DESIGN FESTA: LOLITA ART EXHIBITION, TOKYO DECADANCE GOTH BODY PAINTING.
Anyone else here a raving fan of the Garfield and Friends cartoon (1988-1994)? From the third to seventh season, the theme song went a little bit like this:
“Dancing, fiesta! Romancing, siesta! Samba, la bamba… aie caramba!”
That’s what I was humming to myself (okay, singing aloud) as I moseyed around Tokyo’s Design Festa. The two-day, twice-yearly event attracts over 7000 crazy persons (a.k.a. artists), who are given a sliver of floor space to express their inner animal. For some, this means dragging random attendees onto a stage and crowning them Mushroom King/Queen (top right).
Crazy persons, you say? No wonder the J-Goth crew came out to Design Festa, along with a number of cyber / Gothic / Lolita types.
The Tokyo Decadance regulars re-staged their Halloween performance, but made it longer and less kinky. Basically, they went Jackson Pollock on each other to the soundtrack of EBM (electronic body music). Entwining limbs created a living painting of blood, kabuki, and death.
The more hardcore performers got acrylic paints down their throats and on their eyeballs!
Many Gothic and Lolita independent fashion designers had booths at Design Festa. I’m overly familiar with the major brands, so it was nice to see something both different and handmade.
The sweet accessories are truly works of art.
Over a dozen exhibitors specialized in creepy dolls, along with Lolita-fied Blythes.
Now I have the “Abu Dhabi” song from Garfield and Friends stuck in my head… What were your favorite childhood cartoons?
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 9th, 2008 at 23:30 and is filed under Art + Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
