EVENTS

Members of the Norway-based Tenthaus Art Collective, Shahrzad Malekian and Ida Uvaas, will present their new performance Kizuna in October 2025. Kizuna is a site-responsive work developed in and around Kanda’s Ebihara Shoten. Shaped through movement and embodied research, it leaves traces in the form of shared rhythms, presence, attentiveness, and moving images. The performance is part of Malekian and Uvaas’ long-term collaboration STIM—a living, context-specific choreographic organism. STIM unfolds through a flexible score that shifts with each location, taking on a new title in response to its surroundings. Rooted in an inquiry into time, memory, belonging, and spatial narratives, the work treats public space as a layered and contested terrain, where movement becomes a mode of listening, tracing, and reimagining. Previously presented in Norway, Singapore, and other sites, STIM adapts to each context with sensitivity to its history and social fabric. In Tokyo, the project takes form as Kizuna, engaging with Ebihara Shoten as both a structure of memory and a site shaped by visible and invisible systems of care and control.   Notes Event held rain or shine (mostly indoors). Bring an umbrella for site transfers.   Performers 角田莉沙 / Tsunoda Lisa 坂井美乃里 / Sakai Minori 樋笠 理子　/　Satoko Hikasa 德安　慶子 /  Keiko Tokuyasu 徳安祐子 / Yuko Tokuyasu 山田 響己 / Yamada Hibiki 高成 麻畝子 / Takanari Mahoko Direction： Shahrzad Malekian, Ida Uvaas   Shahrzad Malekian An interdisciplinary artist working across performance, video, and sculpture, they use play to explore power, resistance, and care within public spaces and institutions. Recent exhibitions include SACO Biennial (2025) and Singapore Art Museum (2024). @shahrzad.malekian   Ida Uvaas A movement artist exploring mobility across body, mind, and society. Through interdisciplinary, participatory works, she challenges structures and invites collective experiences across performance, visual art, and site-specific practices. @idauvaas

Notice of Change in Meeting Point (Oct 24):Due to weather considerations, the starting point of the project has been changed. New Meeting Location:In front of Starbucks Coffee at Wadakura Fountain Parkhttps://maps.app.goo.gl/oYT17MuFCLkE2rBV8 address: 3-1 Koukyo-gaien, Chiyoda, Tokyo, 〒100-0002  ＝＝ Workshops by Camila Svenson, a biennale artist. This workshop invites participants to explore the concept of urban transformation through the lens of an old Tokyo travel guide. Using the guide as a starting point, we will investigate how tourist narratives shape our perception of cities and create spaces of imagination. The day begins with a collective reading and discussion of selected passages, followed by the creation of an affective map that reinterprets these references in the local context. Participants will then engage in a performative walk, following instructions inspired by the guide while documenting the journey through photography, video, sound, and object collection. Returning to the workspace, each participant will produce a “guide page” that combines text, image, and found materials, blending fiction, memory, and observation. Together, these pages will form a collaborative, hybrid guide — a poetic translation of past visions into the present urban experience.   Schedule (tentative) 13:00–13:40 Introduction & Workshop 1 “Reading the Guide and Poetic Mapping” 13:40–15:10 Performative Walk 15:10–16:00 Workshop 2 “Translation and Assembly”   Notes Preschool children are not suitable to participate. Ideally, the workshop is best suited for participants aged 16 and above. This event will be conducted in English only.

A workshop by Nalaka Wijewardhane, a biennale artist.   Wijewardhane, inspired by Quentin Meillassoux’s concept of hyper-chaos, has been wandering through the streets of Tokyo, capturing the unimaginable with his camera. In this workshop, participants will join a silent walk through the city, sensing a “space of contemplation” shaped by contingency, absence, and non-human presences. By rethinking everyday spaces, sounds, and objects as independent existences beyond human centrality, participants will share in the experience of a dérive—a wandering in which the city subtly engages the body and guides perception. This is a rare opportunity to attentively engage with the faint uncertainties embedded in everyday life and to perceive the city of Tokyo from entirely new angles. Listen to the subtle voices and traces of the urban environment, and allow your body to experience the city in ways that go beyond ordinary observation. We warmly invite you to join this unique exploration.   Workshop Flow Introduction: The artist presents the work and introduces the approach to the walk Silent Walk: Participants drift through the city, opening their senses and engaging with the environment Reflection: Participants share impressions and insights from the experience   Notes The workshop will take place rain or shine The walk and workshop will be filmed, and the footage may be shown later in the exhibition space or included in a publication documenting the project. Please be aware that participants may appear in the recorded videos and photographs.

