Pantieology


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    First Edition.

    19cm x 13cm. 160 pages, colour illustrations. Illustrated wrappers, illustrated jacket, obi. Text is in Japanese.

    “The term “pantieology” refers to the scholarly art of collecting, sorting, drawing, and analyzing data relating to the underwear used by women (i.e., panties), such as the age, place of residence, and occupation of the owners. Concretely, the process begins with assembling the contributors and requesting them to provide three pairs of panties from among those they own, according to certain preset criteria. The selected items are photographed at the time of data collection and returned. At the same time, on the basis of a questionnaire, the contributors are interviewed. This data, once collected, is drawn, and then, following a set procedure, the data is analyzed, after which the results are made public on the web, via exhibition, and in published materials. The main purpose of this research is to enable one to glimpse the lives of modern people and their individual stories through the combination of a scholarly approach and art (expression), via the lens of the panty. Panties are usually hidden. It is important to note that panties are much more personal than other items used in daily life, even other kinds of underwear such as brassieres. Given this, one might expect resistance from potential contributors when they are approached for panty-related data collection, but, interestingly, in the surveys carried out up until this point, I have found that people willingly (and even amusedly) cooperate, regardless of nationality, occupation, or age. (Contributors so far have included journalists, authors, lawyers, doctors, curators, artists and musicians, and people from France, the USA, Italy, Iran, and Japan, among others.) As a result of this experience, I am confident that, by means of plunging into the extremely private domain of panties, it is possible to leap over many kinds of barriers and touch the humanity of others even at a first meeting. One can say that this is a new form of communicative art utilizing the medium of underwear. I want to hear the stories of new and different people. I want to hear the stories of people from all the different cultures of the world. This feeling was the impetus for the present project.” (artist’s statement)

    . Fine Condition.

    SOLD