An ode to the underground - with strawberries
Berry biolence is the new solo show by littlecakes on objkt.one gallery, dropping this Thursday, the 17th, at 6 PM CET. Scroll down for a Q&A with the artist.
so berry hardcore (still from video), littlecakes, 2025.
I know you’re a Japanese woman living in the West. What do you feel you carry from these different cultures, especially in your artistic work?
My experiences are all a big mishmash. I don’t fully fit in anywhere, so I’ve become very comfortable with that in-between feeling — people not completely understanding, not relating to, or sharing my experiences — and just being okay with that. My work always hovers in this middle area, visually and conceptually. I think I’m pulling from both worlds with fluency, so my visual work is also kind of how I talk. Like when I talk to my mother, I mix Japanese and English in the same sentence depending on which phrase expresses what I want to say more accurately.
“I grew up around color and pattern, mixing and matching. ”
Are you the only artist in your family? Did you receive support from your parents and relatives when you were starting out?
Both of my parents are/were working in fashion, and both sides of my family have histories in textiles. So while it wasn’t fine art, I grew up around color and pattern, mixing and matching. They let me do whatever I wanted creatively — let me draw directly on the apartment walls, bought me film cameras, sent me to afterschool art classes, took me to fashion parties and museums. They helped me get my first jobs while I was still in high school — working for a window display designer and interning at an ad agency. They encouraged me to “go see stuff,” whatever that meant at the time. Just go have experiences.
berrydegradable (still from video), littlecakes, 2025.
Would you say your process leans more toward chaos or order? Do you follow a clear timeline, or is it more non-linear?
Neither. I wouldn’t say chaos, because there is some method to the mess I make, but I’m definitely not orderly. I’m very particular about certain things no one will probably ever notice or care about — but they’re important to me. That has to be perfect. But generally, I’m a slow, inefficient, messy worker. I go off on tangents too often because I like the feeling of not knowing how to do something well yet. I enjoy the skill acquisition phase. I get bored when I get closer to mastery. Deadlines definitely help me make timely decisions.
“I just use AI as tools — I don’t feel like I’m having a conversation with it, per se — but I’ve gotten very comfortable using it, even as it keeps evolving so fast.”
Did you start your artistic practice already using AI as a tool? How do you see your relationship with it — then and now? What kind of conversations do you have with it?
I’ve been making various forms of art since I was a child, and my major in art school was Jewelry & Light Metals — although I dabbled in just about everything. Before using any kind of AI, my practice was mostly craft-based. When I started using AI to create still images (late 2021 / early 2022), I just wanted to see what it could do. And now, as the technology evolves, I find myself more interested in what it can’t do well — or what it doesn’t understand — and poking at it there. That often means aiming for nuance, with obscure Japanese references or underground Western ones that maybe aren’t included in the datasets. So I find roundabout ways to coax out the imagery I want. I just use AI as tools — I don’t feel like I’m having a conversation with it, per se — but I’ve gotten very comfortable using it, even as it keeps evolving so fast.
berry beat down (still from video), littlecakes, 2025.
“This series is really an ode to the Tezos friends I’ve made over the last few years and all the inside jokes that are so numerous and random that you just have to be there to understand.”
Let’s talk a bit about berry biolence. Can you share the concept behind the series, and how you built the videos?
This series is really an ode to the Tezos friends I’ve made over the last few years and all the inside jokes that are so numerous and random that you just have to be there to understand — because maybe the original joke is even totally lost at this point. Most of the videos are set in an underground parking garage, which I also used for my piece “vomitus exodus” — a play on NFT Uruguay, which is a magical spoof for all the lovers of Santiago ttiimmees. It’s an underground version of what is usually a very commercialized NFT conference… So underground, it only exists in our minds. But yeah, what could be more underground than a parking garage? It’s just silly.
berry berry biolence (still from video), littlecackes, 2025.
I don’t remember where the strawberries and fruit thing started — maybe it was ileigh’s piece “strawberry skull melt | 2”. We’re always riffing on fruit — but especially strawberries because they’re just so cute, even though I’m actually allergic to them. So that’s kind of funny too. They’re so cute but actually poisonous for me.
There’s so much actual violence in the world… and I’ve been having nightmares of it getting closer and closer to me. So, I’m trying to deal with the anxiety by making art. I have to sugarcoat it so I can laugh — otherwise, I’d just cry all day.
To create this collection, I used a custom Flux model that includes some photos of my past performance/costume work in the dataset, along with older outputs based on those — so there’s some reality in them. The motion was almost entirely done using Luma Ray2, with a few parts created using Pika additions or Pika swaps (video-to-video techniques).
berry love saves, littlecakes, 2025.
The audio feels very techno-violence, but sometimes there’s a mix that hints at Japanese influences — kind of naïve, am I right? Do you create the audio for your pieces too? What are your influences, and what have you been listening to lately?
Yeah, although I wouldn’t say the naïve parts are particularly Japanese in sound. I just feel like raw, unpolished sound (and visuals) are so much more human, real, and beautiful in general.
Yes, I create the audio — I used Udio and Audacity. I have lots of influences, but lately, I’ve been pretty obsessively listening to Otto Benson aka OTTO, Memo Boy, and Pudding Club. His collab with Mietze Conte, “Hobby’s”, is really playful and weird — I love it. Mietze’s solo stuff is great too.
I’ve also had this NTS radio mix on repeat: femcels Spinee x The Femcels, May 25, 2024 — it also features some of my old favorites like Cibo Matto and The Moldy Peaches. I enjoy all the random Vocaloid stuff on Nico Nico Douga (which is like a Japanese YouTube). When I’m in a bad mood, I listen to BABYMETAL because it makes me dance. Hitomi Moriwaki and her duo band Sonotanotanpenz are both geniuses. The new To Live and Shave in LA reissue box set… there’s one piece in “berry biolence” that’s mostly noise, maybe even one and a half pieces, actually.
I once left a comment on one of your works saying something like “sweet’n’creepy,” and you agreed. When you look at your body of work as a whole, do you see yourself in a different aesthetic space in the future?
The scary parts are in there because the world is a fucking scary place right now. And the further it goes in that direction, I can see my work following — but always with humor and some kind of saccharine veneer, because I can’t handle it otherwise. The humor and sweetness are what make it tolerable, even with the real scary undercurrents. If the world stopped being so horrible, I think my work would lighten up. It’s always been what I’ve called “sticky, messy, sweet”, but it hasn’t always been creepy/scary. That’s in there right now because of the state of the world.
berry biolence - by littlecakes
Drop Thursday 17th, 6PM CET on objkt.one