TTF09 WRAP-UP: Q&A with ARKIV (Artist @ Taipei Toy Festival 2009)
With a YOKA design in Series One, and a 12 inch vinyl toy with adFunture - Indonesian artist ARKIV made his maiden trek to Taiwan for last weekend's Taipei Toy Festival 2009 [tagged on TRE] and survived an earthquake! Okay, he did more than that! He did a live demo-painting as well as customize a number of the GID versions of his ARKIV GO figure (edition set at 137 pcs).CLICK THRU to read his impressions of TTF (FYI: Shown-right is the back of his YOKA design)
TOYSREVIL: How many times have you been to TTF so far? (Including this year)
ARKIV: this year was my very first time of TTF. it was really exciting.
TOYSREVIL: How was the experience - especially with the debut of your toys, and live painting! How was the response?
ARKIV: i dont really know what to expect from TTF, but it was wonderful experience and a really good exposure for my debut figure, ARKIV INSTANT. They seemed to respect and like what i do, and meeting people is always great experience. The response was lovely, there was one Japanese guy who bought 6 pieces of my figure at the same time, so he must be a very serious collector.
TOYSREVIL: Hardcore! Besides "work" - did you enjoy the event? How many days were you there?
ARKIV: Yes the event was terrific, and i stayed there for the whole event. The Air Cond on the first day was off for a couple of hours, so it was sucks haha, but when its on again, it was pretty enjoyable event.
TOYSREVIL: Besides debuting your toys - Did you score any good toys yourself? What do you collect?
ARKIV: People are nice and I scored a lot of free toys actually so it was great haha
TOYSREVIL: Anything interesting that caught your eye? That made you want to own or try to own the toy/figure/s?
ARKIV: nope.
TOYSREVIL: What was your personal impression of the event? A Success or Failure? And Why?
ARKIV: yeah, this is a big success for me or maybe a great step for my career, I think everyone seemed to love my works, even though there were more people buying cute and small toys rather than my toy haha cheaper and small toys are the ones that sold and suit the most at TTF.
TOYSREVIL: Any suggestions you would like to give to the organizers or attendees or exhibitors - to improve for TTF 2010?
ARKIV: The event was great and well planned. Lets hope there will be more exhibitors from the U.S and Europe or Japan. This year most of them came from Taiwan and Hongkong.
TOYSREVIL: What was your most memorable happening/incident/item of TTF 2009? I saw your tweet about the earthquake in Taiwan firs thing in the morning - that's how I knew about it happening!
ARKIV: The earthquake. I was chatting with friends and all of sudden there was really huge earthquake. It was really scary and i try to calm myself down and the earthquake was getting bigger, near to 6.3 richter. I never experieced that before, and what scared me the most was i heard that the building is starting to crack, and i thought i was gonna die here. what a day and what a great experience.
TOYSREVIL: How about 2010? Looking forward to going / exhibiting again?
ARKIV: 2010 is the time for me to make more moves. I hope there will be someone, or more people want to promote ARKIV in the U.S or anywhere else. I'm also hoping i can do an exhibition in the U.S since i want to focus more on painting now, and be a great painter, but of course im still gonna design toys as well.
TOYSREVIL: In closing - please do share with us on TRE -Who is ARKIV?
ARKIV: Well, i used to be a serious collector, but since i design my own toys, i stop buying every toys available and became very picky in buying toys. I'd rather concentrate in designing one. My education background is architecture, so i would say that I'm the architect of Arkiv Instant. Arkiv is my nickname, so yeah Arkiv is myself. check my website out Facebook / www.arkivinstant.com
[Additional event images via adFunture]