Globalization, transformations in information technology, and changes in artists’ practices are profoundly reshaping the nature of international art exhibitions. Exhibitions and art festivals are no longer confined by time and space; instead, they are becoming seamlessly interconnected across temporal and spatial boundaries. Collaborative practices between artists and curators now extend beyond the exhibition period, continuing even after the official schedule has ended and outside the exhibition venue. This symposium will explore new forms of collaboration among artists, collectives, exhibitions, and art festivals within this evolving context.   Panelists Binna Choi (curator, Hawai’i Triennial 2025; artistic director, Korean Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2026) Maria Svonni (artistic director, Luleåbiennalen and Verdde) Mechu Rapela (curator, Tenthaus Art Collective) Truong Que Chi and Nguyen Phuong Linh (artists; Nhà Sàn Collective) Masato Nakamura (artist; general producer, Tokyo Biennale 2025) Yoshitaka Mōri (sociologist; professor, Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts)   Panelists Profile Binna Choi Binna Choi is a South Korean curator whose practice interconnect art, the curatorial, and the (sovereign) commons based on politics of decolonisation, indigenous practice and epistemology, and institutional change and unlearning, She directed Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons in the Utrecht, the Netherlands over a decade where she curated projects such as Grand Domestic Revolution (2009–2012 with Maiko Tanaka and Yolande van der Heide), Site for Unlearning (Art Organization) (2014–2018 with Annette Krauss and the evolving Casco Team), Travelling Farm Museum of Forgotten Skills (2018–2022 with The Outsiders), next to a number of commissions and experimental collective works. Together with You Mi, she also maintains a study platform Unmapping Eurasia. Besides, Choi also served as a curator/co/artistic director for art festivals such as the 2025 Hawai‘i Triennial, the 2022 Singapore Biennale, and the 2016 Gwangju Biennale, and curates the Korean Pavilion of the 2026 Venice Biennale.  In the context of pedagogy, she served as the faculty for Dutch Art Institute over a decade and the guest professor for the Gwangju Biennial International Curator Course 2025. Since 2024, Choi also works as the supervisor for Doosan Curator Workshop.   Maria Svonni Maria Svonni is a curator based in Giron, Sápmi. Her work is organized around collaborations, utilizing site-specific methods to promote dialogue and long-term change. She is the artistic director of Luleåbiennalen, Scandinavia’s oldest art biennial, and founder and artistic director of Verdde, a nomadic art institution working for the inclusion of Sámi perspectives. Svonni was part of the team that formulated the artistic program in the winning application for Giron to become European Capital of Culture in 2029 and in 2018 she led the establishment of KiN, the first museum focused on contemporary art in the most northern parts of Sweden.   Mechu Rapela Mechu Rapela is a co-director of the Tenthaus Collective, dedicated to fostering artistic collaboration across cultures. With a Master’s in Art History from the University of Oslo, she is an art historian, producer, and curator with a practice in space making. Currently, she is curating a KORO (Art in Public Space) project in Oslo.   Truong Que Chi and Nguyen Phuong Linh Truong Que Chi (b.1987) and Nguyen Phuong Linh (b.1985) are artists whose long-standing friendship has developed into collaboration. Truong examines contradictions and memory within everyday life through video and installation, while Nguyen poetically explores bodily traces and resilience. Since 2021, they have created works together, bringing poetic tension to space through bodily perceptions. Their practice engages with intergenerational memories of loss and the materiality of women’s bodies. They have exhibited at the Busan Biennale and Asian Art Biennale, and are members of Hanoi’s artist-run space Nhà Sàn Collective.   Masato Nakamura Born in 1963 in Ōdate, Akita, he has led numerous urban and community-based art projects since the 1990s and founded the art collective Command N in 1997. In 2001, Nakamura exhibited at the 49th Venice Biennale (Japan Pavilion). In 2010, he established the public-oriented cultural facility Arts Chiyoda 3331, managing it until 2023. He serves as the overall director of the Tokyo Biennale (2021, 2023) and General Producer (2025). He has published multiple books and received the 2010 Arts Encouragement Prize and the 2018 Architectural Institute of Japan Cultural Award.   Yoshitaka Mōri Sociologist. Born 1963 in Nagasaki. Mōri is a professor at Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School of Global Arts. After graduating from Kyoto University, he worked for an advertisement company, and then earned a Ph.D. at Goldsmiths, University of London. His critical practice takes on themes involving contemporary culture and the organization of urban space, as well as social movements, with particular interest in contemporary art, music, and media. Written works include Sutoriito no shiso (Ideas behind street) (NHK Publishing, Inc.), Culture = Politics – New Cultural-Political Movements in the Age of Globalization (Getsuyosha Limited), and Popular Music and Capitalism (Serica Syobo, Inc.). He also served as editor for After Musicking (Geidai Press).  

