SALOON TOKYO


"all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits.​"



P. K. Feyerabend



AGENDA

SALOON TOKYO #1：THEME &QUESTIONS





Challenge The Method: Community/Art/Participants



The method generally is understood as “How to”, an important tool to implement the idea. However it sometimes builds a kind of “standard” in a professional way, which can cease our creativity to renew our practices. When we consider a possibility of art to expand the action and field, we need to doubt, refine and challenge the method. Here we would like to examine the method, as a key to transform the creative idea into the practice, and discuss your way of challenging the method through your experiences.


In the theme of “Challenge The Method”, we would like to focus on the relationship between “Community” (as a group sharing a common thing, purpose or method) “Art” and “Participants”(as individuals). The “Community”, where we belong, subsumes “Art” at various social, political and economical levels. On the other hand, we are the “Participants” of “Art”, who have a different opinion and idea. The difference gives us a chance to reconsider the system of the “Community” from the view of the “Participants” as an audience, creator, researcher, critic and so on.

In recent years, following Europe, the number of art works, events, and festivals committing to the relationship of “Community/Art/Participants” are increased in Japan. This kind of movement appeared repeatedly in art history; 1920s, 70s, and now. However it is not only the repetition of the past. We can say it something appeared from the necessity of our situation now. Here we think that the new methods; way of community management, artist’s creation and distribution, and participation, were questioned now to reflect to the situation.



"Art puts its faith in difference: this is what is known as ‘inspiration’, or as a ‘project’; this is the motive of a new work – the thing that makes it new; only subsequently does the poet, musician or painter seek out means, procedures, techniques – in short, the wherewithal to realize the project by dint of repetition. (…) The enigma of the body – its secret, at once banal and profound – is its ability, beyond ‘subject’ and ‘object’ (and beyond the philosophical distinction between them), to produce differences ‘unconsciously’ out of repetitions – out of gestures (linear) or out of rhythms (cyclical)."


Henri Lefebvre “The Production of the Space”



SALOON TOKYO #1：STRUCTURE





In the event, each participant will describe shortly his/her practice and vision related to the theme, which you would like to share with the others. Afterwards we will start the round table discussion. 1 session/person (description & discussion) will take approx. 25mins.


With the Saloon Tokyo #1, we propose opening with you a dialogue around the following questions:

  • How do you perceive the method in your practices; research, fundraising, production, or even distribution?
  • What does the method bring us? How does it affect your practice?
  • Could the method itself be art? How can we appropriate it for art? How does it match with the artistic processes?
  • How do you share your method with your colleagues, sponsors and audience members? How do they understand it?
  • When do you feel difficulty with the method? How do you overcome it?
  • How do you make your method evolved? What do you want to change by the method? What are you driven by?

With these questions in mind, which include all questioning practices, we would like to mobilize your experiences and professional or personal practices. In this regard, it would seem relevant to sharing each permit by bringing elements of response to the following questions:

  • How each of you has analyzed the context in which he/she operates?
  • How do you determine your perspective regarding challenges percieved?
  • What concrete outcomes: which approaches have you retained? And/or what projects have you carried?


SALOON TOKYO #1：PARTICIPANTS





Ms. Aasako Hirokawa

The chairperson of NPO Theatre Accessibility Network (TA-net). Hirokawa joined in the Japanese Theater of the Deaf in 1994. She appointed as a member of the 29th edition of the Duskin Disability Leadership Program and studied at the Graeae Theatre Company in London about the disability theatre activity between Sep. 2009-Sep.2010. Then she was inspired by the British theatre support system for the disability, and established the theatre support group, TA-net with her colleagues in Japan in Dec. 2012. She also organized her own company HIROKAWA-project in Mar.2013. She received the new face award of Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts in 2015. The TA-net received the YOMIURI Welfare Cultural Award in Dec.2016.

*Theatre Accessibility network (TA-net)
TA-net is a non-for-profit organisation established in 2012 by a group of deaf people, aiming to support, as well as to give a voice to, every deaf and disabled audience member who wishes to enjoy the performing arts, in Japan.


