is where I am now. The 300 bottles of whiskey inside the Okinawa Jikan Bijutsukan.



A band came here to do some atmospheric talk performance. Now the guy plays some playful melody while they play this game, where someone says just a few words while another person has to finish the sentence. They beplay some meaning. Just wonderful and a quiet atmosphere. Good to be here now.

More and more turns out to work fine. I'm always surprised how much they are able to do at the same time. So today I helped Su-san, the taiwanese artist to do some prints. She made kids from a primary school paint some pictures. And later they will do paper-planes with it. American kids from the bases and the okinawan kids from the Wakasa primary school. I somehow fear pictures children paint, they always look kinda scary and have a strange atmosphere.
Fumiko and Tetsuma started a Guerilla Bar Action, where they sponteanously open the bar inside the Art Center, send mail on everyones phones and sell food and drinks. From now on til the opening.
So right now I'm sitting inside the bar. I met Susanne and Doris here before and we had a drink together. They were out to Koza today to buy stuff and arrange some things inside the Nyantengai. Seems to be a successful day for them. Susanne is also fine with her prints and Doris also gets along with the Noren Market. So: No Problems. Wow.
Okada-san, the director is always here in the Art Center til late and works. It's just incredible how everyone gives their best.

I still wait for the last art work concepts, so I could translate them into english. The biggest of the english version from the wanakio-hp is already online. Just few left.
On the other side the opening is in eleven days...but I guess it'll be alright. As well I was kinda pessimistic yesterday, I'm optimistic right now.


Update: people aROUND:
TETSUMA --running the Single Malt Whiskey Bar usually and hangs out in the Art Center for years. Today he wears a strange kinda poncho which makes him look just like a strange japanese guy who wears a poncho to look indian. Or so.
FUMIKO --studied here on the Art Center and returned from Tokyo. She has this band called K'd rock, where she and Nobu do really strange experimental sound, but i love them anyway. She's pure joy.
This is Fumiko at the opening
OKADA YUMIKO --she's the director of the Art Center and the only one working regularly here. She is around 27, studied Art Management and is a lot of fun. She got the strange talent to be able to be given a lot of food and other stuff from whoever. I guess she never has to buy food. I always find her with something in her hands she just was given to.

EMIKO KATO--is the second curator of wanakio (apart Titus). She does not live on Okinawa but came here for the project.
MASARU IWAI --is an artist from this year's wanakio. He studies on the Tokyo Art University. He is into cleaning. For wanakio he organized a Cleaning Guerilla Group where he'll just pop up somewhere to do some cleaning action in public space. He is a lot of fun.

TANOTAIGA ---is also an Artist based in Miyagi. In his art works you can often see himself in somekinda situation. For this wanakio he pays prostitutes to take him to their room, he takes on their clothes and photograph him in their usual seductive position. He lived in Spain for 3 years and speaks english. I just love him.

RIKKI --studied on the Okinawan Art University and now works in his hometown on honshu. He really IS strange. When I met him first today he just cut himself a too lovely girls hairstyle and afterwards he put red tear stickers under his eyes. Just because he can do it. But he is a lot of fun to have around and got a huge heart of pure gold.

this pic describes Rikki quite well. The cute girl is Chihiro
AND --some guests eating Fumiko's food and gyoza and drinking too much whiskey.

Fine then. see ya tomorrow

After I went to Ogido Daniel Lopez gave me, Fumiko and another friend a lift to his project in Nanbu. He and Xavier Moulin made a workshop with school kids where they collected waste on the beach, divided it and made sculpture and built a huge human shaped trash man. Afterwards we went to a magicians shop to stay amazed for about one hour. Incredible man. The last station was the art work site of Hiromi Tsuha and her installation called "speakers". She lived for 12 years in London and tried to revitalize the time she lost on Okinawa in those twelve years by collecting things people here say. So in the house her late father built himself but died before finishing it she installed a matrix of speakers in which one is surrounded by all those words. Very intense atmosphere, an amazing site and very interesting person.
At night was the goodbye party of Rikki who had to go back to Kanagawa. It was Rikki, Iwai-san, Ohi-kun, Emiko-san, Murakami-san, Mizukawa-san, Soma-san and me. We ate and drank too much on flatrate service and talked til midnight.



