In the second part, we talked to Mike Kubeck and Phil Cashman about the basic philosophy and goals of SupernaturalDeluxe, which has newly formed in Kamogawa.

SupernaturalDeluxe
SuperDeluxe was a one-of-a-kind cultural center that led the underground scene, regrettably closed in 2019 due to demolition of the building. After that, SupernaturalDeluxe opened to the public for the first time in September 2022. This “place for new experiments” had been quietly undergoing preparation in Kamogawa City, Chiba since 2020. SupernaturalDeluxe is a long-term collaboration between Mike Kubeck, Director of SuperDeluxe, and Phil Cashman, Director of Permaculture AWA. Their aim is to revitalize a registered cultural property in the heart of Kamogawa City and its vast grounds as a place offering expression, education, new experiences, research, and contemplation. The restoration is a work in progress and will not be completed for several years. The project will include workshops and other public presentations on the process of achieving sustainable operation and management that places emphasis on community and ecological health. The memorable first concert featured Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O’Rourke.

Establishing SupernaturalDeluxe, an all-encompassing experience

–Was there any other reason aside from the demolition of the building that made you decide to relocate the venue from the Nishi-Azabu?

Mike Kubeck (Mike): Actually, even before news of the demolition, we had been planning for a multi-sited operation, one in Nishi-Azabu and one in some provincial town. When we decided to close SuperDeluxe, we knew that if we were going to reopen, we wanted to do it in a totally different location with a different approach. We wanted to create a place where we could carefully plan and hold events at a slower pace with less economic pressure and stucture. The idea was, “What if artists can stay for a while, eat delicious food, and produce their work, instead of simply stopping by for a day as part of a tour and leaving immediately after doing the show?” With that in mind, we wanted to do something in a rural area that could not be done in Tokyo. So, I started looking at places in Minami-Boso, Fukushima, Yamanashi, Kyushu, and other areas.

–What was the deciding factor in choosing Kamogawa as the location for your venue?

Mike: The fact that my friend Phil was living near Kamogawa was a significant element. I was also offered a position planning events in Kamogawa in 2019, so I decided to move here to get a close look at the area. Those events ended up being canceled due to the pandemic, but I was able to find this place as a result. When I first saw this incredible site, I felt that anything and everything was possible.

I was introduced to the owner and spoke with them a number of times over about two years. It was a very long process, and I almost gave up, but with Phil’s support, we finally got permission to use the space.

The buidling we are using for concerts and other activities was originally a sake brewery. The traditional architecture’s high ceilings and mud walls provide a wonderfully clear acoustic, so we’re using the space with minimal modification. The three historical buildings on premises; sake brewery, rice storage, and thatched roof house, are all registered as tangible cultural property. Artist accommodation is in the traditional thatched roof house.

— Permaculture lies at the base of SupernaturalDeluxe. Can you tell us how you started with a sustainable agricultural lifestyle that takes care of the environment and people?

Phil Cashman (Phil): The birth of my child was the catalyst. Until then, I had been so focused on how I lived that I wasn’t aware of anything else. I had made houses and sculptures out of scrap wood, and I had been involved in social movements toward global environmental justice and anti-war, but my own emotion was at the core of my passion. However, after the birth of my children, I began to put their happiness first. I began to think about how these children could live safely, healthily, and happily through to the age of 80, which has shifted my perspective. I started thinking about what we should do to improve the future and the environment from a long-term perspective rather than being based on a short-sighted plan.

Around that time, I had the opportunity to learn about Bill Mollison, the father of permaculture, and decided to go to Australia to study under him while he was still actively working. Bill’s personality was terrific, and his presence, what he spoke, and how he delivered them all overwhelmed me. I was deeply moved by his philosophy of permaculture, which takes a systematic approach to environmental design based on a scientific understanding of the components of natural ecological systems.

