Photo: Satoshi Nishizawa
What does “contemporary” mean in performing arts? What kind of historical backgrounds, social environment, personal experience or life style influence and inspire artistic expression, and how? What kind of perspective can be possible in today’s increasingly global society? Such questions are the main topics in the interviews with young artists from Southeastern Asia, conducted by Japanese artists with interests in the region.
Project Leader: Akane Nakamura
Interviewer: Yuya Tsukahara, Yoshiro Hatori
Interviewee:
Jecko Siompo (Indonesia)
Fitri Setyaningsih (Indonesia)
Rully Shabara (Indonesia)
Naomi Srikandi (Indonesia)
Mark Teh (Malaysia)
Nadhirah Razid (Malaysia)
Ellison Tan Yuyang (Singapore)
Loo Zihan (Singapore)
See also: TPAM Co-Production Meeting Program
Photo: Nobutaka Sato
Born in 1979. While serving as a program director at ST Spot Yokohama from 2004 to 2008, she co-founded Precog Co., Ltd in 2006. Nakamura has produced numerous projects such as “Azumabashi Dance Crossing” and “Mikuni Yanaihara Project.” Precog has also produced a number of artists, including chelfitsch, Nibroll, and Masako Yasumoto, at home and abroad. Her artists have performed in over 50 cities in 25 countries.
In May, 2012, Nakamura opened a multi-purpose creative space, Punto Precog, in Beppu, Kyushu. In the same year, Nakamura directed KAFE9, a performing arts festival at Kanagawa Arts Theater. Also later that year, she produced the 2012 Kunisaki Peninsula Art Project as its program director. In 2014, she will continue to work as the director of the performing arts section of the Kunisaki Peninsula Art Festival. In addition, she is one of the founding members of the ON-PAM (The Open Network for Performing Arts Management). Since 2011, she has also been teaching at her alma mater as a lecturer.
©contact Gonzo
Interviewers’ Profiles
2002 start working as a volunterr staff at the Dance Box and has later joined the administration team. 2006 founded “contact Gonzo” start producing performance, video, photo, sound works, magazine editorials. Now also directing festivals and performance programs for theaters and art museums. His solo project will be announced on 2015..
Photo: Satoshi Nishizawa
He was born in Brussels in 1989. He is a director and founder of “Kenobi”. He produced “teaching” and “trying”, as his work of directing in a broad sense, in workshop series “Self-government”. He also directed Equal Equal Powers, For a New Inn and Wilkinson and Stones. He published Directions and Instructions -The However Goods in 2012. He is the director of Kyoto International Performing Arts Festival KYOTO EXPERIMENT Fringe “The UsefulProgram”
Photo: Iwan Pagaralam
Interviewees’ Profiles
Jeck Kurniawan Siompo Pui was born in Jayapura on 4th of April 1975. When he still was a child, he learned traditional dance at Rawori Dok 8 Bawah, Jayapura. After having graduated from highschool in North Jayapura, he continued his studies of dance in 1994 at IKJ. In 1999, he studied Hip-Hop in Portland, Maine, USA, and then in 2002 received a scholarship from Goethe-Institut Jakarta to study at Folkwang Dance Studio in Germany. During his time in Jakarta, he also performed in Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Germany, Denmark, Australia, the USA, France, Taiwan, Hongkong and Russia and toured through a few Indonesian cities.
Photo: Jacky Armansyah
Fitri graduated from one of the national arts academies, known as the Institute of the Arts in Indonesia in Surakarta, Central Java. She firstly trained in Javanese dances but later develops a body of eclectic works that critically questions the body in contemporary dance since 2000. She now moves seamlessly between dance, visual- and performance arts, boldly stating that “dance is not only an event of movement, but moving towards becoming a medial event with the body remains at its central axis”. With this idea, Fitri integrates daily life movement and objects. She has been awarded as one of the influential artists in Indonesia by TEMPO weekly newsmagazine in 2011 and a recipient of Empowering Women Artists commission from Kelola Foundation which enabled her to create two choreographies in two consecutive years. One of this work, Bintang Hening (A Tranquil Star, 2011) toured to Europe in Fall 2014 and she just completed a commissioned work from the Asian Arts Theatre (AAT), Gwangju.
Photo: Tony Yang
Jogjakarta’s Senyawa uniquely manage to embody the aural flavours of Javanese music whilst exploring the framework of experimental music practice, pushing the boundaries of both traditions. In doing so their music strikes a perfect balance between their avant-garde influences and cultural heritage to create truly contemporary Indonesian music.
