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  • Bukimi-Tan : sobre o conceito de Kawaii na produção artística contemporânea japonesa (um roteiro)
    Publication . Sousa, Ana Matilde, 1984-; Vidal, Carlos, 1964-
    Although both the sensibility to kinderschema (baby schema) and the nurturing instinct are biologically innate, the formulation of the concept of “cute”, and its first cultural manifestations, are relatively new: they date back to the beginning of the 20th century, along with a subtle, yet significant, reformulation of the social role of the child and infancy. With the emergence of the kawaii culture in Japan, in the early 70s, the concept gains a newfound vigor, rising to the status of a national obsession that reveals the intrinsic relation between cuteness and the traumas that shaped the post-war Japanese identity. In Bukimi-tan, I design a personal itinerary whose goal is to compile some aesthetic categories and plastic strategies through which the concept of kawaii becomes an operational model in contemporary artistic production. This “itinerary” – a series of observations, notes, examples, brief considerations, hints, memos, impressions, and small comments – reflects my own preferences and interests at the time the text was written. It aims at outlining affinities and links between the fine arts (focusing mainly on Japanese artists), and Japanse pop (sub)culture(s) – a manga and anime such as Neon Genesis Evangelion or Puella Magika Madoka Magika, subcultures like otaku or rorikon, street fashion like kogyaru and roriita, etc. – based on the connection between cuteness and concepts like “ignoble” (Sianne Ngai), “formless” (Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss), “abject” (Julia Kristeva), “uncanny” (Freud, Lacan), “queerness” (Lee Edelman), “kyara” and “database” (Azuma Hiroki). On the other hand, in applying the poetical principles analyzed throughout the text to the dissertation’s own material and conceptual structure, I attempt at a convergence of the artistic praxis and the theoretical investigation in the same physical support, thus integrating this project in a larger reflection on the methodological specificities of a thesis in the field of Painting
    2012-01-17Master thesis Open access Show more