I moderated a talk session at "Genpuku", an event held at SuperDeluxe on the peculiar date of June 6 — or 06/06/06 — to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Rontgen Kunst Institut (now "Rontgenwerke"). Speakers included artist/performer Ameya Norimizu, contemporary art critic Sawaragi Noi, former Rontgen staff and presently the owner of Yamamoto Gendai, gallerist Yamamoto Yuko, and Kunst Institut founder and current head of Rontgenwerke, Ikeuchi Tsutomu. All of them have been involved with Rontgen’s activities right from the beginning, while they reportedly asked me, an occasional Rontgen visitor, because among all the insiders they needed someone with an unbiased view.
An incredible number of leading figures in today’s contemporary art scene started their careers at Rontgen Kunst Institut. Alone between 1991 and '95, when the "Kunst Institut" was still located in Omori, such prominent names as Murakami Takashi, Nakahara Kodai, Yanobe Kenji, Iwai Shigeaki, Ameya Norimizu (and Technocrat), Hachiya Kazuhiko, Wolfgang Stiller, Aida Makoto, Ozawa Tsuyoshi, Mikami Seiko, Fukuda Miran, Nakajima Hanayo, Matsukage Hiroyuki, Sone Yutaka, Majima Tatsuo, Nakayama Daisuke, Yamatsuka EYE, and numerous others were showing their works in solo and group exhibitions. Further, artists ranging from former theatre man Ameya to musicians Otomo Yoshihide, Haino Keiji and Violent Onsen Geisha (Nakahara Masaya) appeared in events, and even people from totaly different domains, such as Nemoto Takashi (manga) and Ito Gabin (editing/games), made their "debuts as artists" here. The man who scouted all these artists back when he had just published his first book was Sawaragi Noi, who curated his first exhibition at Rontgen Kunst Institut. Needless to mention, all of the above were young, nameless talents back then.
Among the Rontgen staff and regular visitors at the time were several future curators, galleritst and collectors, as well as many young supporters of the "art scene". Rather than "art lovers" I would call them "woolly-minded young folks who feel like doing something but don't know what and how". One doesn't need to open Okazaki Kyoko’s mangas to understand that Pithecanthropus in Harajuku was the stronghold of Tokyo subculture in the1980s. Now it’s probably SuperDeluxe that’s playing this role, and in the '90s it was certainly Rontgen Kunst Institut, together with P-House. Such radical shows as Ameya’s "Blood Pool" of a serum containing samples of HIV patients' blood were taking place here.
The talk session was interlarded with images from Murakami’s first solo show and other "gem" kind of footage, and visitors learned that it was once again the Kunst Institut in Omori where artist/designer Ukawa Naohiro was first introduced to Sawaragi Noi by Ameya Norimizu. However, what I found most interesting was Ameya’s question to Ikeuchi Tsutomu at the end, "Why is it that you didn't look as if you were having much fun at the time?" Yamamoto Yuko remembered, "Right, and at the Sawaragi-curated '909-Anormaly 2' exhibition you seemed rather disgusted by Nemoto Takashi’s illustration of Kin-san & Gin-san (100-year-old Japanese celebrity sisters) having oral sex!" Ikeuchi admitted, "I didn't necessarily like all the things we were showing". The conversation culminated in Ikeuchi’s reflective talk and his subsequent question to Sawaragi, "So, do YOU really like all that weird stuff?" Sawaragi replied, "It’s not a question of whether I like something or not, but there are things I just have to do". "You're perfectly right," Ikeuchi agreed.
What was there at the time and seems to missing in the art world these days is a sense of mission. Thanks to those people’s strong desire to "create something" and to "change something", talents with different backgrounds and orientation kept surfacing at the Kunst Institut. Their radicalism triggered sympathy and protest at once, and opened the door for countless genre-crossing encounters — an endless loop of positive feedback. Such a cycle was of course only possible because all persons involved were young, and seen from the other end, one would have to say that only the young generation was capable to create the "Rontgen style". I'm not knowledgeable enough to think of many more places than the aforementioned SuperDeluxe, but I believe that, somewhere in this huge city, there must be places that are quietly cultivating a sort of particularity comparable to Rontgen Kunst Institut in the 1990s.
By the way, an unbelievably stupid incident that runs counter to all this positive talk happened on the early morning of June 3, in the gallery "magical, ARTROOM" in Roppongi’s Complex Building (where also Rontgenwerke is situated). Two obviously young individuals broke into the gallery and stole approximately 90 of Yamataka (aka Yamatsuka) EYE’s works (plus nine items by Tsuchikawa Ai and Kobayashi Ryohei) from an exhibition that had just ended. The intruders left computers and cash untouched, which makes their intention quite clear. Due to this incident, the planned publication of a book of EYE’s works is now endangered. That must be the work of mindless, self-proclaimed "fans" who kind of "toppled their favorite" with little thought of the artist and other fans.
Listen, you stupid fools, what you did is violence against the artist you (probably) admire, and the entire pool of Rontgen artists. If you want absolution, please return the items, and by all means don't destroy them or throw them away!
Everyone who knows something about the theft, please let us know.
Ozaki Tetsuya / Editor in chief / REALTOKYO