Karl Castro and the City of Osaka
words by Spike Acosta
photos by Karl Castro
Osaka is the third most populous city in Japan and is also considered as the nation’s kitchen owing to its vast array of delicious gastronomic offerings. Osaka is a city for the senses – with sights, sounds, tastes, and a unique feeling of nostalgia that gives the city its distinct identity and place in Japanese history.
It also served as the backdrop and eventual muse of Karl Castro, the chosen artist-in-residence for the AIR⊿ Vol. 7 residency program. We sat down with Karl to talk about his experience with the city and how much Osaka played a part in shaping his exhibit “Dream After Dream.”
Two Questions
But before we start:
Why Osaka? As it happens, JFM’s partner and one of the progenitors of the program, TRA-TRAVEL, is an Osaka-based art hub that hosts international talks, exhibitions, and as mentioned, artist-in-residency programs. Their mission is to connect locals from different countries, and generate cultural, artistic, and touristic traffic. Qenji Yoshida and Hiroyasu Yukawa of TRA-TRAVEL, as well as Shotaro Ikeda, all native Osakans, served as Karl Castro’s curators and guides in his artistic journey while in Osaka.
Why Karl Castro? According to the evaluators of the program, “Karl Castro’s plan, which won the grand prize in this competition, is an interesting plan that explores the Philippines’ national identity by researching how the Philippine Pavilion at the Japan World Exposition Osaka 1970 strategically portrayed his country. The plan was highly evaluated as a plan that can be expected to generate a lot of sympathy and interest in Osaka, where the second Expo will be held in 2025, at a time when the framework of the nation is shaking.”
Boy meets City
“I was genuinely surprised that I got the residency,” said Karl-san when asked how he prepared for his next few months living in Japan.“Now knowing that I was going to Japan, I did a lot of research already here (in the Philippines.)” “Of course the first thing I did was to look for where and what to eat in Osaka. I saved so many reels and posts (in social media) only to realize that Osaka is such a big city and it would take me a long time to get to these places. So I said screw this list.” This set Karl-san on a path of exploration and discovery. Initially only culinarily, but this approach would become the foundation of how he would navigate through the city and how he would develop with his research on the Expo 70. “It was interesting for me to observe the things that I saw online versus the things that are actually popular on ground. It was very different.”
Karl continues with how his lack of warm weather clothes gave him the opportunity to peruse Osaka’s many vintage stores and second hand shops, and how this lead to surprising discoveries pertaining to the subject of his artistic dissertation. “I love thrift shopping, and I think my shopping skills were put to the test because thrift shopping became a research methodology.” As it turned out, Osaka’s thrift shops not only sold vintage clothes, but still carried a good deal of original merchandise from the Expo 70, and some shops even produce new things carrying the theme of Expo 70. “There was a lot, and it was very surprising.”
As a welcome outcome of his forays in thrift shops and vintage stores, Karl found a unique repository of historical artifacts that played a key part in his research. The presence of the past, though, was not only confined in his retail endeavors. Karl soon found out that history’s distant echoes still reverberated within the city itself.
“I was surprised about how much of the past was still there,” now talking about the city. “In the train station, I realized that some of the pictograms, the toilet signs and elevator signs were from Expo 70. These have not been changed since the 1970s… I was pleasantly surprised to see the stratification of different bits of history still present there. It wasn’t just in the station but I saw it throughout Osaka.”
“In my research I discovered that the world’s fair and expositions played a huge part in how the city developed; certain areas saw new buildings, new train lines were opened. It really bears the imprint of when these things came about. In a way, the city became a living museum for me.”
Children of the City
Karl-san’s time in Osaka was also influenced by the people around him, particularly the native Osakans that formed his core group during his residency. “My curator Shotaro Ikeda had an interesting point of view. He’s someone who grew up with knowledge of the expo, but he didn’t actually see the expo itself… Seeing his perspective made me understand how Osakans viewed the expo and its legacy.” This also rings true with Qenji Yoshida and Hiroyasu Yukawa of TRA-TRAVEL. “They were very supportive. They knew what artists need and what artists would appreciate… My ideas were challenged by their different perspectives. It was a push and pull process that was informed by their point of view that I really appreciate.”
Although Karl-san served as the main proponent of the exhibition and the first to wade through the ocean that was Expo 70, the journey also served as a rediscovery of sorts for his Osakan contemporaries. “Being involved in my project helped them see things in a new way… In the way that they learned about the Expo (through my research), they learned things about themselves. It was a big learning experience for everyone.” Before, the Expo 70 was merely something in the periphery of the Osakan collective consciousness, but Karl’s exhaustive research unearthed troves of material memory that brought things to fore.
“We all went through this journey together, and that really meant a lot to me.”
After Dream After Dream
Karl-san’s months of research and preparation as artist-in-residence culminated in an exhibition which consisted of works in different media including painting, photo-media, sculpture, and installation. The works explored the themes of the Philippine Pavilion during the World Exposition Osaka 1970. The exhibition ran from 2-17 December 2024 at the Chidori-Bunka, in Kitakagaya, Osaka. The exhibition was entitled “Dream After Dream” – a title brought about by his collaboration with curator Shotaro Ikeda. The titled references the exhibition’s impetus as “an allegory for the recurrence of events or ambitions.”
Expo 70 left an indelible mark on Osaka, and Osaka, with all its sights, sounds, tastes, and unique feeling of nostalgia, has also imprinted itself into Karl Castro.
Related Article: Shotaro Ikeda’s exhibition notes on Karl Castro’s Dream After Dream. Read the full article here.
