POLYESTER YAROH: Ujino Muneteru   
text: Roger Mcdonald

In the hands of a batter, the baseball bat assumes the status of a tool for winning games, for homeruns. Unlike the game of cricket in England, the baseball bat is held high and aloft, the maximum position for exerting maximum energy with a swing action. It has thus also been adopted as a weapon by gangsters and street gangs throughout the twentieth century in America.
Like the bat, the guitar also symbolises other forms of violence. One of the 'fathers' of electric guitars in America is Fender Company. Its guitars were played by guitar heroes such as Jimi Hendirx and bands such as The Who (who were British) in the 1960s also began to destroy their guitars and instruments on stage as part of their performance, often swinging them around their heads like baseball bats.

Both of these tools are iconic American inventions, symbols of the dominance of American popular culture in the modern age. They have entered the popular Japanese culture too, almost to the point where they have lost their American-ness. Baseball in particular enjoys a popularity in Japan only second to America, and the Major League is often referred to my commentators and players with envy as the pinnacle of their destinies.

Love Arm 4 is a simple wooden baseball bat that has been adapted to become a cross-over guitar feedback tool. Over a wooden bat, Ujino Muneteru has attached a black metal frame which contains pick-ups and electrics. When plugged in and swung in different directions, the bat becomes a feedback machine. Ujino performs this Love Arm with Gorgerous. On stage, surrounded by a cacophany of noise, Ujino swings the bat around in a simultaneous homage to the bat and the guitar and its various images of violence. Ujino makes noise without using a guitar; and he thus distances himself from a history of American rock which centres around the guitar. But, paradoxically as he says, the bat is made from the same wood as the Fender and shares roughly its same weight and size. It is thus in some senses, a guitar Ujino 'plays', but one which has been totally transformed. The two most influential American icons which have entered Japanese modern culture are simultaneously merged and destroyed. He frees himself, if only for a moment, from those two great symbols of American culture in which he lives. The transformed bat/guitar truly becomes a 'Love Arm', an expression of his undeniable respect for these icons, and a weapon (arm) against them, using feedback and noise to make the two indistinguishable. Indeed, Ujino says of his works that they represent his philosophy towards the Unites States.

Ujino Muneteru has been making 'instruments' using many different parts and elements. The 'Love Arm' series consists of five models, but within each model there are several sub series and special editions. Five is apparently the maximum number of objects which the human eye can visibly register at once. The 'machines' operate electrically as instruments and as lights, made up of different parts taken from a variety of other objects. Within a post-war Japanese history perhaps the 'Love Arm' could be related to Tanaka Atsuko's 1956 work, 'Light Dress' (Denki Fuku) which consisted of many coloured light bulbs hanging from the artist like a dress. Both works operate as part of a performance, using electricity as their main medium. Whilst Tanaka's work presented a critique of fashion as a constrictive form, as well as perhaps parodying the idea of the artist as a genius (who illuminates the world), it can be considered as one important forerunner to many recent artists who make electrical objects as part of a performative practice.

Love Arm 2 is a very different looking machine. Resembling something akin to a motrobike without wheels, it consists of a ridiculously large mechanical contraption embedded with various lights, fake fur, disco spots and two motorcycle handlebars. Ujino talks about this in terms of older machines which were more human sized and which could be repaired, compared to micro-chip technologies which are almost invisible and once broken must be replaced totally. The handlebars act as the control panel for the instrument, with buttons which are pressed to make electronic noises and operate the different coloured lights. The machine is strapped tightly to Ujino's front with a harness system so that, when played, he resembles a biker. The harness system and size of the machine also resembles some high school baseball 'O-en-Dan', with their unweildy school flag strapped to their front. In this piece too, Ujino references iconic elements of American culture which have been imported into Japan. Most visibly is the Harley Davidson motorbike, symbol of the American free spirit epitomised by Dennis Hopper's film 'Easy Rider'. Here we encounter an icon from the 1960s, and the rough lifestyle of the pioneer cowboy. Ujino merges this symbol with perhaps its opposite, the disco and house musics of black American culture. One represents a predominantly white, patriotic America, the other a more culturally diverse and immigrant one. As well as referencing disco, there is also one other important Japanese culture the machine references; this is the tradition by truckers of decorating their trucks with many different lights and shiny metalic parts. Ujino refers to the series of movies produced by Toei during the 1970s and 80s called 'Truck Yaroh', which centred around the lives of truck drivers and their road journeys. For Ujino they represent what he calls an 'uyoku po sa' or a kind of fiercely patriotic sentiment that is not necessarily ideologically right wing. In Japan, where individualistic public expression has always been limited, the truckers and their lights represent an attitude which says that this reality in Japan is the best and that they have found an original way of expressing this. Moreover, for Ujino the fact that their lights are not digital LED's is significant, a sign of an earlier time of analogue brightness and consumption, hot and physical rather than the cool distanced glow of LED lights.

The machine obviously also has sexual connotations, particularly resembling some large African drums which are played while straddled. His performances particularly play freely with different ideas of masculinity. The various icons he uses tend to be strongly related to masculine activities, but Ujino's performance manages to show these as gestures and as facades. But, like the baseball bat, the machines tend also to operate on a more metaphorical level. During a performance, the machine visibly weighs Ujino down, forcing him to adjust his body and constantly shift positions. Perhaps this is like American culture in Japan, a force that is desirable and enticing (flashing and masculine) but which also somehow cannot fit into the Japanese situation fully or correctly. Ujino shows us this as he tries to 'play' his instruments. There is thus also a psychological aspect to Ujino's performances which is transmitted via the 'machines', perhaps in a similar way to how Franz West's Adaptives break down any sense of cohesion of self and display a fragmented and absurd self. The Love Arms are complex tools which probe specific Japanese issues about identity, sexuality and cultural domination, but always within the wider arena of pleasure and the visual. Therefore they tend not to lend themselves too well for static exhibitions or cool, distanced viewing, but rather are most powerful when played by Ujino within the situation of a live performance. The Love Arms make you stare in awe and lose yourself in a wash of noise and lights, like at festivals or raves, where one's identity is seemingly blurred and forgotten in a common experience.

I have the opportunity to play with Gorgerous, and be a part of Ujino's performance. I play electric drums and pedal a 'mama-chari' or very ordinary bicycle to which Ujino has added noise pick-up parts, and when peddalled it sounds like a huge powerful motorbike. At the start of the performance we all make as much noise as possible. To make so much noise feels like a kind of surrender, but at the same time it is also an act of affirmation and enthusiasm.