibition in Japan was 2004 at both BEAMS-T and Rocket Gallery.

From “Memai (Giddiness)” at Nanzuka Underground © Adapter

How was the last exhibition in 2004?

I suppose that the 9/11 terrorism attacks naturally gave me a tremendous impact which resulted in quite a lot of paranoia-like collage pieces… (laughs).

“Surface 2 Air” © Adapter

From “More than human” at Surface To Air in Paris, 2005 © Adapter

Do you think that artists/designers should create works with an anti-war message in general?

There were a lot of wars after 9/11 and many creators stood up for anti-war movements, which I totally support, but personally - I am not really sure how these collaborative artist-actions can actually change the reality. For example, I love Banksy. He painted the wall dividing Palestine from Israel and created other works with a strong anti-war message - but doing this, he used his original ways of expression. I like his attitude. I think it is important to cry out for peace, but also believe it is important to maintain a personal perspective when you take that kind of action.

Did you try to continue this anti-war theme at your last exhibition then, too?

No, I felt that I cannot do an exhibition which feels like half of an extension of the last one. So I decided to go towards a more personal expression in order to show my passion for graphics connecting the outer world.

Collage is at the core of my work, so I decided to pursue it. I was afraid that we would fall into the trap of thinking too digital and focussing too much on designing graphics and simply printing them out, so therefore we tried to find other ways such as changing the frames or taking unusual approaches.

At “Memai” Exhibition, there are a lot of pieces which pursue on the new possibility of digital artworks by using transformed frames and silkscreen. © Adapter

From Aapter at “Memai” Exhibition © Adapter

Was there anything else in particular that inspirated this exhibition?

I listened to the music of Rei Harakami a lot. Basically his tunes do not have lyrics, but some kind of feeling as a “language”. When I tried to figure out what to do for this exhibition, I found great sympathy for his music. For example, I think my methodology of creating and layering collages composed by JPEGs on silkscreen have a common feeling with his music.

Do you mean the integration of digital and analogue?

Well, people a little older than me would probably point that out, but for my generation the crossing of digital and analog is nothing special. We naturally enjoy the technology and we are hardly conscious about whether this is digital or analog. The digital has already become the true format for expression anyway, that is like some common sense among Japanese young creators. Whether or not you then combine that with analog doesn’t really matter.

From Aapter at “Memai” Exhibition © Adapter

How was your exhibition received in Paris last year? Did they point out your unique sense of Tokyo?

They did actually, where as for me, my works are very similar to European creators (laughs) - actually I’ve been much affected by them!

Some creators try to point out their “Japaneseness” - how do you view things? What could a “Japan thing” be? Some “good, old Japanese culture” with a pinch of orientalism?

Well, for me it is never “Nippon!”, “KYOTO!” or something like that. As for Tokyo, I could speak of it only as a “the feeling of layers” and an incredible capability to collect and hold information. Naohiro Ukawa’s work is a good example for that, too. People can find his obsessed way of archiving materials and laying them out extreme, weird, with some kind of otaku sense, you know. I guess that is Japanese. MUSTONE is another artists who has a very Tokyo-like sense with his layers&copies plus physical action.

From “More than human” at Surface To Air in Paris, 2005 © Adapter

What sort of Japanese culture would you say has influenced you in your childhood and still does in your work today?

My generation has been brought up with “Bikkuriman Choco”, “Famicon” and others.

As I said earlier, my works have a taste that is similar to European creators and yet, I have been influenced by Japan very strongly in the way of the processing of work, not that of the output. The way of stuffing materials into one work, the general sense of a collage. The different approach of processing is the part I consider different, what I think distinguishes Japanese creators from foreign ones.

There are quite a few Japanes who seem to make it in other countries or at least give it a try. You have been around quite a lot as well. Were you ever seriously thinking of setting up your own business abroad?

I do like to work in foreign countries, but I’m better off staying in Tokyo at present. If you are going to expand your activities overseas, you have to get an agent there and set up an office. Foreign art books often contain Japanese creator’s works, but it does not push you enough to turn that into a business. You have to actually go and live abroad and fight with the local people face to face. Today, Japanese creators’ activities in foreign countries often stay at the promotion level. They may think they are serious about doing business in foreign countries in the future, but the way it works now is to fully establish yourself in Japan first.

Tokyo is great right now, but I still feel that there should be more people trying out their own things and challenging design a little more.

Thank you for today’s talk, Mr. Harigai.

5 Comments

wonderful illustrations :)

Posted by: Balakumar Muthu on September 25th, 2006 at 11:14 pm
[...] I only recently learned about the design firm Adapter from the japanese online art/design magazine Ping Mag, which i think is one of the best sources of interviews with contemporary artists and people involved with visual culture. They recently interviewed Kenji Harigai the founder of Adapter who’s work rangers from fine art gallery work, to fashion for labels that Xie would probably know more about, to private commission/gallery work for the likes of nike. His work is emblematic of a generation of designers now who, like myself, secretly aren’t really sure if we’re artists or not. That aspect aside Harigai touches on some interesting aspect of the kind of work that designers do now, a fascinating perspective was that of personal response to war rather than that of a public demonstration: [...]

Posted by: » Blog Archive » Adapter on Ping Mag on September 26th, 2006 at 2:36 am
Just curated a Tokyo artists’ wallet line and ADAPTER did a design. check it at http://www.poketo.com

Posted by: Chako Suzuki on September 26th, 2006 at 8:02 am
Great article! and is full of links! :) You live of this, must be a hard work do all this research. :)

Posted by: Sergio on September 27th, 2006 at 11:40 am
I love the work. The new but old japanesse culture. It’s great, the colors and designs are amazing. You’re and inspiration.

Posted by: Storm Edward Garrison on January 22nd, 2007 at 4:30 pm

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