UJINO AND THE ROTATORS

As you get older lots of things in life change, people come and go, life moves on. One thing that has been a constant in my life is Southbank. I may not go there on a regular basis anymore but, when the chips are down I always seem to end up back there. I went for a little stroll after work on Monday and was blown away by the latest art installation there.

It was by the renowned Japanese sculptor and musician Ujino Muneteru (born Tokyo, 1964) founded The Rotators in 2004, a band whose members consist of ordinary household appliances, including blenders, hairdryers and power tools. Each of these 'musicians' are connected to the Rotatorhead, a unit created from a specially adapted DJ's mixing desk that Ujino has programmed to automatically control all The Rotators' components.

Ujino has said that 'I set up the band on the table and control everything from the Rotatorhead, so it ends up looking like a cooking show on TV. The permanent members of The Rotators are: the blender, for its heavy, low frequency sounds — like a punchy kick drum; the drill, set up too for its snappy, tight snare drum sound; and the hair dryer, which is always involved with my performances because it resembles a fuzzy bass but sometimes takes the role of vocals.'

While Ujino's work recalls both the Intonarumori (noise intones) invented by the Italian Futurist artist and composer Luigi Russolo and kinetic sculpture of Jean Tinguely, it also speaks of his childhood and adolescence in 1970s and early 1980s Japan, a time when that nation was undergoing rapid economic development. Growing up surrounded by American pop culture and then-novel plastic household appliances, his passion for Punk and New Wave led him towards an interest, as he puts it, in 'art as material realism rather than the planar illusions of painting, manga and animation'. For Ujino 'rock music expression and electric technology which amplifies sound signals were at their peak in the 1980s', and this is why he prefers to make use in his work of second-hand items from this period. While Ujino and The Rotators reflects the impact of globalisation on the local, it also speaks of how even its blandest material deposits — a piece of kitchenware, or a power tool — become strange again when connected to a specific set of cultural, social and historical currents.

For this exhibition at The Hayward Project Space, Ujino is transforming the space into his workshop, continuously welcoming ‘new band members’ from London during his stay at The Southbank Centre as an artist in Residence. During the exhibition’s run, Ujino and The Rotators will give several public performances as part of Southbank Centre’s Ether 09 Festival of Art and Technology.

Check it out!




http://the-rotators.com/