Week6 in Japan-the exchange zine is filling up,thanks for all submissions so far!

unfortunately this is headquarters as the internet is in a really dodgey place in our apartment. eek!

 Millie, my exchange buddy old pal,  has taken some great photos and videos of our time here in Japanland. check her out. www.milliepopovic.blogspot.com -shes a lovely printmaker too!

experiments with presentation of exchange zine...links, exchange, kinetic art, stickers, paper chains, mobiles, activity, engagement, light, transparency, money exchange, leaving a trace... more experiments to come (zine image courtesy of  Tsuna on MCD Communication course)

engwish and cartoons everywhere! 

some weird and wonderful things in japan

our surroundings...

Week5 and the Exchange Zine is coming along nicely!Still room for more submissions!

Exchange magazines submission posters are around the university and the submissions are coming in! Thats my desk space there..its sooo nice to have my own area to work in.

What I have been reading on the bus and when I have a spare mo. Handed in the Draft Proposal of my dissertation this week with the help of some of these books. The 'Education role of the Museum' by Eilean Hooper-Greenhill was quite pivotal. Maybe Museum studies masters next next year...

Pompoko!
These little fellas are everywhere, like are garden nomes! After talking to the girls in painting we realised that the japanese restaurant back home is named after Racoons!

Anime Lucy, Shelly and Millie!
They girls here love these photo booths where you get edited and airbrushed into a cartoon manga character!

'Dieting'
By touching this little cow will cure all your aliments and running around this building turning these blocks and ringing a bell is pretty good for you too... Oh and they have shrines specifically for babies! Enlightening. 

Kyoto Markets
 We stumbled into a flea market in some temple grounds. ..they were selling all sorts of foods, crafts, clothes and all sorts! There are lots of shopping arcades here and food markets! Squid with a quails egg in its head.Yoshi (yum)! They like raw egg over their food here too, i didnt realise this and hacked away thinking it was hardboiled, dribbly egg everywhere...

Night in Kyoto!
Saw the giesha girls, it was really exciting, quite magical, and a bit disney like...Met some other internationals from a fancy university in America i think in a Brazilian bar...not very japanese but was fun! Then off to a club, usual hip hop goop but with some funny DJ hyping in between. Squid balls and a bit of apple shisha after, an alternative to the kebab at the end of a night!

Week 4 in Japan...its going so quick.

the highs and lows of japanese dinning...rice flour sweets and sweet bean paste, pigs feet, omlettey ricey thing, raw egg and rice thing, pizza toast pot noodley thing, amazing ice creams and flabby chewy skin fat meat....mmm!

Our landlady loves ichi-ban flower arranging, she does some herself and took us again to another show...its pretty cool they bend the flowers over time i think into shapes and hold them together with these delicate attachments...but after a while theres only so many flowers you can look at before they all start to look the same...

We went to a nearby city called Gifu which still practices the thousands of years old Ukai fishing technique of using birds to navigate where the fish are at night. Very beautiful. We met a really nice family and lone behold were sat next to a Buddhist monk, lovely!

Millie does printmaking and she showed me how to do wood cut printing on japanese paper. Just a few experiments...

Feedback from my photograph magnets at the Brighton Magnetic Art Exhibition May 2011- www.brightonopen.blogspot.com

CALL OUT FOR ART, WRITING, DESIGN, CRAFT SUBMISSIONS FOR THE NEW EXCHANGE ZINE-為替雑誌

Magazine manifesto

A new magazine set up by the international students from Brighton University in England at Nagoya University in Japan, with the aim to EXCHANGE issues, ideas and work by anyone, students, artists and designers across continents.

Any submissions welcome. paintings-photography-crafts- drawings-essays-stories-doodles-anything…

Email your entry and contact details to: swingin_sista@hotmail.com or you can hand it in personally to my desk in MCD/media communications, on the top floor.

Deadline 11^th June 2011

The original colour artists book will be exhibited and black and whites copies of the zine will be on sale from 8^th July 2011 in the Design Centre Gallery, University of Nagoya and later sold in England.

