Critics in Residence @Kyoto Experiment 2024 / Freda Fiala

The Delegation of the European Union to Japan has held “Critics in Residence @Kyoto Experiment 2024” to explore the possibilities of criticism in culture and the arts during the international performing arts festival Kyoto Experiment 2024 (held 5-27 October). This initiative is organised by the Delegation of the European Union to Japan, operated by the Goethe-Institut Tokyo, and supported by Kyoto Experiment and the Saison Foundation.

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Kyoto Experiment 2024: Kansai’s „fringe institution“ has turned 15
A reflection by Freda Fiala

A snow-white cream cake, topped with a dollop of red sauce and black candles shaped like the number fifteen. Beneath it, a signature – scribbled, illegible and tantalisingly tangled. This image greeted those navigating urban Kyoto in October 2024, appearing again and again to mark fifteen years of Kyoto Experiment (KEX) festival. The motif, inherently kawaii, speaks volumes in its cultural context, where ”cute” transcends sweetness to become a socially potent and sociopolitically relevant take on the aesthetic. Since its founding in 2010 under the direction of Yusuke Hashimoto, KEX has become a vital nexus for theatre, dance and interdisciplinary performance in the Kansai region. Since 2020, under the co-directorship of Yoko Kawasaki, Yuya Tsukahara and Juliet Reiko Knapp, whom many refer to simply as ”the trio”, it has embarked on a new trajectory, increasingly synchronised with intra-Asian efforts to foster networks, collaborations and co-productions. Also in this fifteenth year, and for the first time in the festival’s history, the Delegation of the European Union to Japan and operated by the Goethe-Institut, supported by Kyoto Experiment and The Saison Foundation, initiated a critics-in-residence programme, directed by Ulrike Krautheim and coordinatated by Haruna Hirano. I count myself incredibly fortunate to have been part of this initiative among a group of inspiring writers. Over the course of four immersive weeks, we engaged deeply with the festival’s offerings and gained invaluable insights into its themes and ambitions – this reflection revisits selected productions from KEX that exemplify the festival’s recent focus on building regional networks through the lens of its curation.

On a hot first October weekend, KEX opened with the durational performance Sweet Dreams Sweet, a work by Indonesian artist Melati Suryodarmo, staged on the Rooftop Garden of Kyoto City Hall. First performed at the 2013 Jakarta Biennale, Sweet Dreams Sweet has evolved through several iterations, this time in collaboration with students from Kyoto City University of Arts and others recruited in Kyoto. Under the blazing autumn sun, an audience shaded by parasols watched as the performers dressed in white slowly dabbled in baths of Yves Klein blue paint. Suryodarmo, whose work navigates between her Indonesian roots and the influence of Western performance art known through her years in Germany, juxtaposes their symbolic registers. Here, contrasting with Klein’s deep blue hue, the pristine white costumes evoke the school uniforms worn every Monday in Indonesia. To further introduce local audiences to Suryodarmo’s iconic work, the performance was complemented by a month-long video exhibition at the KYOTO ART CENTER.

The first festival commissioned production I saw, Sticky Hands, Stitched Mountains by Nanako Matsumoto and Anchi Lin (Ciwas Tahos), brought together queer-feminist perspectives and eco-historical storytelling. Staged at THEATRE E9 KYOTO, the collaborative work blended installation and performance, presenting objects that spoke across time and geography: camphor trees native to both Japan and Taiwan, gardener’s gloves suspended over a water basin, and hand-crafted paper referencing colonial documentation practices targeting Taiwan’s Indigenous groups, including Ciwas’s Atayal ancestry. Through the lens of artistic research, the piece explored alternative historiographies and the ways in which personal encounters shape collective memory. Rooted in ecocritical approaches to extractivism, and inspired by both Atayal (Temahahoi) and Japanese (yamamba) folklore, it also marked KEX’s first co-production with the Taipei Performing Arts Center (TPAC).

