A day in October
I meet photographer Mark Borthwick for the first time in two years. I was invited to a party at the Martin Margiela shop in Ebisu, Tokyo, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the brand’s launch, and Mark is doing a live performance there. I was involved in the editing of his photo book "Synthetic Voices", which was awarded the Art Directors Club (New York) Silver Prize for Book Design, and have maintained a friendly relationship with him in both private and professional life. But what the hell is he doing in a live performance, you might ask. He has in fact released two albums with his friends from an independent label, and he also does the music for his videos by himself. Recently he is doing a lot of guitar and vocal performances in galleries among others.
At this party, Mark plays guitar and percussion at once, but it’s all done in a very laid-back manner. While opinions surely differ over whether that style defines the musical quality, fact is that about one third of the visitors leave the venue about halfway through the set.
After the one-hour performance, I seize the opportunity to have a chat with Mark. He seems very satisfied with his show. Now all the fans are suddenly coming back and gather around him, so we decide to have dinner together sometime later, and I leave him to the crowd.
We eventually meet again two days later. From his hotel we drive to the restaurant Higashiya in Nakameguro, and as Mark is obviously still suffering from his hangover, I recommend some dishes that will pep him up. We eat and talk for hours. While browsing through a (magnificent!) dummy of a retrospective kind of photo book that will be published next year from Rizzoli, we talk about how boring fashion magazines have become, and how independent media are gradually losing their original spiritedness. The discussion about ways to get out of this miserable situation is endless. A resident of Brooklyn, a neighborhood in which land prices keep escalating, Mark comes to the conclusion that the current worldwide financial crisis is actually quite a lucky thing. "That’s finally something that forces people to straighten themselves out!" The photographing troubadour, who has been capturing manifestations of unostentatious beauty and people leading beautiful lives, tells me that he wants to photograph some organic farmers next time he comes to Japan. That will surely result in some truly modern, beautiful pictures.
October 25
I travel to Ichinomiya in Minami-Boso. It is the first time that I visit this little town on the Kujukuri coast. My destination is architect Baba Masataka’s house party introducing guests to his new home and the area around it.
I am presently in the middle of putting together a book based on Baba’s blog documenting the construction of what is in fact becoming a little village, as Baba explains in a sidesplitting account how he bought on impulse a plot of land in Boso, designed his own house, negotiated with several financial institutes, and ended up designing houses for friends and acquaintances who heard about the project and decided to become neighbors. The book is scheduled for publication from Ota Books in December (provided that Baba-san sends his texts in time…)
Here in Japan, it rarely happens that an area is developed by people other than local governments or big urban planning firms, and this grass-roots project in which young architects collaborate on a personal level to design an entire area is certainly unprecedented. Baba-san’s R-Project, RealTokyoEstate, and now this project in Minami-Boso (that has begun to spread to adjacent areas), are at once questioning and proposing interesting solutions for architecture and town planning in Japan.
Baba announced on his website that he was going to have a barbecue, and asked guests to bring their own food, so everybody - both architect friends and unrelated people who knew about the event from the announcement on the Internet - show up with food and drinks, which we prepare in the spacious garden around the perfectly white construction that seemingly popped up out of nowhere in the surroundings of Boso. Now show me a place in central Tokyo where you can inspect the interior of a new house while chatting with the architect and having barbecue… It’s probably because of the building’s relaxed feeling, along with the pleasant climate of Minami-Boso, that encourages guests to talk to each other even though they have never met before.
On our way home, me and my wife realize that we are coming from a site of modern architecture smelling like grilled beef.
Sugatsuke Office website: http://www.sugatsuke.com