'This place aint getting no better, keeps me under the weather'

Saturday the Nina/Karen/Anetos meeting/pick up all goes horribly wrong, there is a major time confusion (my fault) so while I am driving to Tokyo Karen and Nina are struggling to find their way to Matsudai - which they achieve, finally following a black person who the assume to be part of the Triennale on account of the ‘differentness’ - meeting Kumagai, one of the Triennale managers, the same Kumagai who has failed to attend 3 consecutive meetings that he scheduled. Kumagai then calls me to tell me what had happened but refuses to run Karen and Nina the 10mins up to Toge. He also won’t call a taxi as he is too busy and wont delegate to anyone else to do it, he acknowledged that K&N look tiered but suggested they should wait at the centre till I returned from Tokyo at 8pm in 6 hours time. I will find this ‘help’ difficult to forgive.

As it is Karen calls me and I explain how to get a taxi, Kumagai had told them it would be too expensive as Toge was 40 minutes drive. Jamie and I race back from Tokyo foregoing the worlds’ best sushi resturant. Karen and Nina had made it back to the house, all is well bar the slight problem of 2 more people to squeeze into our 4 rudimentary rooms.

As we progress the pressure to make things that the village like is immense and Barnaby’s hyper real portraits provide a 6th form sensibility that will deliver - and it does, he is soon acclaimed as a genius by the locals. Ben also is affected producing a highly polished stall, finely finished, sanded and everything.

On Sunday we are all due to work on the footpaths project, it rains like a horse pissing on a pansy but still we gather and head of to clear many thousands of pounds worth of Acaias, Camellias and rarities beyond my humble gardening knowledge from the footpaths of the region. This very wet ordeal is followed by a mass village bar-b-que where it s all great fun and lots of interesting stuff comes out. We arrange to go and meet Karl Bengs a Dutch/Swiss/German (no one is sure which) architect. He has been living in the area for 10 years and buys old traditional buildings, which he converts into contemporary interpretations of a Japanese/European vernacular architectural fusion.

We have an evening meeting with Kumagai in the squalid office to go over the performance event. He suggests that we have been tardy producing the detailed event schedule (it has been waiting on him for a week). I am pretty much white with anger and make the meeting as uncomfortable as possible. This does seem to energize Kumagai but he looks so ill and tired that I don't really have the heart to go for him. I really feel very sorry for him and his predicament however self-inflicted it maybe. Of course he makes sympathy hard by still trying to chisel money out of every possible orifice, including suggesting that they will sell the booze being supplied to them by the Australian Embassy. The party they are trying to make us pay for is to thank the artists and volunteers who have slaved to make all this possible and from whom Art Front will be then have worked to near death. I am kind of imagining a popular riot and public hanging of the art front staff with me trying to calm the winds of fury. It really seems like an abuse of people, both locals, artists and anyone else that comes within range of the Art Front black hole/negative space. Perhaps what is most unpleasant is the hierarchy whereby some artists get support and funding, luxury hotels and chauffer driven cars, mostly artists that Art Front mistakenly thinks are important, like Richard Deacon (who? You know, 80’s guy, the one that was slightly more credible than Tony Cragg (he comes on a progress through Toge with his retinue, nodding and waving and comparing things to 80’s world)). Art Front really are the rudest people on earth and there seems to be no honor in word or action. Maybe this is just an art thing, there is little honor or honesty in art, the art world or in many cases artists, maybe that is surprising, it seems the opposite of what you would expect - much like Japan. The western perception being that Japanese people are honorable and keep to their word, but then a popular perception of art it that it is about truth. As you might be able to tell I am getting increasingly pissed of with the way we are being treated. Not by the village, but by just about everyone else. Maybe I am just dissapointed again.