Fabian Stech

The asian atmosphere in Ridley Scott’s movie Bladerunner isn’t something you will find in Philip K. Dick’s Book “Do andoids dream of electric sheeps”. It is a pure invention to place the set there and it expresses better then any other movie of the eighties the american fear of Asia. (Scott’s picture “Black rain” produced at the end of the decade in 1989 prouves the same preoccupations). It is always raining and you see a huge number of umbrellas in the picture. In the National Art Center building in Tokyo l’architecte Kisho Kurokawa replied in 2003 to Scott’s Bladerunner. Kurokawa issued of the metabolism movement of the 60‘s, build outside the wave front of his museum, a little building were spectators can secure their umbrellas, amongst others also Bladerunner umbrellas. Inside, the onlooker can choose between, postimpressionist paintings from the Musée d’Orsay, and a Man ray exhibition, both announced in english or an exhibition on calligraphy only presented in Japanese. The fact that there was no free press entrance made me focus on the umbrellas.