Participatory events for a biennale artist Adam Roigart’s Sanpo Project. Roigart has long focused on overlooked corners of the city, exploring ways of intervening in these places through gatherings. In this project, participants will visit forgotten spaces scattered across Tokyo with him, assemble simple structures on site (such as tables or benches), and experience a form of temporary “hacking” and collective “hosting.” These walks into what could be called “non-places” aim to share the latent potential of each site and open it up to new relationships. At the same time, they naturally question themes that Adam has consistently been interested in: caring for places, access from the public, hands-on design experiences, and the joy of working together. Through this project, participants will engage with each site directly, while also sharing new experiences and stories with one another, creating connections between people and place.     Schedule Departure We set off toward a selected site carrying the structural parts, flags, tools, and light refreshments.  Arrival at the Site – Activating the Space – Assemble Assemble the simple structures together – Share beverage and  light snacks together. – Dismantle all structures and return the site to its original condition. Return to the Starting Point Return to the initial meeting point and bring back all items to the exhibition space.   Meeting Point 1F Workshop Space, Etoile Kaito Living Building (see Map section below)   Notes In case of rain, the event will be postponed as follows: ① Sat 10/11 -> Sun 10/12 ② Sun 10/19 -> Sun 10/26

Workshops by Mariam Tovmasian, a biennale artist.   Step away from Tokyo’s fast rhythm and explore a cyanotype workshop that captures the city’s traces and the chance moments discovered while walking. Starting from a meeting point, we will take a slow walk through the area, collecting objects that seem meaningful along the way, and then create original prints under the sun!   Cyanotype is an early photographic technique that uses sunlight and water to produce vivid blue images. Participants will learn how the shapes of various objects leave their traces on paper through light and time. By walking, noticing, and imprinting with sunlight, you will capture Tokyo’s fast-paced landscape while experiencing the slower rhythms hidden within it.   Meeting and Dismissal Points Meeting point: Hamacho Park, in front of Exit A2, Hamacho Station (Toei Shinjuku Line) Dismissal point: Etoile Kaito Living Building, 1-15-15 Higashi-Kanda, Chiyoda-ku (near Bakurocho Station, JR Sobu Line)   What to bring 3–5 small objects that you associate with Tokyo or that remind you of the city An apron   Notes As the event involves walking, please join only if in good health. Outdoors under the sun—bring sun protection (parasol, hat, etc.). Wear clothes you don’t mind getting dirty. Participants may take their prints home, but one piece must be contributed to the artist’s exhibition. Children of elementary school age or younger must be accompanied by a guardian (guardians also require a ticket). Cancelled in case of rain.

We welcome Norihisa Minagawa, president of the Tokyo Suribachi Society, who conducts fieldwork focusing on Tokyo’s distinctive undulating terrain. In this lecture, he will guide us in interpreting the city’s structure and history through its topography.   Guest Speaker: Norihisa Minagawa (President, Tokyo Suribachi Society) Speakers: Shunya Yoshimi (Professor, Faculty of Tourism and Community Development, Kokugakuin University)Hidenobu Jinnai (Professor Emeritus, Hosei Uiversity; Director, Chuo City Chuo Historical Museum)   *“Mori” (杜) is a Japanese term that signifies a forested area holding spiritual, cultural, historical, or other special significance. *This event has ended.