Postcards

Postcards – Japan By Sergej Vutuc

I’m sure you’ve all gazed at one of Sergej Vutuc’s photos before, distinct in style, analog as fuck and always depicting a sense of mystery and poetry.

The master photog, artist and self-proclaimed modern nomad recently went on a trip to Japan to shoot for his new book, and while there he sent us this super 8 Postcard and some advice for Japan travellers: 5 fives, 3 threes, 1 one…

5 best places to visit in Japan: Every place I visited so far was so different in itself; all very special… I enjoyed Osaka a lot; on me it left a strong raw impression. The mix of the harbour and the business district is quite a culture clash. Fukuoka was amazing too with traditional parks. But most of my time I spent with the PFK crew at their concrete jungle paradise by the beautiful ocean side.

5 best hook-ups abroad:  NBK Crew, Evisen Crew, TBPR, PFK Crew, Print Exchange Program, Iseki, Rip Zinger.

5 best people met:  This list could be huge cos hospitality and friendship are very important for the Japanese. And through two exhibition tours within the last two years, I met so many amazing people and shared many private and beautiful things with them, sometimes in very small places. That’s why there can’t be THE BEST !

5 craziest sightings: Many things… the silk road decorations in front of people’s houses. The search for the opposite of the stereotypical manga/digital style which only seems to reflect a fraction of the actual Japan. The organisation and tidiness of the homeless, the cardboard houses the built for themselves left a big impression on me. The Fukushima  trip with the Bridge crew was breathtaking. This old Japanese coffee place next to the Bridge skateshop – I had a traditional Japanese coffee there with a blind woman, who then became my translator and helped describe my process working with spaces. Laurence Keefe and I walking back home one night with a ladyboy that worked by our house…

5 necessary travel items for Japan trips:  Japan rail pass ticket, patience, flexibility, notes with Japanese words – vegetarian! (sometimes you need to act as if you were allergic to meat)

3 next trends to come out of Japan:

Oh… out of my perception! But hopefully a feeling for aesthetic and equanimity.

3 inspirations you took home:

The way to look at spaces, functionality and to breathe deeply as much as possible.

3 biggest differences from your culture back home:

Food balance, equanimity, purity (cleanness)

1 lesson you learned:

Equanimity.

Also make sure to check out Sergej Vutuc’s new photo book “Tragovi”.

Risographer, 37 photography, format: 20×25 unfolden page 37,8×25
edition of 150
Published by Gloria Glitzä and Sergej Vutuc

NEXT DATES:
FRIENDS WITH BOOKS, Berlin Artbook Fair
Hamburger Bahnhof 11-13 December 2015
PRINTED MATTER´S LA Artbook Fair
The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA 11 – 14 February 2016

… event for contemporary artists’ books and periodicals by artists and art publishers. Featuring 130+ international participants and a series of public programmes: discussions, readings, presentations, performances, and art works that explore the perimeters of today’s art publishing.

USA RELEASE – SIGNING:
PRINTED MATTER´S LA Artbook Fair
The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA 11 – 14 February 2016

Tragovi is about observing the development of modern society; a privatization of the public space and conquering the nature with concrete, on one side, and the natural human urge to expand one’s consciousness, to be in between, to exist playfully and live through imagination, on the other side.
Skateboard culture is just one of many contemporary social subcultures whose philosophy is based on the aspiration for playfulness and urge to use the open space in the context of freedom of expression.

Sergej researches this phenomenon and participates in it through his position of the modern nomad, whose radius of movement includes specific places such as Fukushima, Detroit, Israel and Palestine, strong symbols of on going human mistakes and wrong directions in social and economic development.
Through his work, he grasps a surreal feeling of a new or parallel existence, and, even though it can sound utopian, moments of the shift of perception in the human and the society in general.