After returning to Japan, I was engaged in permaculture practice in Hayama, but I wanted to expand and develop the community in a larger location, which led me to Kamogawa. The farm is environmentally designed so that everything is circulated. Rainwater and domestic wastewater are decomposed and filtered to be stored in a pond with water-cleaning plants planted around it. Frogs and dragonflies gather there seasonally and eat pests. The waste generated is composted and turned into soil, which is used to grow vegetables such as kale and coriander leaves.

Aiming for a utopia where all people can freely participate and enjoy experimentation

— What do you envision for the future of SupernaturalDeluxe?

Mike: I want to provide artists with unique experiences related to “food,” “environment,” and “nature” and explore that impact on musical expression and the art scene. In improvised music, synergy between the artists brings out new potential. Similarly, new forms of expression may emerge through the interactions arising from encounters between people, and that artists may be inspired through direct experience with permaculture.

Phil: Permaculture is a powerful system, and food is one of the elements. Overall, this place aims to be a kind of utopia. We are not bound by rules or money; we take our health and the environment seriously and eat good food. This place will be where we can respect each other’s individuality, stimulate sensibilities, and be ourselves.

Mike: This year, we plan to offer a permaculture design course as a workshop. We also intend to plan events from a long-term perspective rather than just hosting one-off events. We want to make this a place where people can experience various things throughout the year, including educational content, artistic expression, technology, and spiritual perspectives. When we were in Nishi-Azabu, people of all ages and occupations came to our events. We hope the same will be true in Kamogawa.

Phil: I have become friends with the people at the temple next door, and after a year of being here, the people in the area have slowly come to accept us. I would like to observe and grasp more of the characteristics of this place. In permaculture, there is this idea of “needs,” and it is essential to observe what is needed.
We are at a point of change. We want to create an enjoyable place by looking at what is happening in the world, in the fields of art and science, in Kamogawa, and in our own homes.

Photography Masashi Ura
Interview Akio Kunisawa
Edit Jun Ashizawa(TOKION)
Translation Shinichiro Sato(TOKION)

The post SupernaturalDeluxe’s ideal form of community:Interview with Mike Kubeck and Phil Cashman Part 2 appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

In the first part of this interview, we talked to Mike Kubeck about the background and unique development of SuperDeluxe.

SupernaturalDeluxe
SuperDeluxe was a one-of-a-kind cultural center that led the underground scene, regrettably closed in 2019 due to demolition of the building. After that, SupernaturalDeluxe opened to the public for the first time in September 2022. This “place for new experiments” had been quietly undergoing preparation in Kamogawa City, Chiba since 2020. SupernaturalDeluxe is a long-term collaboration between Mike Kubeck, Director of SuperDeluxe, and Phil Cashman, Director of Permaculture AWA. Their aim is to revitalize a registered cultural property in the heart of Kamogawa City and its vast grounds as a place offering expression, education, new experiences, research, and contemplation. The restoration is a work in progress and will not be completed for several years. The project will include workshops and other public presentations on the process of achieving sustainable operation and management that places emphasis on community and ecological health. The memorable first concert featured Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O’Rourke.

Toward a place for genre-less collaboration and discovery

–I would like to ask you about the beginnings of SuperDeluxe in Nishi-Azabu, a space that would bring together music from Tokyo’s underground scene.

Mike Kubeck (Mike): In the early 1990s, the underground scene was thriving in Tokyo, and there were many exciting events taking place in various places, such as the student hall of Hosei University, along the Chuo Line, and at “La. mama” in Shibuya. I went to live concerts almost every night.

In Los Angeles, where I went to university in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a great Hip Hop scene, club scene, and interesting events like Lollapalooza, but in Tokyo, there was music beyond imagination, even more than in Los Angeles. But at the time, I simply loved music and had no idea of opening my own music venue.

The turning point came in 1998. Together with the creative unit Namaiki, Klein Dytham Architects, and other people, we started a craft beer company called “Tokyo Ale” in a space called “Deluxe.” Deluxe was a shared office in a converted warehouse in Azabu Juban, where our brewer and I organized live events and served beer.