Yesterday was wadai ni naru semi and artist talk. Doris, Xavier and Daniel, Hiromi Tsuha, Sayo Yamazato introduced recent works. Fumiko made real good food and I helped a little out. Xavier's son Akira assistented as well. he is nine years old, talks french and japanese and is incredibly cute. Everytime I listen to the stuff he talks about I'M horribly surprised about the reasonable things he says.

At ten I went with Chihiro to the Wakasa Shogakko to fix the paper planes which had fallen off the installation. To our surprise a lot of people came to help. So it was Chihiro, Sonobe-san, Jun-san, Toru-san, Tetsuma, me and this really nice girl who's name I always forget. We goofied around a lot and actually it was not kinda work at all, just a nice evening with friends.

Because of soem trouble in the market the closing party will be held in the 8onpas in Asato.

For the whole art works sites are spread all over the main island, the art center organized a bus tour. Quite cheap, like for tiikashi 500yen and for usual visitors 1500yen. For I will do an individual tour, I didn't participate and thought to help out in Naha, but actually there was nothing else to do.

So Teppei Togase and Kei Kobashigawa invited me to Ogido to give me a tour on the site.


In Kitanakagusuku-son, Ogido is an archeological site where some hundred years ago some scientists found a heap of shells, which were obviously thrown off the nearby cliff by the former inhabitants of that region. Like a waste site. Thousand of years old waste. They excavated it and brought it to some museum and all which is left is a memorial, reminding at this case, but the memorial is at a complete different place.
At the real spot, the cliff, is no sign and you wouldn't recognize it as historical site at all. And for this the recent inhabitants just do like their anchestors before and waste their stuff there. If you dig a little there, you will still find shells, but also coke tins and usual trash.


So the two guys renovated an old shop near this site, display thousand year old and 2 year old waste together and also show the stuff found in this old shop. Which is also kinda antique consume museum.



Teppei Togase in their shop
They gave me a tour to the memorial, which just stands there between two houses, completely out of context and talks about something that can't be seen.

So they copied that memorial and put it near the real site, which is actually quite hard to reach.

When we arrived there, we decided to challenge history and climbed the reverse way the trash uses to do for centuries. Now I'm all dirty but somehow feel the nimbus of having done something incredible. We had some ice and okinawan sweets in the old store and talked til they gave me a lift back. On their table was a small toy instrument made of wood and old iron. Someone just nailed some thin spans of iron in different lenghts on a wooden brick.

So if you flip one end of the iron a clear tune comes out, and through the different lenghts the sound also differs. You can do wonderful lullaby melodies and even some more complex sounds with it. I was fascinated. They told me where I can buy it and this is probably the next thing I will do.

The All Japan Art NPO Forum in Okinawa came to join the wanakio staff. Yesterday was the first day and there were suddenly over 60 people in the Art Center. A lot of people who I wouldn't consider to be somehow linked to art, but that's surely my european social code understanding. Some performances and a lot of beer. Fumiko and Aki Rika cooked and sold very Okinawan food.
Titus' students made stamps for a stamp rallye and from monday a bus goes over the whole island to bring the people to the exhibition sites.

Tanotaiga, Mizukawa-san and Iwai-san returned

but Susanne left. It's a little strange to don't have her around anymore.


So they meet everyday and night in the Art Center and eat, drink or perform.

So they finally arrived: the artists from abroad. And with them came the REAL beginning of my internship. Susanne from Germany, Doris from Hongkong and Wedhar from Indonesia. We all live together at Titus' house, So i had to move into the children's room, finally surrounded by toys again. Back where i belong.
Susanne was the first to arrive, so i took her on a walk through Naha and showed her some interesting sites. We are fine with each other, joking and goofying around. I met Doris and Wedhar first on the gintengai matsuri. Actually i like to do that translation and guiding stuff, it's pretty much some exercise for me too. But i always end up mixing languages, not knowing in what face i have to speak in what language. All day talk between me, Titus and the artists is mostly in english, so we have nearly no problems communicating.

The first day we went on a trip with two other volunteers, who were surprisingly able to speak fluent english and Ishigaki-san, who is also an artist for wanakio, drove the second car for us. So we were 3 artists from abroad, one japanese artists, Titus (artist, art education professor, Maejima Art Center director, wanakio curator, my host) and 3 volunteers, two cars, a tiny, but interesting island.


