Question
You mentioned that you were irritated by things a couple of times in your talk, and I wondered how much a kind of anger about your surroundings, the place or juxtapositions of things has informed your work?

Mamiko
It’s actually really important for me that the work isn’t just swallowed as this beautiful, commodified thing, and I think that where and how each of these parts I actually consider, there is a bit of a violence to them and I don’t know how much translates in just slides, but I actually think that’s probably the most Japanese part of the work, but I don’t expect any of you guys to understand that.

Question
Is it a combination of beauty and violence and balance?

Mamiko
Well, I think for me, in my sort of chopped up experience of Japan, I’m always really struck by this willingness to tear down something super old or carry out this strange illusion about something right next to a concrete factory. You’re always bombarded with this perfectly packaged cultural historical thing right next to something like Kiddieland, and there is a kind of violence, and I think I can identify with that somehow.

Question
I was really struck by what you had to say about design, particularly coming from where you’re coming from. I’m wondering if you’ve also got similar sorts of irritation questions or interest in fabrication along the same lines?

Mamiko
Yes, I love those things, but at the same time it was really so irritating that Kartell can sell a perfectly moulded plexiglas table for $140, whereas if I were to buy and cut the plexi myself, it would cost me $500 and wouldn’t look half as good. So I wanted to set up a system for myself where I wasn’t necessarily limited by my resources and where I could swallow all those things and still make a work that was mine, regardless of whether it was branded or canonised or MoMA. I think the best thing about being an artist is that you are at liberty to do that; I want to reserve the right, as an artist, to be able to use whatever I want.

Question
I was struck that you mentioned Brancusi twice, and it probably relates to some of the questions about Japaneseness, but I wonder if you could put your finger on what it is about his work that interests you, or perhaps about his career or the way he crafts a fashion or identity for himself. What is it about Brancusi apart from perhaps first looking at the screens, this kind of play of precariousness and balance and piling up? Can you say a bit more about that?

Mamiko
Well, I only mentioned Brancusi because it was relevant to those pieces. I’m also a huge fan of Alex Katz, but I think the artists that I’m interested in, there’s something really efficient about their process, but the efficiency doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to lose something. I’m attracted to this kind of steady, daily practice that painters can have, which, at least from the kind of work I make, is not possible for me, and so most artists I’m attracted to seemingly have that kind of consistency, but within that consistency are able to continually come up with interesting works.

Question
Has anyone compared your work with contemporary visual poetry? That would be my instinctive response.

Mamiko
No, you’d be the first one.

Transcribed by Jackie Howson and edited by Marion Endt.