One of the first things you’ll see at the Sumida Mukojima Expo is a 150-centimeter photo of a penis.
Carved from the earth under the foundations of the ramshackle Kyojima Eki building, the central hub of the festival, this is the work of the Kusamura Mad Rat art collective. The dark and musty room is filled with the sounds of high-pitched voices squealing, “Sugoi! Sugoi!” (Wow!), as a photograph of an actual phallus is projected onto the mound.
The installation, “Daddy Never Understood,” has an excavated tomb-like quality. The work’s title and the pointedly girly-sounding voices make me think it was made by a female artist exploring a traumatic experience of sexual abuse. I’m way off. The four lads who make up Kusamura Mad Rat say their main objective is to have a laugh.