First we went to Nanjô, which is an early castle of the Ryukyu culture, made by a warlord in the 14th century. The actual ruins give quite an impression on how the logic of that building worked. looked a little like a mace. It was completely covered by huge snails and some impressive gashumaru trees. That kinda tree happens to completely amaze me everytime i see it. It seems unearthly, some kinda UFO from an extraterristic race. while growing, the gashumaru drops slim root strings from it's aces, which, as soon as they reach ground (or stone or whatever) start to grow wider and thicker til it becomes another log. At some status you just can't say, if it's one tree or a whole huge organism of different plants. One tree becomes a complete jungle. It is said fairies would dwell inside those tress. I truly believe it.

gashumaru tree


We continued our route to the holy beach, where the Ryukyu gods are said to have arrived at. Hermit crabs and stick insects. We had traditional okinawan food in an awesome kinda tropical tea house and went to see some more gashumaru and a beautiful garden.
While everyone went to see Seefa utaki, the holiest site for Ryukyu culture i was waiting outside. The most important point on Seefa utaki is a huge rock, which, but whatever unearthly force was split into two pieces, with an incredible clear cut. The opening is a triangle shaped gate, through which one can enter a small narrow space, like a natural chamber. The chamber walls are made of stone and plants, but there is a window like vent, allowing a view onto the pacific ocean. Right in the center of this panorama lies Kudakajima, the island fo the gods. Overwhelming. Through the rock stone drips constantely water, which is considered holy and for that catched in again holy stone hollow-ware. In former times only members of the royal family and the priestesses were allowed to see the holy sites. In all Ryukyu culture, women are said to have a direct connection to the gods and for this they are worshiped as holier than men. Sisters are the guardians for the brothers and the men would ask their wifes for divine council.

After having some home made cake and coffee we hurried to reach a traditional okinawan wood house, one the few that survived the war on okinawa.

At about 6 pm we spend a lot of money to prepare for the barbecue on Titus' veranda. I was doing my first pasta salad in my life (was good) with cucumber, tomatoes, cresses, avocado, mayonaise and garlic. Raw vegetables with salsa and huge and delicious amounts of fish and meat. Happy northern island jungle chicken.
Beer and awamori, talking about different culture's ghosts and Wim Wenders veranda.
Susanne, Doris and Wedhar


Titus the BBQ Master

I think i haven't understood how time works here, yet. Okinawa is in many ways slowlier than Germany and people sometimes are surprised, that I wanna do things right after I decided to do them. So I made the mistake to relaxxxxxxxxxx to much. Now I'm defintely too slow. While I had the impression in september, that they're gonna organize everything very slow and take their time, they suddenly jump huge time gaps to do everything at the same time. And I didn't notice and fell back.

After the artists arrived they took them to several sites all day and I thought this can't be right. If they have too much input they'd have no time to reflect everything and choose an appropiate project/site. It took them 3 days of input overload to completely decide which site and project they'll gonna do. WOW! I'm impressed. And now they already work hard and fast to keep everything in time. So I have to hurry to catch up.

Wedhar, the indonesian artist does a project with puppets in the Gintengai in Goza. He'll do several workshops and I wanna assist him. Doris and Susanne will do projects in the Noren market square.

Doris and Wedhar

They seem to come along pretty well without someone interpreting. Everytime I ask them If they needed something they just don't.

This weekend there's the Sakaemachi ichiba matsuri and the market square grandma's rap again. Meanwhile they run the Single Malt Tasting Bar inside the Art Center. So they'll probably be a lot of people crowding...gonna be fun anyway.

From tomorrow on I will spend the most of my time inside the Art Center to make the people understand that I'm avaible for any kind help and support. Titus said, they wouldn't ask me or call me if they thought they needed help. Even though I send emails and tell the people that it's my job here to support, they seem to ask only if you seem to be bored. So I'll become one with the grandmas again. I was shortly there today and one of the guys from the Mora Cafe greeted me with "hisashiburi" what means something like 'long time no see'. symptomatic. Anyway, being there makes me learn more than my dolce vita style right now, so I'm all fine by doing so.

So from tomorrow on GANBAROU!!!!

So we survived the opening and everything changed.
The opening itself was a lot of fun. For I did the bar, I actually don't know how many people really came, I just saw the faces asking me for drinks. Fumiko made the moderation.

They build something like a frame in which everyone was displayed like the sakaemachi ryukyu puppets Gima Tomotatsu made.

