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/ Best of Charleston /
From: Charleston City Paper: Best Of Charleston 2006
MARCH 1, 2006
CRITICS' PICKS | Culture, Arts & Entertainment
Best East-Meets-West
Sawaguzo!, Oct. 27-Nov. 5, 2005
Redux Contemporary Art Center
In late Oct. '05, the Sawaguzo! festival -- organized by Kevin Hanley and other smarties at Redux Contemporary Arts Center -- kicked off a week-long celebration of Japanese-themed visual art, music, film, cuisine, and culture. The seven-day festival kicked off Sawaguzo!'s centerpiece, a month-long exhibition of new work by three Japanese-born contemporary artists, Aya Kakeda, Miwa Koizumi, and Fumiha Tanaka, which remained on view through November. The festival featured Japanese, Asian-American, and Asian-inspired musical acts such as DMBQ, Green Milk from the Planet Orange, Yukari Yucca, Shinji Masuko, and Shellshag who mingled and jammed with such local music groups as Genrevolta, Maniquinn, and others. A two-night "Japanese Horror Film Fest" packed with Japan's goriest, strangest films by directors like Takeshi Miike added mightily to the vibe. --T. Ballard Lesemann
Best Lecture Interrupted by Godzilla
Aya Kakeda, Fumiha Tanaka, and Miwa Koizumi, October
2005
Simons Center for the Arts, 54 St. Philip St. Downtown
All college lecture formats need a shake-up now and again. What better to do that than a 100-meter-tall radioactive dinosaur? As part of Redux Contemporary Art Center's Sawaguzo! festival (see above), three giggling Japanese artists gave a talk at CofC's Simons Center for the Arts. To wrap up the event, they ran screaming from the college in the shadow of Godzilla, projected on one wall of the lecture room while images of the Earth loomed on another. Maybe the monster was after Miwa Koizumi's edible art -- tastier than any Toho Studio extra. --Nick Smith
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