In the second half of the festival, Stand by Me by Shinichi Anasako and Pijin Neji haunted the Horikawa Oike Gallery. In collaboration with musician Tentenko, this new work blended absurdist satire and coming-of-age reflections, nodding to Stephen King in its exploration of crisis and identity. Set in the aftermath of a natural disaster where a murder occurs on the same day, the story followed undead characters navigating a surreal world. A pivotal moment unfolded when they visited a Noh theatre and tried to find answers in tradition. A casted Noh performer (Haruna Tanaka) explained with restrained courtesy that tradition itself had no universal solutions, prompting uncomfortable laughter from the audience – a shared recognition of human futility cloaked in the art of wit. The final scene extended this interplay of reverence and transgression, with one performer exiting through the back door of the gallery and stepping into the street – a gesture reminiscent of the symbolic bridge of the Noh stage – as if crossing into another dimension would be that simple.

One of my personal highlights was Lynch (a play), choreographed by Yasuko Yokoshi, a Kyoto-based artist known for her probing engagement with tradition. Performed on the final weekend, the piece was based on the dense, lyrical work of author Yoshiro Yoda Hatori. Hatori, who reportedly attended every performance while keeping his identity hidden, therein addresses the sensitive subject of Japan’s imperial past in Southeast Asia. Yokoshi’s choreography formed symbolic landscapes from this historical material assemblage, juxtaposing cultural traditions with postmodern hybridity. Performers used a range of found objects such as amateur’s Noh masks, subverting notions of authenticity and expertise, and choral recitation to question the boundaries of the body and its claims to individuality. More personal elements, such as Yokoshi’s medical records as a Hiroshima-born artist, added layers of reflection on collective responsibility and the ambiguous legacy of humanity’s progress. Rarely does one encounter such a fearless engagement with the past – Yokoshi’s Lynch (a play) production deserves a wider, international audience.

Complementing KEX’s core programme was Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, held in the frame of the Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels Festival in Kyoto and Saitama. This Francophile initiative contrasted KEX’s often enigmatic offerings with more accessible works such as Soapéra, an installation by Mathilde Monnier and Dominique Figarella, and Room with a View, a pseudo-rave by (LA)HORDE x Rone with the Ballet national de Marseille. But there were also more complex engagements, such as Ola Maciejewska’s Bombyx Mori, a reinterpretation of Loïe Fuller’s Serpentine Dance. Unfortunately, the latter avoided what would have been relevant aspects of Fuller’s troubled history in the Japanese context, including her work with performers Sada Yakko and Hanako under the guise of Japonism in Europe.

Contextual programmes such as ”Super Knowledge for the Future [SKF]”, with expert talks, and ”Kansai Studies”, now in its fifth year, furthered artistic research and experimentation. One highlight was Ophelia Jiadai Huang’s Future Dictionary, an interactive exhibition exploring contemporary artistic and curatorial practices with local artists. It introduced terms such as yokai body or sakuhin (work) as conceptual expansions of existing performance terminologies – exploring different ways of grounding the festival in its local context, illustrating the potential of such frameworks to bridge cultural specificity and broader artistic inquiry. At the same time, it highlighted the ongoing need to acknowledge untranslatable concepts and terms as productive in the context of further decentralising a contemporary performance discourse. How do we continue to move together in a world so rich in old traumas and new forms of violence? As part of ”Super Knowledge for the Future”, a talk argued that the future is inherently uncertain and unstable, making predictions futile and decisions nothing more than ”bets”. In Kyoto, amidst all its temples, heritage sites and lingering patterns of historic changes, I’d suggest that the festival’s best bet is to continue to frame its ethos in precisely this way, as an experiment.

Freda Fiala
Freda Fiala is a performance scholar and curator. She is a fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and studied Theatre, Film and Media Studies and Chinese Studies in Vienna, Berlin, Hong Kong and Taipei. Her work focuses on performance cultures in East Asia and intercultural relations. She curated the performance festivals The Non-fungible Body? and HYBRID BODIES at OK in Linz, Austria. She has taught performance theory at the Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Vienna and has published with DISTANZ Verlag, PAJ / MIT Press, Taipei Fine Arts Museum and Taipei Performing Arts Center, among others.