Mr. Hidenaga Otori (Theatre Critic)
Born in 1948. Otori specializes in Russian arts and philosophy. He has held positions as member of the Global Advisory Committee at the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, U.S).; artistic director of the Laokoon International Theatre Festival (Kampnagel, Hamburg) ; vice-president of Kyoto Performing Arts Center, Kyoto University of Arts and Design (Japan). Otori also worked as a chief editor of numerous theater magazines, including Theater Arts and Performing Arts. He recently engages in an experimental theatre lecture series “Theatre Theory of the Apes for Provocation and Barinwashing by Hidenaga Otori” since 2015.

Mr. Kiichi Kaiko (Art Director, Architect)
Born in 1970 in Miyagi prefecture. Kaiko graduated at BA of Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology. He traveled around Asia and Europa to study the folk houses and buildings then opened the S.E.A design and build office. Alongside, he started working for theatre design, illustration and art works at the local community hall in Miyagi. Later on he co-organized the Art YATAI project (2008) and formed the general incorporated association, *TAIWA KOBO (2011). Recently he also engages in filming, recording and editing the archive of his local community. He continues developing and creating the place for the dialogue to connect people and lands.

*Taiwa Kobo (Places and Opportunities for Dialogue and Expression)
Taiwa kobo has a purpose to regain the lost "Places and Opportunities for Dialogue and Expression" to people affected by the disastrous damages from the Great Earthquake in 2011, the 10 members(artists, architects and editors) gathered in Onagawa from all over the country after the earthquake.


Mr. Naoya Fujita (Literary Critic)
Part-time Lecturer at the Nishogakusya University and Wako University. Born in 1983 in Sapporo, Hokkaido. Doctor of Philosophy (2014, Tokyo Institute of Technology). Fujita published “CHIIKI ART - Aesthetics/System/Japan” (Horinouchi Publishing) in 2016. His other books are “Existence in Fiction-Yasutaka Tutsui and ‘new dimension of life’”, the conversation book with Kiyoshi Kasai “The Ruin of Culture” (Kyobunsha), ”floating view: Art in Suburb” (topofil), “Future of 3.11: Japan/SF/Imagination” (Sakuhinsha), and ”Film of +Zero Generation: Real, Fake, Gatchi, Cosplay” (Kawade Shobo Shinsha). He recently published “Theory of Shin Godzilla” in Dec. 2016.


Mr. Shintaro Fujii
Shintaro Fujii is a professor in theatre studies and currently the chief of the Department of Theatre and Film Studies at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. He specialises in contemporary performing arts, with a focus on francophone countries (France, Belgium and Canada) and Japan. He works on dramaturgy of the works of such prominent artists as Romeo Castellucci, Alain Platel, Robert Lepage and Dumb Type, as well as on cultural policies concerning performing arts. He has been the co-editor of Creative Force in the Postdramatic Age, Hakusuisha, 2014 (an anthology of interviews with artists such as Romeo Castellucci, Gisèle Vienne, Rimini Protokoll...); Arts and Their Environment, Ronsosha, 2012 (an anthology of essays on national and international cultural policies); Théâtre/Public, no 198, “Scènes françaises, scènes japonaises : allers-retours”, 2010 (a special issue of a French theatre review on exchange in theatre between Japan and France); and Keywords in Theatre Studies, Pelicansha, 2007. In 2013, he was the initiator and director of a pilot project “Training Programme in Dramaturgy” at Waseda University, the first attempt of the kind in Japan, with the funding from the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs. He also translates plays, mostly from French into Japanese, among which Incendies (Scorched) by Wajdi Mouawad, for which he received in 2015 the prestigious Odashima Yushi Award for Drama Translation.
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Mr. Takao Kawaguchi (Dancer, Performer)
After joining the Japanese multimedia performance collective Dumb Type from 1996 to 2008, Takao Kawaguchi since 2000 has been exploring the fertile field of live performance in the intersection of theater, dance, visual image and fine arts, mainly through solo works and collaborations with artists of different disciplines. From 2008 he started the solo performance series a perfect life, the 6th work of which, “from Okinawa to Tokyo”, was presented at the 5th Yesbisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions (Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, 2013). More recent works include: About Kazuo Ohno - Reliving the Butoh Diva’s Masterpieces (Kazuo Ohno Festival 2013, currently touring around the world ); and TOUCH OF THE OTHER (ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives in Los Angeles IN 2015, and Spiral Hall in Tokyo in 2016).


*alphabetic order



Saloon tokyo



organised by extrapole
in collaboration with Yuka Sugiyama
as part of European network N.O.W.

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