Tenthaus Art Collective and the Oven Network: The House Is Bigger than It Looks

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

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).