a wayward profile of the artist as a spaghetti enthusiast...
Andrez Bergen is an expatriate Australian journalist, musician, photographer, DJ,
artist, some-time filmmaker, writer, wayward graphic designer, and ad hoc beer connoisseur who's been entrenched
in Tokyo, Japan, over these past five years.
In most respects
(aural and visual), Andrez likes to steal glances into a metaphysical rear-vision mirror towards the “found art”
chapter of the Dadaists’ handbook; he then flicks his gaze in the direction of the cut-up techniques of Brion Gysin
and Tristan Tzara, with a sardonic eye on the deconstructive tendencies of post-modernism… and then throws it all into
the air, like so much humbug confetti.
Armed only with his trusted keitai (mobile phone) in-built digital camera,
he's taken a wad of alientated-yet-indoctrinated, expat-cum-insider's-eye-view snapshots of his adoptive megatropolis [Tokyo],
from the city's people to its wayward architecture; its in-your-face neon advertising schlock to its inherent
cultural eccentricities; its crazy TV programs right through to its historical (if somewhat inadvertent) elegance.
Andrez, under the alias of Industrial Form, previously dabbled with graf,
then moved on to installation art spaces and visuals for the many events put on by pioneering Melbourne experimental
electronic music label IF? Records (which he co-helms) from 1995 to 2001, mostly at the
now-defunct Punters Club in Fitzroy, and also at the Global Village warehouse art space
in Footscray - for a series of massive rave parties called Omniglobe - in 1995/96.
He also created a majority of the IF? gig and event flyers and advertising art, along with collaborating
with friends like Damian Stephens, Shaun Elstob, Yoko Umehara and
Mateusz Sikora on much of the CD and record cover art.
Andrez previously worked in 1989 as an assistant photographer to enigmatic Polish celluloidster Tomek Sikora,
with whom he collaborated on the award-winning tome Behind The Light.
Andrez also scribes for the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper in Japan, American mags Anime
Insider and Geek Monthly (ex-Cinefantastique), British
movie tome Impact, de-VICE, 3D World and Vice
in Australia, and various other publications, on movies, music, travel, art and anime. He previously wrote for The
Age newspaper in Australia and Mixmag and Wax in the UK.
Having moved to Tokyo in 2001, Andrez has continued to work with more artistic installation asides for
IF? Records events in this city, principally at Bullets in Nishiazabu, as well as DJing at clubs like
Womb and making music in his alter ego as Little Nobody - and throughout
this time he's been photographing everything around him.
In 2005 Andrez married New York based artist Yoko Umehara, who has moved back to
Tokyo, and in November last year the couple had the world's cutest daughter, called Cocoa.
ABOVE little nobody record cover by andrez & yoko
BELOW andrez dans shibuya elevator (self-portrait)