Several dance-, live and other performances, DJs and Tanotaiga's face made of tofu .
Check the pics on
Opening pics

Tanotaiga's pics



Okada-san paid gyoza for all and we sold german beer and cocktails. Around 11 everyone was quite drunk, and when I left around 9 in the morning, everyone already fell asleep in the second floor after getting REALLY wasted. A nice and little orgiastic party. I guess everyone was just sooo exhausted and happy to have made it til the opening. At last, everything was in time.

The next day we made German Potato Club with German beer and German dishes. Three types of potato salads, meat balls and bohemian plum dumplings (wiithout plums but kaki). The first time I really made German dishes.

Tetsuma and Doris

For I didn't sell all the vodka I bought for the opening I will do a russian bar next wednesday with several vodka drinks, soljanka and pelmeni.

Iwai-san, Tanotaiga, Mizukawa-san and several others returned home (to prepare the next exhibition) but will come back here later. So everything is a little bit more quiet.

They did pamphlets and postcards for people visting the exhibitions....and it runs and runs. It really started :)

2 days left, a lot happened and was decided, a lot stays undecided und unsure til the end.
The malayian artists arrived 3 days ago and immediately started to work. He just married one week ago and actually wanted to go on honeymoon, but as kinda emergency artist came to join the wanakio bunch for the philippin artists wasn't able to come.
He speaks english, mandarin, german and malayian and is fun to have around. He concentrates on portraits of dead people. He made a quilt of death were he made patches with the portraits of the people from death notices in newspapers.
So I went to the public library to find portraits of people who died in the okinawan war. We finally found a book in a book store, showing all the children who died on a ferry which was supposed to rescue the pupils but was shot by an american war ship. He goes to a memorial now, which shows pictures of victims of himeyuri.

We had 2 artists talk, one in Gintengai and one in the Art Center. In Gintengai Susanne, Wedhar and Nakanosai-san (all of them exhibit in the Gintengai) talked about their projects. Nakanosai-san's project is already done. A completely white room filled with white light and fog. Looks amazing. See his concept on the wanakio-page. Wedhar also nearly finished his shop. He completely painted the room's wall with pictures of his hero Hanuman (Sun Wukong/Son Goku). Awesome. Did it in so few time. Susanne also managed to hang her picture of the arcade lamps. It fits very well and is just beautiful. So the Gintengai is ready for wanakio2008 to come.

In the second artist talk Iwai-san introduced his project, as well as Wedhar, Uehara-san and Kei Kobashigawa and Teppei Togase. Iwai-san also made a short film yesterday for which he lent my hands. Under a aquarium he placed his camera and inside the aquarium was water with soap. He, his assistent a butcher from the market and me washed inside this water things like tofu, cake, fish and other stuff found inside Sakaemachi market square.
I'd love to go once more to Higashi-son to see the project of Uehara-san.

Anyway, all the artists will be in time for the opening.

I will assist for the moderation and sell German beer. The next day we do German Potato Club at the art center. All four Germans will sell German beer and German dishes. Which I will cook.

I AM EXITED.

Of course it is absolutely necessary for a project like wanakio to have as much publicity as possible. And as far as most of the people are not aware of art or ways to cope with the identity struggle, we even need to do much more to make the people come to see it. So Iwai-san and Emiko-san invented POSTAA HAROO, which doesn't mean anything else than "Let's hang posters!". They even did posters for POSTAA HAROO to gain volunteers to help them. At the end it was Iwai-san and his assistent, Taeko, Mizukawa-san and her friend, Testuma, So-kun and me. And Rikki, the wanakioman, in skin-thight pants and shirt, really looking like a pseudo-superhero. So we crossed all the area around kokusaidoori and sakurazaka til miebashi, promoting with flyers and hanging posters everywhere. We spend around 5 hours walking around, instantly fleeing the rain. It was a lot of fun which we was filmed and soon can be seen on the wanakio-page.

The Maejima Art Center became the living room of Naha's artists. Whenever you pop up here, someone is around to do something for the project. So I just thought to do some translatiion here cause it is easier to directly talk with the people about their concept. And for it is a living room, someone always cooks and you get invited for "homemade" food. And for it is the living room, people also spend their break here. So Iwai-san, his assistent and Rikki decided to perform their first exercises as the brand-new j-pop girly-band. While watching some cheesy j-pop video on youtube, Real-life karaoke and dance performance. I haven't seen something so cute in ages. They did it for about four songs and got better and better. Can't be so hard to look lovely while doing those moves.

5 Days left til the opening and people wheter get ill for stress (everyone seems to have a cold) or even try to overcome their stress by goofying around.

5 days

5 days