Yankee and Otaku
Video Installation, HD, 2 channel, 7:56 min, 2014
"Yankee and Otaku" is a video installation work. Yankee, which reproduces the work of Jackson Pollock, refers to a slang term originally from North American, but has come to include the iconic stereotypes of the Japanese bad boy and bad girl. The Japanese Yankee often comes from circumstances of poverty, family neglect and domestic violence. Mizushima sets the stage, an area reclaimed as a military industry site during WWII, which remains one of the most important industrial producers in Japan. After 2000, the Yankee has been influenced by American Hiphop and gangster culture. With social segmentalization, however, few Yankees are seen in Japan.
Symbolic to the transformation of high and low culture as represented in the Comic market, Otaku refers to people who are addicted to comics, animation, games, computers, SF and figures. There products continuing appropriated and reproduced. Most Otaku are from the middle class and experience exclusion from school, community and society at large. They gather together and create individual new markets. Otaku may also influence the direction of consumption culture as collectors.