The shared office was also used by the interior design company, “Spinoff,” and DJ QUIETSTORM. Eventually, everyone’s work became too busy to allow for many live events in the shared space, so we decided to move these activities to another location, and opened SuperDeluxe in Nishiazabu in 2002. Initially, it was going to be a brew pub, but the members of Tokyo Ale saw new potential in the space and thought it would be great for improvised music and other performing arts. In the end, we decided to forgo the brewery and concentrate our operating as an event space. This was the beginning of SuperDeluxe.

–From the beginning, SuperDeluxe hosted avant-garde events, but as the years went by, the events became more and more intense as some of the best artists in the scene began to appear. What kind of venue did you want SuperDeluxe to be?

Mike: Our desire from the beginning was to create a place where artists from diverse disciplines, including music, dance, photography, and film, could interact with people from different fields and experiment freely. We all had friends who were artists working in various disciplines, but they didn’t have much contact with each other. We thought it would be interesting if they collaborated more. So we created opportunities for them to connect by inviting artists we thought might have chemistry with each other to perform on the same program so that they could experience each other’s work directly.

We wanted to make a place where both artists and audiences could enjoy themselves and where we could experience new creations and experiments that we could never have imagined. The thought was that if we could provide the infrastructure and environment, we could create unexpected encounters and witness something new. And that’s pretty much what happened!

–How did you go about planning the event to enhance the creativity and interaction of the event?

Mike: It was important to have a supportive attitude toward realizing what each artists wanted to achieve at SuperDeluxe. We were also willing to proceed with projects without knowing everything about each artist. If there was something about them that we intuitively liked, we would just trust them. Then, confirm the quality of their work by experiencing their performances. This way, both the audience and myself can enjoy “something new.” It’s a luxury to be able to experience something for the first time, live.

I think this method of working is quite experimental, and as Director, I worried about many things, but that’s also the nature of experimental and improvised music. If you don’t enjoy this process, you won’t be able to produce something unique.

On the other hand, I can also feel like an audience member and plan an event just because I desperately want to see it.

For example, we had a collaboration between the manga artist Toyo Kataoka and the theater company Tetsuwari Albatrossket. I felt that they somehow shared the same worldview, and I wanted to ask Toyo-san to draw a poster for the “Tetsuwari” performance. They hit it off so well at the meeting, it was decided that Toyo-san would also appear on stage. Even more, Toyo-san joined as member of Tetsuwari for a certain period after that. Things like this make me thankful to work as Director.

–Unique events were held every night in your venue, but what was the most memorable project for you?

Mike: There were many, but the duo of Tony Conrad and Keiji Haino was genuinely amazing. Another memorable project was a performance by the Dutch big band Willem Breuker Kollektief with the Tokyo dance company Strange Kinoko Dance Company, which turned out to be something different from a concert, and more of a fusion of dance, music, and theater.

Carsten Nicolai’s live performance was also mind-blowing. Experiencing the process of his worldview revealing itself through images and sound in close quarters was very special.

I am proud that through SuperDeluxe, I could communicate with many artists and experience the process involved in their expressions.

A community spreading from person to person

–SuperDeluxe was truly invaluable for the fact that it brought together independent artists from not only Japan but from all over the world. How did those miracles happen?

Mike: Actually, it was all through word-of-mouth (laughs). If a performer has a good experience at SuperDeluxe, that person will recommend it to another artist.

For example, musicians Carl Stone, Phill Niblock, and Jim O’Rourke have connected SuperDeluxe with many great artists. Even if we didn’t know the artist, we could feel comfortable proceeding with the project with these introductions. In this way, the community grew bigger and bigger.

We had to close our space in Nishi-Azabu after 17 years, but we were able to meet people from all over the world and build an unparalleled community. I hope we can meet even more artists and continue to present exciting performances in the future.

Photography Masashi Ura
Interview Akio Kunisawa
Edit Jun Ashizawa(TOKION)
Translation Shinichiro Sato(TOKION)

The post SupernaturalDeluxe, A Place for New Experiments: Interview with Mike Kubeck and Phil Cashman -Part 1 appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.