Lecture

     Scott Tschutitani is a "multidisciplinary interventionist" artist from San Francisco.  As an Asian American, he described his goals as an artist as trying to subvert racial and cultural means.  He didn't go to an art school, but his first project as a college student, "Seasons Greetings," displays his goal of challenging cultural and social norms as they relate to his Asian heritage.  He spent a large portion of his lecture talking about his best known work at the Geisha Exhibit at a San Francisco Museum.  Coinciding with the release of the movie 'Memoirs of a Geisha," an exhibit at the museum featured Geisha themed pieces, but the marketing campaign featured a non Japanese model and was based on a westerner's view of Geisha culture, not necessarily a factual representation.  He said the exhibit and it's marketing campaign was "perpetuating the fetish" westerners had for Japanese culture.
     In response, he had a mock advertisement put up in a billboard near the museum featuring a Geisha with his face on it with the text "Geisha: Perpetuating the Fetish."  He wanted to bring awareness to the fact that this exhibit was somewhat offensive to actual Asian and Geisha heritage, and greedily played into the fascination Americans have for Japanese culture.  Years later, he did a similar project regarding a Samurai exhibit, this time making mock pamphlets featuring less than respectable facts about real Samurai and placed them in the museum for people to unknowingly read.  On these pamphlets he informed people of war crimes, pedophilia, and slave labor committed by Samurai of Japan.  Again, his goal was to point out the misinformation, or rather lack of accurate information, in the exhibit and it's advertising that leads people to fetishize samurai culture, just like the geisha project.  He calls this type of project 'Intellectual activism," as it makes factual knowledge more accessible and useful.  Finally, he said he believes his art exists to make things happen, not just to make things.  This is clear as he aims to make a change in the way people see and interact with Asian culture.