It used to be easy to define what artists did—they painted pictures or carved sculptures. Some people consider Kenji Yanobe to be an artist, but he neither paints pictures nor carves sculptures. Instead, he makes objects and creates installations. Regardless of whether or not you think this is artistry—and some of Yanobe’s own would-be patrons don’t—it is worth looking at some of his creations, if only to know that someone exists who is doing these things..

Yanobe has never been susceptible to the charge of being ordinary. One of his earliest works was The Atom Suit. He created this bright yellow outfit, complete with Geiger counters, for post-atomic survival. It is not merely a gesture–Yanobe wore the suit himself to explore the area near Chernobyl in Russia. He also created Survival Gacha-Pon, which he dubbed the last automated vending machine in history. Customers insert their money to receive a “survival goods capsule”.

He’s described some of his works as sculpture. One was created with fashion designer Issey Miyake and is called Queen Mamma. It’s a dressing room designed as a womb. Yanobe is also capable of putting his ego on display, too, as shown by another work, Antenna of the Earth. Based on the artist’s studies of classical Buddhist sculpture, it’s a life-sized figure of Yanobe as savior standing in the middle of 300 miniature Atom Suits. Emerging from the figure’s open mouth are even smaller Atom Suits.

Cinema in the Woods

One common thread running through many of these works is their functionality. This is art that can actually be entered or operated. One work that combined Yanobe’s themes of survival in an atomic age, functionality, and weirdness, was the Cinema in the Woods. This small movie theater for children was built to resemble a mountain hut, complete with chairs, table, and small movie screen inside. It also was built with steel walls that enabled it to serve as a fallout shelter.

Torayan

Here’s where it gets interesting. Yanobe’s father took up ventriloquism and performed at his son’s exhibitions with a dummy named Naniwa no Torayan. The dummy was conceived as half child, half middle-aged man. It has a child’s face, but a combover hairstyle and a short moustache. Torayan was originally dressed in the uniform of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team, hence his name (Tora is tiger in Japanese.)

Yanobe liked the character so much he made it a central figure in Cinema in the Woods. There are several Torayans in the hut. One hides under the table, one is placed in a tub on the roof, and another is in front of the hut dressed in a mini Atom Suit. When the Geiger Counter detects radiation, it dances and sings an old Polish folk song called Let’s Go to the Forest. The movie shown at the Cinema in the Woods is called The World of Torayan, in which Yanobe’s father uses the dummy to teach ventriloquism. Inserted in the middle of the movie is a cartoon interlude based on a 1950 U.S. Department of Defense film called Duck and Cover, which teaches school children what to do in case of a nuclear attack.

Children’s City Project

His masterwork was yet to come. Yanobe was named the artist in residence for a six-month stay at the 21st Century Museum of Art in Kanazawa, near Tokyo. Here, Yanobe conceived the Children’s City Project, in which he built a “city” for children at the museum. He established a studio, equipped with welders and power tools, which he named the Children’s City Project Laboratory. Eventually as many as 300 local citizens got involved and came to the museum to help with the work.

Yanobe and his volunteers built a Children’s City broadcasting company, complete with a TV tower and original programming. The project had its own City Hall and disco. The volunteers began competing to build their own pavilions for the project and finished 21, which completely encircled the museum from the exterior. They held exhibits in the museum showing the progress of the work on the pavilions. Some local people brought in a mini-railroad they had built themselves. This became the Children’s City Railroad, and tracks were laid around the museum. Nothing if not self-referential, Yanobe had a new railroad car built to be used as the lead car of the train, and created a Torayan head that he placed on the front.

Torayan became the project’s symbolic character, and the artist launched a Torayan Project within the Children’s City Project. Yanobe produced a cartoon feature starring Torayan for broadcast over the Children’s City television station. There were Torayan character goods, a theme song, a Torayan band, and Torabii stuffed toys. Eventually, Yanobe created a giant Torayan, called the G-TRY (photo). The G-Try was a giant robot 7.5 meters tall that sang, danced, belched fire, and was capable of following orders as long as they were given by children. Yanobe called this the ultimate child’s dream. The voice recognition technology for the robot was developed by the Nagoya Institute of Technology, and Yanobe used his pre-school son’s voice as the recognition standard.

On the last day of the project, all 21 of the pavilions were returned to the lab. A projection screen was set up, and Yanobe and his volunteers watched a film in which they were the stars, building the Children’s City over the previous six months.

Mammoth

Yanobe also has bit off more than even he can chew. The Chunichi Shimbun newspaper company asked him to create a special project for the Aichi Expo. He conceived the Mammoth Robot of the 20th Century. The Aichi Expo is exhibiting a real mammoth excavated from the frozen tundra of Siberia, where it had been buried 10,000 years ago.

Yanobe came up with the idea of building a mammoth robot. It was to be a four-legged beast standing 20 meters high, weighing 20 tons, and walking by diesel power. After it was displayed, it was to be lifted by helicopter and flown over the city of Nagoya to be exhibited to the whole city at once. The robot would then be brought back to earth, where it would walk to the port and board a ship that would transport it to Siberia. There it would then be buried at the site where the real mammoth had been dug up, with instructions that it was to be re-excavated in 10,000 years.

The project never materialized because the sponsors didn’t allocate enough money to pay for a project of that magnitude, and, as reported later, differed with Yanobe over what constituted art.

I don’t know if it’s art or not, but his work does present a contrast with chindogu. Yanobe’s work is called art, but unlike pictures or sculptures, is functional and can be used. (Why and by whom is a different question altogether.) In contrast, chindogu, as our previous report here notes, are tools with a purpose, but not meant to be used. Does that make them art?

I have to stop now. My mind feels like it just fell into an elevator shaft.