Tokyo Nonsense is an 11 person show hitting the Scion Installation L.A. Gallery on Oct. 4th.

The title, TOKYO NONSENSE, not only refers to the city itself but also references the word “nonsense” in the context of Japanese popular culture, connoting so-called “modern decadence”and the rebellious, anti-establishment spirit of the 1960s student protest movement. The work of these 11 young artists reflects both Tokyo’s frenetic energy and the banal realities of everyday city life. The exhibition will consist of more radical forms of expression such as performance,video, and installation art in addition to more traditional mediums such as drawing, painting, and woodblock printing.

Within the Japanese vernacular the word “nonsense” has assumed various meanings throughout modern history, often associated with radical expression that challenged the dominant discourse of the moment. In the early 1930s, “nonsense” was included in the phrase ero-guro-nansensu,which the Japanese mass media used to label decadent and salacious popular culture (literature,film, theatre) that was viewed as a threat to traditional family values. Then in the late 1960s,“nonsense” became the rally cry for the disaffected Japanese students who protested to express their frustration with the current political and social situation at home and abroad. The rebellious spirit evoked by the word “nonsense” in Japan continues today, reincarnated and rearticulated by this group of young artists working in Tokyo. Their work simultaneously reflects the precedent setby the “nonsense” of the 1930s—labeled as absurd and meaningless by the dominant discourse—while dismissing the dominant discourse itself as pure “nonsense,” reminiscent of the protest tactics employed in the 1960s.

Featuring the real-life electric rats of the six-member artist group, Chim|Pom and the surreal woodblock prints of Sachiko Kazama. Scion’s site does not, unfortunately, have any real info on the show. Luckily, there is a preview up on Flickr.

“Tokyo Nonsense” at Scion Installation LA [Juxtapoz]

If all goes according to plan, I’ll be making my first sojourn to Tokyo later this year to spend time amidst my people; androgynous psuedo-adolescents in ridiculously large shoes and intricate makeup that my clumsy gaijin fingers could never hope to achieve. That is, of course, unless the post-apocalyptic vision of Tokyo Genso is realized and the already frantic pace at which the denizens of this planet are determinedly ruining it increases to an exponential rate.

While a Tokyo crumbling and covered in vines does sound like a gas, it would be nice to see the prancing lady-boys of which I’ve heard so much at least once before the Earth reclaims this beautifully androgynous Metropolis.

Tokyo Fantasy: Images of the apocalypse [Pink Tentacle : Tokyo Fantasy]

Keeping with the fine Japanese, cinematic tradition of unconstrained insanity and over-the-top violence, comes Tokyo Gore Police by the same people who brought the world Machine Girl. The “plot” of Tokyo Gore Police is as follows: in the future, Tokyo is in the grip of a plague which allows infected individuals to turn their wounds into weapons. These individuals are called Engineers and in order to keep them under control a private, heavily armed police force — whose members are imaginatively named “Engineer Hunters” — is created.

All of this takes place in a world where the denizens of Tokyo are so tumid with fluids that one would expect to hear it sloshing in their bulbous, distended limbs as they waddled about. The aforementioned ability to use one’s wounds as weapons also leads to some inventive situations, such as a gentleman using his severed penis as a cannon, a woman who sprays acid from her chest after being separated from her breasts, and a woman whose torso terminates in a toothsome toothy, alligator vulva. The level of gore in this trailer reaches such a hysterical pitch that at times it appears that the filmmakers have stooped to just throwing rubber organs in the air and spraying fake blood on the camera lens. In one scene I cannot even be sure if what is being depicted is a truck driving through a pile of mannequin parts or if said parts are supposed to be human bodies.

Needless to say this clip is NSFW and brilliant in a way only something so completely ridiculous can be.

Tokyo Gore Police trailer [YouTube] : The Reverse Cowgirl

As much as we enjoy conjecture and extravagant speculation regarding the future and the treasures it holds it’s a shock when something from the pages of the professional speculators, aka sci-fi authors, worms its way into our disappointingly nonfictional reality. Though in all fairness, less so when it comes from Japan.

Yet the newest way in which the metropolitan Japanese surprise and confound we less progressive western dullards is a bit surprising even with the knowledge of its origins. Frenetic salarymen dissatisfied with the pink-cheeked rush the pharmaceutical melange of energy drinks has to offer can now pop in to Tenteki10 for a vein full of “vitamins and other nutritional supplements”.

Yes that’s right; if you’ve got $20 (2,000 Yen) and 10 minutes you can have a doctor stuff your veins with the mysterious “vitamins and nutritional supplements” for what they describe as a “pick-me-up”. While I’m intimately familiar with the potentially less than pleasant effects of a botched intravening (to say nothing of potential “supplement” overdoses) I can’t help but wonder when we’ll have similar set ups in the States.

Even now you can swing by your local plastic surgeon’s office for a speedy syringe full of botulism for all your muscle paralysis needs. How long until Starbucks trades baristas for nurses? And further, how long until our “supplements” are supplemented with the wares of illicit chemists and old-fashioned coffeehouse snobbery is supplanted by a caste system of stat-boost aficionados?

My hope is not long; my daily ritual of chasing down a handful of No-Doze with three or four Viente Quad-Americanos has long since stopped clearing away the borderline somnambulance of the morning.

Drop-by IV drip service helps stressed Tokyoites [Japan Today : Inventor Spot]

It is in the spirit of this week’s Noise du Jour theme, Sleep Deprivation, that I make the flagship post: too late, too little, and fobbed in with dolorous haze. I cannot recall when or where I posted this before. I am posting it now.

I am only dimly conscious of this being a Tuesday, though I typed this in the late-night-Monday continuum, club-wise (bass grinding my girders and garters at the Glas Kat, natch). Which is exactly the sort of music to which we are not listening, in this post. Here, They Might Be Giants do something beautiful en regard staying awake.

Let us chew over that ectoplasmosis is, in fact, the name of a disease. Literally translating, the office chair scholar would assume something sneezy and spiritual, but the writers here (New Scum and Old) have not been vaccinated, and manifest unghostly symptoms.

For example, my adopted, bastard brother, Qais Fulton, suffers from debilitating chronoxysms, during which he sleeps little, or too much; remembers little, or too much; and nightly wrestles with somatic terrors and blisses. Qais reports that he “loses time”, a classic symptom of encroaching Multiple Personality Disorder. The stabbing kind.

My own affliction, experienced maybe trimonthly, takes the form of twelve-hour blackouts packed around intense dreams. The dreams portray the basic cast, characters, and set dressings of my waking life, but coaxed into scenes still more believable, and enjoyable, than the smoked-quartz window of “reality”. Osmotically, dreaming and waking life reach equidistance, and I waver through bifurcated days.

Ross’ sleeping habits, like his parentage, are obscure. I hesitate to question the dreams of a man who contributes to such dark journals as the Weekly Geek. I assume he is at least burdened with insomnia, or hypersomnia, and probably a full set of shining groinal pustules (itchy).

As for my dearest Florian, nee’ Brownlee, his phlegmy slumber is well-documented, webcam-wise, from a trip we took to Tokyo. He jams his fez on, cinches the sash of his smoking jacket, and is snoring within seconds. I had to sleep in the hall, where maids politely trod on me with their tiny Japanese feet.

Official Going Like This at TGS, originally uploaded by Ectomo.

Brownlee and I are in the offical Tokyo Games Show Press Room, enjoying delicious cold tea and even colder stares of disgust and condemnation from our game-journalisming peers.