Mechademia

Vienna's Museum of Applied and Contemporary Arts (Museum für Angewandte Kunst, or MAK) is known for its eclectic collection and innovative shows. (Some of its exhibits are housed in a cavernous World War II-era flak gun tower that the museum annexed in the mid-1990s.) In fall 2005, MAK sponsored the first show by a major Viennese museum dedicated to manga. We spoke with Johannes Wieninger, the museum's curator of Far Eastern and Islamic art and the creator of the show.

CHRISTOPHER BOLTON: The exhibit has the eye- or ear-catching title UAAAAA! MANGA, and a provocative subtitle: On the Aesthetics of a Trash Culture. Can you tell us how you conceive trash culture?

JOHANNES WIENINGER: Indeed, people were confused by the subtitle, and manga fan clubs [End Page 298] protested it. But I understand Trashkultur in two senses:

First, trash as it is: you use something and discard it afterward. Many things in our everyday life are made for temporary use only and become useless after a short time. But they have a certain aesthetic in their design and content. Weekly manga are trashed after reading. Nobody keeps them. Even the big editors don't keep them. Not everything in our life is made for eternity!

Second, Quentin Tarantino impresses me when he says his work is Trashkultur. That means that the producer, creator, or artist may know that his or her work is only of temporary use. They don't create for eternity. And they know that we cannot consume so-called high culture all day long.

This level of everyday culture may have more influence on our lives, thinking, and behavior than any opera production or other art praised by critics. In that sense, we-the museums-must deal with this Trashkultur and not ignore it, to understand what is going on. And very often, after a certain period, subculture/trashculture changes into high culture, as we all know.

CB: MAK's collection ranges from applied arts and industrial design to contemporary installation art, with a large teaching collection of Asian art as well. Where does manga fit into this artistic universe?

JW: Although MAK has old and important collections from all the cultures of the world, we see our museum also as a kind of laboratory in which we can try new things. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail. The manga exhibition was a low-budget show, but it worked. We are experimenting also in other fields like fashion, advertising, poster design, etc.

CB: Could you tell us a little bit about the process of conceiving and organizing the exhibit?

JW: During the past few years, several exhibitions on manga were offered to our museum, but they all tried to show a historic evolution, with samples of work by well-known manga artists. But I believe if you are creating a show on something uncommon, you must use an uncommon language.

For a long time I was not sure how to manage this problem, but during a flight from Tokyo to Vienna I had the idea to work with blowups of the manga and to use only original comic books-not to translate, because the exhibition itself is a translation. Organizing it was not so difficult. After getting in contact with Kodansha and the manga artists, I knew that less would be more and decided to have only two titles featured in the show.

I chose Derby Jockey (1999-2005), a sports manga by Ishiki Tokihiko, and Mars (1996- 2000), a shojo manga by Sōryō Fuyumi. Sōryō is a star. She is well known in Europe, and Mars has been translated into many Western languages. Ishiki is an up-and-coming figure on the Japanese manga scene.

I chose these works because they are contemporary, and both show very dynamic design. Sōryō's style has had a big influence on Japanese graphic design; Ishiki has a fast, individual, and very realistic pencil style.

CB: The exhibition is in the "works on paper" room of the museum, a wonderful space that is the former reading room of the...