This work, inspired by how the Osaka Byobu screen depicted the cityscape of Osaka, takes the current streets and everyday life around Ueno—especially near Tokyo University of the Arts and Ueno Park—as its subject, and presents them in the form of an accordion-folded booklet, similar to a leaflet.
Whereas commercial leaflets and flyers typically convey product or service information through dense text, this piece contains no such new information. Instead, it captures scenes of daily life as it unfolds in Ueno.
By using a familiar, freely available printed medium like a leaflet—something often found in flyer racks and easy to take home—this work reflects an awareness of reproducibility and everyday accessibility by printing familiar urban landscapes in a compact form.
Whereas commercial leaflets and flyers typically convey product or service information through dense text, this piece contains no such new information. Instead, it captures scenes of daily life as it unfolds in Ueno.
By using a familiar, freely available printed medium like a leaflet—something often found in flyer racks and easy to take home—this work reflects an awareness of reproducibility and everyday accessibility by printing familiar urban landscapes in a compact form.
Makiko Kawakami (1999) is a printmaking major at Tokyo University of the Arts. Her artistic research focuses on bookbinding, printing, and printmaking, and from the exchange between the two, she seeks to lower the threshold of the book and from there explore the possibilities of artist books and zines. Here we present her approach to artistic research and her focus on highly mediocre printed materials.
