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COVID-19 drives Takashi Murakami’s company into bankruptcy

Takashi Murakami’s gallery Kaikai Kiki, based in Tokyo, has taken a blow as a result of the financial ramifications of COVID-19 (Heison Ho)
Takashi Murakami’s gallery Kaikai Kiki, based in Tokyo, has taken a blow as a result of the financial ramifications of COVID-19 (Heison Ho)
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02 Jul 2020 09:07:19 GMT9
02 Jul 2020 09:07:19 GMT9

Arab News Japan

Takashi Murakami’s Tokyo-based gallery Kaikai Kiki has taken a blow due to the financial ramifications of the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The Japanese contemporary artist’s company is facing bankruptcy, halting his artistic free flow.

For nine years, Murakami dedicated his time to the completion of a project titled ‘Jellyfish Eyes Part 2: Mahashankh.’ He described the termination of the sci-fi feature film as “heartbreaking.”

The artist’s interest in sci-fi stems back to his years in high school justifying how this project inextricably bound to his “childish dreams,” as he says.

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This spring, I streamed a series of cooking show of a sort on Instagram Live. I’m sure those who watched them were utterly confused, but I was trying to buoy my own thoroughly sunken feelings through these streamings. With the sudden swoop of COVID-19 pandemic, my company faced bankruptcy and I had to give up on a number of projects, the most symbolic of which being the production of my sci-fi feature film, Jellyfish Eyes Part 2: Mahashankh. For nine long years, I had persevered! It was a film that was to realize my childish dreams! The enormous budget I poured into this project, as well as my tenacious persistence, put a constant and tremendous stress on my company’s operation for the past nine years. But at the same time, I was able to endure various hardships because I had this project. Faced with the current predicament, however, I was persuaded by both my business consultant and tax attorney that I must, simply must try and drastically reduce our business tax by filing the film’s production cost as tax-exempt expenditure. To that end, I am going to produce and release a series of videos to publicly announce the discontinuation of the film’s production. (To be clear, this is an entirely legitimate procedure—I’m not trying to evade tax!) These videos will be released against the backdrop of our struggle to avoid an economic catastrophe, but perhaps it may have a cathartic effect on the viewers/my followers to see the story of stupid Murakami’s failure. Long story short, I’m a silly human being for whom the moment of bliss is when I am thinking my truly childish sci-fi thoughts. I don’t know how many episodes the series will end up being, but a series it will be, so please come along with me on this journey for a little while.

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Aside from its symbolic weight, Murakami invested a hefty budget dedicated to the completion of the feature film augmenting to the gravity of this artistic loss.

While ‘Jellyfish Eyes Part 2: Mahashankh’ intended to represent the hardships of life, the termination of the project proved a source of inspiration for his upcoming one. Murakami now aims to rework the film and present it into a series of episodes, extending the lifeline of Jellyfish Eyes.

Despite his financial lows, Murakami’s career is still on a high as he continues work as the franchise director for Kanye West and Kid Cudi’s animated show Kids See Ghosts. It has also intensified his understanding of art, where he  publicly questioned, on Instagram, what it means to be an artist. He has also showcased progress shots of a large- scale sculpture intended for the WallaWalla Foundry.

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👉 Thanks to all this, I have been managing to keep up my activity as a popular artist, but I have never been complacent about my situation. Instead, I have constantly been thinking how I might become the mirror that reflects this era and have been doing everything in my power to simultaneously execute every and all such ideas. I mentioned how my company has faced the possibility of bankruptcy in the video about abandoning my film project, yet we have in fact been facing this very risk at the end of every single month—it’s a routine, and a terrifying one at that. I have always been pouring whatever funds I have into every imaginable project. Needless to say, in the past few months of the pandemic, not just me but numerous company owners around the world must have been going through tough times, scrambling to stay afloat. So to come back to the question of what an artist is, if I were to posit that they must be a living proof of an era, then vividly depicting my suffering and struggles in this present chaos is also a job I must execute. And so I forge ahead with my endeavors while literally making a fool of myself for all to see. These images show the production of my large-scale sculpture in progress. I have been funding this production entirely on my own. The work is being made at #WallaWallaFoundry in Washington State in the U.S., and it had been scheduled to be completed in May. Now, its completion has be postponed until this fall. When plans get upended and the future becomes unpredictable, what choices should an artist make? How shall they choose to live? In the future, after my death, it will become clear whether all this commotion was for something worthwhile, or whether I was merely an artist full of foolishness. I am 58 now, so I wouldn't live another 40 years at the most; you’ll be able to examine the result relatively soon. So in the meantime, please continue speculating as you wish and wait for the verdict. translation @tabi_the_fat

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