I’ve traveled to Japan many times over the decades and seen some really strange shit.
Once I was taken to a restaurant in the small town of Seki (a short drive from Gifu) where the chef filleted a live fish to expose the organs, peeling back the skin, flesh, and whatever. During this process the fish was laying on the cutting board, gasping for air. At one point the fish died, so the chef turned his wide knife sideways and gave the fish a nice whack with the side of the blade. Damn if it didn’t resuscitate the poor bastard, who once again began gasping for air. And then he was brought to the table of customers next to us, who ate him with chopsticks while he was barely still alive.
The Japanese artist Mio Izawa must be a fan of David Cronenberg’s film Existenz, where the director’s fascination with flesh and inorganic objects combines in what can only be called an “unhealthy way.” Izawa’s website is a gallery of aberrant body parts which live in one way or another when plugged into a wall socket or computer.
He has created a giant beating heart, called “Heart (L)” that functions as an odd sort of pillow.
More notorious is the hideous tumor which plugs into your computer and expands as your CPU “gets busy.”
But his masterwork is a weird iPhone charger that makes sucking noises as it simultaneously appears to suckle and absorb the phone.
If you’ve got a load of dough sitting around and you don’t have anything better to do with it, the flesh-sucking phone eater, which is a one-of-a-kind piece of contemporary art, can be yours for only $6,052.96 on the artist’s Etsy page.
The artist describes the iPhone charger on his website:
The iPhone cable is shaped as an umbilical cord, which keeps moving while it’s charging. Now people carry their iPhones all the time in their lives. I designed the look of this cable as an umbilical cord, with which a mother feeds energy to her baby. It moves as if it’s trying to absorb the iPhone, to express the irony of people’s dependence on the iPhone.
He also sells a beating heart—human size—for $10,000 … but that shouldn’t really be a surprise, should it?
Anyone for a fish dinner?