応募は、雑誌を募集

雑誌 コンセプト

交換の問題、アイデアや大陸を越えて学生のアーティストやデザイナーの間の仕事を目指して、イギリスのブライトン大学からの留学生によって設定された新しい雑誌

すべての投稿は歓迎

絵画 - 写真 -き込み - デザイン- 工芸-ドローイング-エッセイ-印刷作る-何…

エントリ及び連絡先についての詳細をメールで送信エントリ及び連絡先についての詳細をメールで送信: swingin＿sista@hotmail.comか、最上階では、MCDの/メディア通信の私のデスクに個人的にそれを渡すことができます. 締め切り2011年6月11日

ジンは、デザインセンターギャラリーで2011年7月8日から販売に展示される. 後、彼らはイングランドに戻って販売される.

Week 3 in Japan

 

         

Mino City; the cutest place in the mountains thats not in the guide books, what a find! Ancient houses from the Edo period and traditional paper making. We will definitely come back here despite the confusion of trying to find this little gem.

The best in amusements entertainment...people were queuing for photo booths to turn you into manga/anime characters, its on the to do list!

Nagoya Castle, everything is so green,even the green tea ice cream...nice to see amongst all the grey city buildings

A visual log of ideas from photographs and secondary sources; etching, printing, typography, magnifying, paper chain, bags, weaving, links, language, knowledge, learning, traditional skills, Milan Design Trade Show 2011, artists, issues of time, fragitly, memory, tracing and mapping, book arts, paper making, shadow, light, mirroring, minature, found objects, preserving, sharing, exchanging, distribution, communication, community, documentation.
 Google. Web. 08 May 2011<http://www.google.com/>

Free Magnetic Art on Brighton Seafront on 7th May, 2011

Image from: Alban. "Free Magnetic Art." Brighton Open. Alban, 4 May 2011. Web. 06 May 2011. <http://www.brightonopen.blogspot.com/>.

As part of the Brighton Fringe festival from 10am on Brighton Seafront on 7th May 2011 you can pick up a free magnetic artwork. You can choose from 530 artworks by 239 artists. Im one of them! I have two black and white 35mm film developed photographs. See the links below.

http://picasaweb.google.com/openfridge/BrightonOpenExhibition#5579169093979021666

http://picasaweb.google.com/openfridge/BrightonOpenExhibition#5579169100244117826

Each magnet has a number. Match that with the number on the online catalogue on the website below to find the artist. If you want to find out more about the artist then the majority of them have a link on the artists page on the website. See below.

www.brightonopen.blogspot.com

www.brightonfestivalfringe.org.uk/ticketing/index.aspx?q=magnet

Week 2, Golden Week in Nagoya, Japan

Another welcome party at University, this time on Millies' Printmaking course ( milliepopovic.blogspot.com). There was some alternative entertainment...a tribute to a popular anime/manga tv show...

National holidays! Easter Sunday with a seafood meal and one boiled egg... Golden week begins with flying fish outside our apartment and all sorts for Children's Day.

This gets me very excited to go food shopping!

Traditional Japanese Flower Arranging. Our landlady invited us to her exhibition and a tea ceremony. The tea ceremony was a ritualistic, you have to appreciate and give time to drinking the frothy creamy green tea and green tea paste sweet, even the ceramic bowl it is in. Lots of bowing. We were asked by the local journalist to say a few words on our experience; ''Yoshi''- yummy! Cant wait to see that article!

A bit of normality. We watch the royal wedding on the internet with homemade flags, Anna the other international girl in the apartment downstairs and the most vile cold green tea drink. Oh, and washing day on the balcony with a book. Iv finished it now, well worth a read; 'Hokkaido Highway Blues: Hitchhicking Japan' by Will Ferguson.

Stumbled along a temple in Nagoya. Lovely.

Shopping in Nagoya. Finding cute antique and handmade stores, we were all given cute knitted cat broaches. Secondhand kimono's, bizzare inventions for making your mouth slimmer?!, inside of your water bottle cleaners, cheap electrical stores.

Bike riding. We are in the suburbs of a large industrial port city but around there are lovely traditional houses and concrete houses and allotments and farmlands. A confused landscape.