Their sound is comprised of Rully Shabara’s deft extended vocal techniques punctuating the frenetic neo-tribalism of instrument builder, Wukir Suryadi’s modern-primitive instrumentation. Inventions like his handcrafted ‘Bamboo Spear’; a thick stem of bamboo strung up with percussive strips of the plant’s skin along side steel strings. Sonically dynamic, the instrument can be rhythmically percussive on one side whilst being melodically bowed and plucked on the other.
Photo: Asa Rahmana
Naomi Srikandi is a theater maker whose works include writings and performances using aesthetics as a framework for investigating the questions how every day life images, sounds, languages as such retroact to politics. Her writings are published in Pena Kencana Literary Awards “20 Best Indonesian Short Stories” and her published plays are Perbuatan Serong (The Deviant Act) and Goyang Penasaran (The Obsessive Twist). Naomi worked in various performances with Asia’s figures in the arts: Yudi Ahmad Tajudin, Neelam Mansigh Chowdry, Goh Boon Teck, Saidah Rastam, toured to Asian and European cities such as Insomnia 48, Singapore and In Transit Festival, Berlin. She was in artist residencies hosted by Hooyong Performing Arts Centre, Wonju and DasArts Master School of Theatre, Amsterdam. She received Kelola Foundation’s EWA grants for projects Medea Media presented in the Women Playwrights International Conference, Stockholm and The Obsessive Twist. She is currently associate artistic director of Teater Garasi/Garasi Performance Institute.
Photo: Andy Darrel Gomes
Mark Teh is a director, curator and researcher whose diverse projects are particularly engaged with the issues of history, memory and the urban context. His collaborative work is situated primarily in performance and education, but also operates via exhibitions, new media, writing and social interventions. He graduated with an MA in Art and Politics from Goldsmiths, University of London, and currently teaches at the Department of Performance & Media, Sunway University. Mark is a member of Five Arts Centre – a collective of artists, activists and producers based in Malaysia.
Photo:
Normalrizwan Kamaduddin
Nurul Nadhirah Binti Mohd Razid was born in 1991. She holds a Diploma in Dance and is currently a final-year choreography major at ASWARA. In this time, she has choreographed and presented many contemporary works such as Question Mark, Do I?, Sampaikan, Madu among others, to emerge as one of Malaysia’s most exciting young choreographers. She has performed extensively, primarily in traditional dance genres in productions such as Main Zapin, Tapestry, Asyik, as well as presented and performed at the Short + Short Dance Festival, K.I.V and 2 by 2. She has performed abroad in China and Singapore.
Photo: Juliana Tan
Tan Yuyang Ellison is a Theatre Studies graduate from the National University of Singapore. Recent theatre credits include Dear Nora by Our Company, Sublime Monsters and Virtual Children by Brian Gothong Tan, Temple Reconstructed by Cake Theatrical Productions and Turn by Turn We Turn by The Finger Players. Ellison has been fortunate in terms of the training opportunities she has had with ECNAD, Cake Theatrical Productions, The Finger Players, Nine Years Theatre and this collective. She is also an avid playwright, and her latest works include: The Eulogy Project I: Muah Chee Mei and Me (Potluck Productions) and 《吴刚成仙记》(Handsforth, part of Esplanade’s Moonfest 2014). Ellison is currently an apprentice of The Finger Players.
Photo: Samantha Tio
Loo Zihan is a performance and moving-image artist based in Singapore. He is interested in the affectual transference and transmutation of shame in his work. His recent body of work strives to expose the tension between the flesh of the body with the bone of the archive.
Zihan graduated with his Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011 and his moving-image works have been selected and screened at various international film festivals. Zihan’s solo performances have also been presented at various performance events such as the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival.
Videographers’ Profiles
Born in 1986. Graduated from Kyoto Seika University Department of Visual Design. Joined the performance group Contact Gonzo in 2010. IN the same year he co-founded The Hanzai (Crime) Boys together with NAZE. Mistime has been working as a freelance designer and photographer since student.
Satoshi Nishizawa (Malaysia and Singapore)
Photographer. He photographs people’s familiar places and daily lives. Recent shows include: “Satoshi Nishizawa: Hardcore of Documentary” (2011, Sanagi Fine Arts); “Romantic Geography” (2014), a group exhibition at Taipei TKG+ and Tokyo Arts chiyoda3331. He showed his film “Hyakko” (Hundred Lights) in 2013.
