The Next Kyoto Experiment Program Directors

Kyoto Experiment 2019 marks the last edition to be programmed by Yusuke Hashimoto, who has served as program director since 2010. From the 2020 festival, a collective of three directors will share the role of program director.
 
Yuya Tsukahara: Artist / member of contact Gonzo
Yoko Kawasaki: Producer / currently Kyoto Experiment Chief Production Manager
Juliet Reiko Knapp: PR Manager / currently Kyoto Experiment Public Relations Team
 
Kyoto International Performing Arts Festival Executive Committee is pleased to announce that the next program director of Kyoto Experiment will be a collective of three directors. Yuya Tsukahara, Yoko Kawasaki, and Juliet Reiko Knapp will be collectively in charge of festival programming from the 2020 to 2024 editions, a period that can be extended by a maximum of five years for a total directorship of ten years. Yusuke Hashimoto has served as program director of the festival since its first edition in 2010 and the 2019 festival that will mark his tenth forms an ideal juncture to change program directors and build a new identity for the festival as well as fresh perspectives on its future development. The selection of the next program directors was made after consideration of the following: diversity of artistic perspectives; the practical scope of specialist areas; international communication; and the sensibilities of the younger generation. Handing the reins of the festival over to these three specialists will ensure those issues are adequately covered and will contribute to the further development of the festival. As various social circumstances continue to change rapidly at home and abroad, our present brims with an opacity where previous common sense no longer seems to apply. In a time when the arts may also become ensnared in the immense torrents of the day, surely it is not mere praise of the new or adherence to the old that will allow us to anticipate “art” and the “modern” more lucidly, but rather each and every individual must acquire a kind of multifaceted way of thinking. The newly envisioned collective program director system will be able to respond to the needs of the coming age as outlined above and is a peerless choice of talent to support the “multifaceted thinking” necessary for the festival in the future.

Kyoto International Performing Arts Festival Executive Commitee

 
Profiles

Yuya Tsukahara
Born in Kyoto in 1979. Based in Osaka. Graduated from Kwansei Gakuin University Graduate School of Letters Department of Aesthetics. After joining NPO DANCEBOX as a volunteer staff member in 2002, he began activities as a member of the performance group contact Gonzo in 2006. Sometimes seen to be like fighting and sometimes like a kind of dance, the group has produced many unique improvisational performance works that appear to ignore existing concepts. Based on these experiences the group also creates various forms of installation works, edits and publishes magazines and operates catering among other activites. Tsukahara has been a Saison Cultural Foundation fellow artist from 2011-2017 and is also currently co-director of Art Area B1, located in the Keihan Naniwabashi Station.

Yoko Kawasaki
Born in 1982 in Mie. After graduating from the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in German in 2006, she studied at The Free University of Berlin. She then worked at CAN Inc. and as an Art Coordinator for Kyoto Art Center from 2011-2014. From 2014 to 2015 she was a fellow for the Program of Overseas Study by the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan and studied at HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin. In recent years she has produced for Yasuko Yokoshi, Kaori Seki Co. PUNCTUMUN, as well as been production coordinator for Okazaki Art Theatre and Uthis Haemamool x Toshiki Okada x Yuya Tsukahara’s Pratthana – A Portrait of Possession produced by the company precog. Also involved in the production coordination of the TPAM Direction Program. In 2018, she co-curated The Instrument Builders Project Kyoto – Circulating Echo. She has been involved as production coordinator at Kyoto Experiment since 2011 and managed many international projects.

Juliet Knapp
Born in Fukuoka in 1992. Graduated Oxford University with a BA in English Literature and Language and began working in Japan in 2013 on the JET Programme as an english teacher at Elementary and Middle Schools in Shizuoka Prefecture. After interning and volunteering for Kyoto Art Centre and Shizuoka Performing Arts Centre she became Communications Manager and Project Manager for Music and Performance at Ryoji Ikeda Studio. She has experience in editing as well as translation and interpretation related to the performing arts. Involved in Kyoto Experiment since 2017, she is currently part of the PR team as well as assisting the director in the programming of the festival.