ONE NOT NOT
curator
PIetro Franesi
thursday october 15, 2009 10:00 p.m.
central Park mall - manhattan - ny
The artist will hold a video performance on Thursday October 15, 2009.
The theme is “Money cat”.
Media: Video, NTSC,
Length: 2 sec. looping video
Presentation: single monitor or projection with looping
video
Maneki Neko (Money Cat)
The cat “Tama-chan” brings golds to his young master,
who had a rich family but becomes poor because of his
gambling-hobby. The young master decides to follow
Tama-chan because it gets thiner and thiner, and he wants
to find out where it finds the golds. Once he realises that
Tama-chan prays to god to exchanges its body to gold,
he regrets his bad hobby but it was too late. He uses the
last gold from Tama-chan and quit his gambling-hobby,
becomes rich again afterward.
This is one of the legen of this cat. although it’s not the
only one but the “exchanging body to money” (as prosti-
tution) idea comes into my mind to make this piece.
The work shows two desire of human nature, Material
(Money) and Sex (Genital of a man). Since money was
being created, the “artificial desire” of human-beings
was also created. Desire of possession causes fights,
wars, thieves, we say that war is bad, thieves must be
punished.
Sex as a nature desire, which is meant to reproduce gen-
erations, and is defined by moral: porn is dirty, public
naked is not allowed, erected penis is not art (?).
The combination of these two desires, in this tradition
symbol, can be traced, was being used by the society,
here is another history about this cat:
-- One of the most plausible reasons for its rapid rise to
popularity in the Meiji Period involves the sex industry.
In the secluded Edo Period, during which Japan closed
its doors to the outside world, an indigenous “amuse-
ment” culture grew side by side with the expanding
power of the merchant class.
Special zones (“Yuukaku;” soap land in modern par-
lance) sprang up to provide female companionship (pros-
titution) and other forms of merriment. Many “houses of
amusement” were equipped with a “good-luck shelf” on
which were displayed lucky charms in the shape of the
male sexual organ. Even today, various localities in Ja-
pan still hold an annual fertility festival, during which a
gigantic wooden penis is paraded through the streets as
an offering for good harvests and prosperity. ---
“if I need money, I wing my dick”, prostitution existes
in everywhere, art creation is manipulated by different
factors which make artist prostitute to the art market.
