Friday, June 20, 2008

Chanel Mobile Art

Another day in Tokyo, another day of waiting in line. It's like I'm in Disneyland. Naomi accompanied me to see the Chanel Mobile Art exhibition at the Yoyogi park in Harajuku. Entry is free, but you have to reserve tickets for an exact date and time. They were sold out for the entire time the exhibit is here at Family Mart (convenience store), and apparently the line for this weekend's tickets at the box office started forming at 8AM so it was totally impossible to get any when we arrived at 11AM. We ended up waiting in line to enter the exhibit that day, which we were told was possible because there are often no-shows. But it was well well well worth the one and a half hour wait!

You enter through the cave-like part, and exit where the woman is standing by the slick glass doors. Designed by Zaha Hadid, the structure is basically a mobile art museum with Chanel-bag-related contributions from various artists. It moves from city to city—it started in Hong Kong, came here in May, will move on to New York in September, and then I think it goes to Paris. When you enter, you get an audio guide that helps you navigate the building and the works of art. The woman’s voice who guides you sounds like the old lady at Margie’s—for those of you who don’t know her, she’s a crabby old lady who takes ice cream orders inefficiently and sounds like she’s been smoking since birth. Anyway, it was a cool interactive guide with nice music and direction. Before you leave, you get a gigantic, unstapled (wtf?) magazine that includes artist information, interviews with Karl Lagerfeld and Zaha Hadid, and other random cool stuff.

I should've checked to see if my camera has a panoramic option. I highly recommend seeing this exhibit if possible. Long live Uncle Karl!

2 comments:

wes said...

looking at your posts makes me really wish i had bought a digital camera before going to korea. but those days are over.

i also think i've lost the little bit of shamelessness in taking pictures of anything. don't really like being seen as a tourist.

Anonymous said...

It looks a bit like a continuous version of Mori Mariko's Wave UFO. The attendants at that had little white slippers and cult-member white tunics. I wish it involved the Margie's lady's voice, though.