That's Not My Name: Lord, It's The Samurai! Intervention
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The ersatz site also recognizes the dangers of the exhibit's glamorization of violence, noting,
The faux-site also calls out the Asian Art Museum’s ongoing Asian fetish with its hilarious tagline (Where Asian Still Means Oriental) and a fun little word-scramble that mixes up past titles from Asian Art Museum exhibits to form an amalgamation of exotic Asiaphilic fantasies.
The imitation site also makes a cogent connection between the museum’s soft-peddling of Japanese nationalism and the US government’s interest in remilitarizing Japan, which would aid the US in maintaining the upper hand in Asia. The faux-site also notes that it’s not the first time the Asian Art Museum has backed up a superpower's questionable point of view, as seen in Tibet: Treasures from the Roof of the World, the 2005 show that gave credence to the PRC's claim that Tibet is really just the back door of China.
All told, this little fakey website is a fine, funny, and extremely effective critique that packs in a copious number of links and information. It’s a companion piece to hard-copy flyers that have been distributed in public brochure racks in San Francisco's Japantown. Someone upstairs at the Asian Art Museum must have twigged to the switch since, as noted in the site, the counterfeit flyers have been systematically removed and replaced with the Asian Art Museum's own brochures almost as soon as they've been distributed. The fake site's gmail address was also disabled shortly after sending out its first email blast. If the museum’s functionaries are so freaked out that they're furiously trying to eradicate it, then I’d have to say that the intervention is working.
By guest contributor Valerie Soe, originally published at Beyond Asiaphilia.
No myth here, and it hasn’t changed since the times of the samurai: it’s universal and real, how war dehumanizes everyone.
Aestheticizing violence, normalizing war.
The museum may not want you to see it, but there is blood on those swords.
The faux-site also calls out the Asian Art Museum’s ongoing Asian fetish with its hilarious tagline (Where Asian Still Means Oriental) and a fun little word-scramble that mixes up past titles from Asian Art Museum exhibits to form an amalgamation of exotic Asiaphilic fantasies.
The imitation site also makes a cogent connection between the museum’s soft-peddling of Japanese nationalism and the US government’s interest in remilitarizing Japan, which would aid the US in maintaining the upper hand in Asia. The faux-site also notes that it’s not the first time the Asian Art Museum has backed up a superpower's questionable point of view, as seen in Tibet: Treasures from the Roof of the World, the 2005 show that gave credence to the PRC's claim that Tibet is really just the back door of China.
All told, this little fakey website is a fine, funny, and extremely effective critique that packs in a copious number of links and information. It’s a companion piece to hard-copy flyers that have been distributed in public brochure racks in San Francisco's Japantown. Someone upstairs at the Asian Art Museum must have twigged to the switch since, as noted in the site, the counterfeit flyers have been systematically removed and replaced with the Asian Art Museum's own brochures almost as soon as they've been distributed. The fake site's gmail address was also disabled shortly after sending out its first email blast. If the museum’s functionaries are so freaked out that they're furiously trying to eradicate it, then I’d have to say that the intervention is working.
By guest contributor Valerie Soe, originally published at Beyond Asiaphilia.
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re: That's Not My Name: Lord, It's The Samurai! Intervention
Spokesperson for the spoofers was interviewed along with Valerie Soe on KPFA's Hard Knock Radio on Monday 9/14. It's available streaming online for a limited time (2 weeks), here:http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/54583(Show begins at 06:40 from start, after news headlines)
re: That's Not My Name: Lord, It's The Samurai! Intervention
majime & valerie, you're awesome! the radio interview was educational and eloquent, really clarifying the issues about the one-dimensional, orientalist museum exhibit. keep up the great work! i hope more people pick up the issues about racism against asians and hold discussions across the nation. the museum's problems don't exist in a vacuum--corporate media, many other events & exhibits, and uninformed people exoticize, misrepresent, and dehumanize us. but this satirical piece of resistance shows that there is hope for change, that people are willing to listen when exposed to the truth strategically. thank you!