Jun Togawa’s robotic arm

"…Togawa’s lyrics repeatedly treat her own body as ‘insect-like’ (in songs such as Pupae Woman and Swarms of Insects), or as distorted into robotic, quasi-human forms. This ties into a simultaneous trend of Japanese popular culture to focus on the cybernetic augmentation of the body, a trend which (as far as I know) has not yet been written about. In Togawa’s case, I get the sense that these descriptions of the destruction and reconfiguration of her body relate to puberty, which she re-imagines as a hideous process of physical distortion. In one song, she describes love as a ‘mutation’ of her body - an acknowledgment of the inherent violence of the power relations of romantic love. In these powerful metaphors, she also highlights and subverts the objectification and territorialisation of the female body that the aidoru archetype is built upon. Whilst other aidoru produced glossy photo albums of themselves dressed as various feminine archetypes (schoolgirl, geisha, etc.), Togawa released a similar collection of photos with the English title JUN TOGAWA AS ONLY A LUMP OF MEAT. This imagery is continued in her videos and stage performances, where she often appeared wearing dragon-fly wings or ‘robotic’ attachments to her limbs…”

Good old fashioned Christmas spirit

Press conference for Star Trek The Motion Picture.