My name's Ren, and I'm the founder of Senspace, a Web3 creator network built from me and my team's local community in Tokyo. Copped in Tokyo is a content series chronicling the stories behind the merch and knick knacks that I collect in my every day life.
Thanks to everyone who read and collected the Week #0 edition of Copped In Tokyo! For those of you who didn't you can check it out here. Now on to Week #1.
Intergalactic dog with a bindi and a necklace that says "Desire" by Minori Murata
Minori Murata is a Japanese 3D Designer and art director from Tokyo, currently residing in London. Minori is also a member of Booger Flick, a creative crew that I'm a part of, mentioned in the Week #0 article and was actually the one who came up with the name "Booger Flick" for the crew.
I'd been to a few of Minori's exhibitions before, but was particularly excited about this one as 1) I hadn't seen Minori for a few months as she's now in London and 2) KOM_I was performing. KOM_I is a popular artist, model, actress and singer, who is most well known for her role as lead singer in Wednesday Campanella, a popular music group that she left in 2021 as well as for putting on a famous performance art show where she would dissect a dead deer for audiences (not copypastaing that here; Google if you want). I personally was first introduced to KOM_I by watching the Netflix show, Followers in 2021. Minori is quite the character herself, but with KOM_I also being a part of the performance, I knew this was gonna get weird.
I arrived right at 7:00PM at the Shibuya Parco Museum. The venue was already packed wall to wall, with audience members sitting in front of a strange hanging structure and a backdrop of Minori's ant art (pictured in the flyer), each person with a cardboard ant cutout on their head. After a few minutes of quiet chatter amongst the audience members, Minori and KOM_I appeared from behind the ant backdrop, also with ants on their heads.
From there, Minori and KOM_I introduced themselves as ants and discussed their every day ant lives in a seemingly simple, yet highly existential dialogue around what it means to live and work. Minori often plays with the theme of what it means to work in modern society, releasing a series of 3D VR/AR art pieces in 2022 called "Work to Eat", depicting computers eating their worker owners in today's work culture.
KOM_I described the monotony of fetching food every day, going to and from the ant hill over and over again, while Minori urged KOM_I to question the monotony of the life of the ant and strive for something beyond serving the colony. Both Minori and KOM_I periodically had their memories erased as the room shook, forcing them to remember what they had been discussing and even broke out into song dance, including singing an ant-themed remix to "Let It Go" from Frozen.
Eventually Minori and KOM_I broke out of the colony bringing the audience with them and paraded through Shibuya Parco, a high end shopping mall singing, "Ari no Mama" or (we will be ants!), until we landed outside of the mall. We all laid down on the ground and played dead to escape from "the man" and got up and cheered after a few minutes to celebrate our victory.
After the performance, we had some time to check out Minori's exhibition. 3D ant art animations were projected onto stretched white materials that due to their low height shrunk the room, truly making you feel like you were in the ant's nest. At the end of the exhibit was the ant queen, who would tell you different messages based on the fruit or vegetable that you touched.
After the show, I of course made my way over to the merch table to see what I could grab. I debated buying a print from Minori, but considering I'm moving soon and there isn't a ton of space in small Tokyo apartments, I ended up going with a reflective card with an intergalactic dog with a bindi on its forehead and a necklace that says "Desire." Don't know the context at all, but it's safe to say, I hadn't seen anything like this before :).
Wind and Sea Turquoise Fisherman Hoodie
I didn't know much about Wind and Sea until the middle of last week, when my friend Marin reached out asking to see if I could translate their press release for their upcoming Spring/Summer collection.
She also invited me, my girlfriend and my dog, Dub (who she's dogsit for in the past) to their invite-only early viewing of the collection and so I immediately accepted the ask to do the translation.
The collection was inspired by Provence, in the south of France with guest creative direction from french designer, Tyrsa. Each of its items mixed together elements of streetwear and formalwear with vintage vibes and faded colors to made it look as if the clothing had been sitting for hours in the French sun.
Wind and Sea made a floral and fauna arrangement with plants that you would actually find in the south of France and created a special orange juice stand, both of which set the mood nicely for the viewing.
I debated between a few items, but ended up copping the turquoise soft linen hoodie, which I plan to call my "fisherman" hoodie, pictured below. The material was very lightweight and I look forward to wearing this on a cool summer night.
mars by Misato
Last, but definitely not least, I'm very excited to announce that my good friend and fellow Booger Flicker, misato, has released her first NFT on Zora! Misato is an accomplished art director and 3D designer from Tokyo, having done graphic and 3D design work for major brands such as G-Shock, Budweiser, Girls Don't Cry, Doc Marten's, GU and many more. And my personal favorite, she recently did the live visuals for Kenny Beats' live set in Tokyo.
Her first collection is space themed with two pieces so far, mars_01 and Mercury_1. Both pieces depict far away wastelands on Mars and Mercury respectively that are somehow made beautiful by the geometric graphics that misato has superimposed on these backdrops. I'm hoping there are more pieces to come from misato, especially considering I've convinced her to get on Warpcast to engage her community haha! Give her a follow here!
Pictures of mars_01 and Mercury_1 and links to mint below!
Thanks!
If you've made it this far, I hope it means you enjoyed reading Week #1 of Copped in Tokyo! More to come next week, and if you want to keep up with what I'm up to outside of just copping fun stuff, feel free to give me a follow at the links below!
