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AREA 58:
PURIKURA INFESTATION
Installation Van Sowerwine + Alice Lang
Sound Ai Yamamoto
Installation assistance Wah Cheung
Workshop participants Sunjah Panimo + Carmen Mak
Performers Andrea
Pleitez and Ruth Hewson
Purikura Infestation is a site specific collaborative installation exhibited
at Area 58, a sticker booth stall in Brisbane’s CBD. Presented as
a stop-motion animation, installation, and costumed spaces, Purikura Infestation
transforms the sticker booth into a foreboding portal that invites viewers
and late night shoppers into a netherworld of gory parasitic invasion.
On entering Area 58, the viewer is confronted by a bulbous vinyl pod
in lurid saccharine colours. It protrudes like tumourous formation at
the base of the ‘real’ purikura booth structure. The pod’s
malignant forms suggest an organic entity, but the artificiality of the
material point to a strange mutant creation, oozing and leaching into
the surrounding space. It is expanding and alive, appealing and repulsive,
beautiful and horrendous. Within the pod’s interior, a toy character
stands engulfed by the tumourous material.
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The character is a hybrid creature. An amalgamation of a human in a bear
suit, taxidermied animal, and the fictional characters that often decorate
the exterior and interior of sticker booths, mobile phones, and personal
diaries. Alluding to popular characters such as Hello Kitty and Doraemon,
it is made from mix-matched furs, with a flesh coloured face and small
black eyes. The character’s arms end in flesh coloured stumps, hinting
at both past violence and a synthesised artificiality.
Frozen in animated suspension, the material toy characters stares directly
into a small monitor screen, mesmerised by its own mediated alter-ego
mirror image. On the screen however, the animated toy character lives
and breathes, dancing to sickly sweet melodies. As the animation continues,
background colours flash with increasing hallucinogenic intensity, as
stop motion bugs enter the frame and start to crawl all over the character.
The character fights off the bugs, but they keep coming, gnawing at its
eyes, ears and stumps. The character finally shakes them off, but the
skin of one stump has been devoured by the alien pests.
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For Purikura Infestation, the slasher/horror meets cute customisation
of the sticker booth becomes a doorway into a claustrophobic and viral
alternate world. Elephant-man inspired costumes are provided in the booth
allowing participants to document their encapsulated experiences, and
view themselves as mutant figures trapped within the borders of a pre-manufactured
fantasy world of artificial landscapes, glittering stars, and animated
palm trees.
Through its site-specific installation and interactive performance components,
Purikura Infestation hints to the fleeting and transient nature of pop
cultural trends and tastes, and the obsessions at the heart of character
consumption. As participants strike ‘super kawaii’ poses under
fluorescent lights, and girly digital voices instruct the participants
to say ‘cheese’, the stuffed toy continues to peer into the
reflection of its own fantastical destruction.
Additional Exhibition Documentation, Pictures & Video: 24
November 2006
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EXHIBITION OPENED
17th
November 6-8 pm 2006
Area 58
Elizabeth
Arcade, Brisbane CBD |
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