Closing Message

Kyoto Experiment 2022 came to a close on October 23rd. We would like to thank all the artists who participated in the festival, our staff and everyone involved in creating the festival, and of course our audiences who took part and contributed to the festival in numerous different ways.This year, for the first time since we were appointed co-directors, we were able to welcome international artists to Kyoto to present their work live. Since the pandemic began, we have been exploring the possibilities of online and remote collaboration over the past three years, however being able to finally present all our Shows program live made us realize that our audiences have been waiting for this. We have been overwhelmed and touched by all the different feedback we have received about what everyone has experienced during the festival.We are also very grateful to everyone who attended the pre-talks and post-talks and listened to the artists and our team, and to all those who also came to our Super Knowledge for the Future [SKF] program. We really felt that the potential for Kyoto Experiment as a place to open up dialogues through experimental performing arts was stronger than ever. We hope to continue to think together with you about experimental forms of expression and that the festival is also a place where we can continue to think about questions that don’t necessarily have immediate answers.Finally and in closing, we would like to express our solidarity with the artists from Thailand, Myanmar, and Iran who presented work this year and continue to create work and express themselves in different forms despite difficult circumstances.

Yoko Kawasaki,  Yuya Tsukahara and Juliet Reiko Knapp
Co-directors, Kyoto Experiment