Ego Bag – 4BT310
At Design Festa 2011 I stumbled upon this macabre but fascinating piece of art. A calf in shiny plastic, with an inverted luxury hand bag inserted into it’s body. But there was more than meets the eye in this mysterious creation. Upon the request of the three girls whose work this was I put my hand into the bag and felt the rumblings of machinery through the leather siding. It was like a living thing in there. Normally I am not for art with chock value, but this thing was pretty neat. The three creators, all exceptionally normal young Japanese girls talked to me a little about the piece, but all I could think of was the combination of young women, the skilled craftmanship and the the bizarre idea. I loved it. They call themselves collectively 4BT310 and do all their work together, unplanned but certainly not without skill. They also had stuffed animals, drawings and plenty of other fantastic ideas on display but I was hypnotized by the plastic calf. Their real names are given only as Shibata + Sato X 2 (Sato is a very common name in Japan). I think these three young designers have a bright future ahead of them!
Not quite sure how to react to that!
Haha… neither were I! But it stopped me dead in my track. (^-^)
That seems like such a terrible thing to do to a LV Damier bag. It’s not even leather, the Damier are cotton canvas and I don’t think that canvas is used as lining. OK, so maybe the handles and trim. I feel like Linus when Lucy cut into the pumpkin on Halloween. The part where Linus says, “Oh no, you didn’t tell me you were going to kill it…”
And their shoes are leather…
But then they must be hoping that their art starts a conversation. I certainly just did have one in my head.
D, no animals or bags were harmed in the making of this art piece, it’s all fake stuff! I doubt they would have used a real LV bag, those things are almost worshiped over here. I have no idea about their shoes though, hahaha… And yes, I normally don’t care for art that just wants to upset, but this one was just too good to pass up on!
Oh thank goodness, I feel relieved. Actually I understand liking the work that went into it even if the idea of it was not to create a positive feeling.
Don’t about you, but this looks pretty weird/scary to me! The alien eyes of the calf don’t help either. But, I guess it’s just me, being a sci-fi freak.
Haha… yes, I thought it looked a bit like an alien too. But then again cows have an other-worldly look. I really miss cows, living here in Tokyo. There’s very few of them here…
You’re right about the other-worldly look of cows.
And speaking of very seldom seen cow in Tokyo, CowParade didn’t hit Tokyo, did it? I saw it in Belgrade and I really liked it.
Oh we have the cow parade, as a matter of fact I see several every day (some permanent cows remain), but live ones? I’ve only ever seen 3 inside Tokyo proper. (^-^)