Tokyo: Laurie Anderson

We went to see an amazing Laurie Anderson exhibition in Tokyo, The Record of the Time, at the NTT InterCommunication Center

There we discovered weird and wonderful rooms of sound and video and walls covered with diagrams and writing, and a room where you could see her sing O Superman ("they're American planes") and other songs/video pieces.

And Laurie Anderson talking with her chain smoking clone.

Lots of strange automated violins and bows.

There was also a table where you sat with your elbows in small depressions and your hands clamped to your skull so you could listen to music through your arms. This table was situated in a vast room and whenever two people sat at either end, the resulting installation looked like a still life of inmates in an asylum. But the experience of your arms and cranium becoming conductor and speakers was great.

Then there was a huge airfilled chair on which was projected a couple of paragraphs from Moby Dick. We wanted to sit on it, but the answer was "Ie".

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The reactionaries have done well here in the elections endorsing the men (mostly men anyway) who want to change the Japanese constitution so they can feel more confident about going to war (ie trash Article 9). Prime Minister Koizumi friend of Howard and Bush now seems to have much more control of both houses of parliament.

No doubt there will be more visits to the Yasukuni Shrine which honors Class-A war criminals along with the nation's war dead.

And of course the world's banks and finance sharks will be all lining up for pieces of the world's only US$3 trillion bank aka "The Japanese Post Office" when the privatisation goes ahead. As Brecht once wrote "why rob a bank when all you need to do is start a bank and you can rob the people".

Good outcome for bankers bad for peaceniks!

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