A visit to YBA & Beyond — British Art in the '90s from the Tate Collection at the National Art Centre Tokyo recently stopped me in my tracks. It was all je ne sais quoi then, Now it's a period piece. Which, of course, is exactly what "contemporary" art eventually becomes — the clue was always in the name.
That visit became the seed of Episode 6.
The 1990s began with the end of the Cold War — which some historians call World War Three — and ended with 9/11, which triggered the ongoing conflict between the Christian and Islamic worlds, already being called World War Four by some. Which makes the '90s, rather neatly, an inter-war decade. A brief, strange window of relative peace and optimism — and I have the Doomsday Clock to back me up. In 1991, the Clock stood at 17 minutes to midnight, the most hopeful reading in its history. It currently stands at 89 seconds — the closest humanity has ever been to self-inflicted catastrophe. We've come a long way. Backwards.
In Episode 6, I use that window — the euphoric, deluded, magnificent '90s — to examine London and Tokyo: two cities that were, briefly, at the top of the world. Through music, art, and economics, I trace how they got there, and what happened next. Britpop. The bubble. The YBAs. The boom. And the long, quietly dignified slide since.
Decay fascinates me more than progress - Oscar Wilde
Post-Whatever with Ken Nishikawa — BBC, MTV, J-WAVE — weekly cultural commentary on the space between Japan and the West. Music, food, art, politics, history, philosophy. Presented by someone who has lived in both worlds long enough to find them equally baffling.
Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and YouTube.
Search: POST-WHATEVER with Ken Nishikawa
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