It seems that there have been comments on the internet that my installation at the “A Nightmare Is A Dream Come True: Anime Expressionist Painting” exhibition is suspiciously similar to an installation that Chaos*Lounge created for their Hatsume*Lounge show. I would like to correct the record on this below.

As a starting point, have a look at this photo:

This was my thesis work in art school, unveiled at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in Ueno in 1995, at the age of 26. That’s 15 years in advance of “Hatsume*Lounge”. I myself was influenced by the Italian movement Arte Povera. I will not say here that Chaos Lounge set out to imitate my installation but to say that I am stealing from theirs shows a complete lack of knowledge of art history.

Here is the relevant installation from “Hatsume*Lounge,” executed in 2010.

※This image is taken from the CHAOS*LOUNGE homepage.
Link：http://chaosxlounge.com/
(It is one of several images which appears when reloading the page).

Next, I’d like you to look at these photos:

These are from my installation at GEISAI Museum#2, May 11, 2008.

And these:

This is my installation from the “World of Nobody Dies” exhibition in 2008. As part of the program for this show, I held a live talk with Makoto Aida and this talk was in fact attended Uso Fujishiro and Kazuki Umezawa from Chaos Lounge.
You can read a blog entry about this by Umezawa here.

And then, we come to this:

This is the set for the live play “Tomonori Arakawa in 1983,” held as part of the “January 2011 Tomonori Arakawa presented by Chaos*Lounge show at Tokyo Wondersite in Shibuya.
Link：PUBLIC-IMAGE Website

Lastly, here is my installation for “A Nightmare is a Dream Come True”.

The members of Chaos*Lounge have never said publicly that they copied my work, imitated it, or event respect it. Thus, if the reality is that it has become an accepted fact among young people on the internet that I copied theirs, I thought it best to make things clear.

It is indisputable that Chaos*Lounge were influenced by more work and yet, they have never made any kind of statement to this fact. I have always found this to be dishonest and a matter of some discomfort.

From the beginning, Chaos*Lounge have specialized in creating word of mouth through controversy. This can be seen in their activities on pixiv,
the copied money they sold, the kimekona incident, the Touhou Project, the TBS radio show, their destruction of books, their dirtying of printouts of people’s drawings, and all the other stories that brought them attention. Again, I have always been skeptical about their methods.

However, the world is full of artists who employ controversy, from chim↑pom to Voina or the BT Dommune, and I am not in any particular place to offer comment. Thus, it has been my stance that they be allowed to do as they please and I have not criticized their right to do so. Despite this, there are some things that I cannot abide by.

The idea that my installation is a copy of theirs is one of these things and I wanted to inform everyone of the historical inaccuracy of this notion here.

May 31, 2012
Mr.