Creators’ Cradle Circuit 2021:
Transnational Mobile Performing Arts Festival Loei & Tokyo

Paradigm Shifts and Rethinking the Multi-cultural Body

The spread of infectious diseases and the ongoing problems of modern society such as environmental destruction and inequality in the background, we will reconsider the body in a multicultural society brought about by globalization.

The “Creators’ Cradle Circuit (3Cs)” is a transnational mobile performing arts festival where emerging Asian performing artists travel and gather in Asian cities, crossing the borders of their areas of activity, to develop their works and experiment with new values and expressions in the performing arts.

After two years of research to realize the 3Cs, Karakoa and three project collaborators, together with six groups of eight artists from Southeast Asia, Japan and Taiwan, will hold the series of events and festival in Loei (Thailand) in July and Tokyo (Japan) in September.

Due to comply with the travel restrictions imposed by various countries as a measure to prevent the global spread of the new coronavirus disease, the 3Cs artists will remain in their home countries. Still, they will collaborate with a remote body of partners in Loei and Tokyo to present their work in a hybrid format that crosses online and real venues.

Venue
Loei & Tokyo

Artists
Ayu Permata Sari
Chanapon Komkham
Chen Yi-Chin
Chou Kuan-Jou
Geta Hiyori
Kishodai Kageyama
Raul L. Raquitico Jr
Yasuno Miyauchi

Curators
Chizuru Matsumoto
Sekar Putri Handayani
Soh Chong Hong
Wayla Amatathammachad
Yi-Kai Kao
Yuka Sugiyama

3Cs 2021 Tokyo: Mutation of Performing Arts
23rd September- 26th September 2021

This September’s “3Cs 2021 Tokyo: Mutation of Performing Arts” will be held as part of the BUoY Festival, organized the first edition this year by BUoY Art Center in Kitasenju, Tokyo, under the theme of “Art and Resistance”. With the spread of the new corona infection, the travel restriction is expanding. We focus on our world, which is acceleratingly divided into real and digital, and set the stage in those two different worlds. We aim to “reconnect” these two other worlds across countries, regions, and genres with collaborators in Tokyo using the performing arts methods. Although the overseas artists cannot come to Japan, each team will present their online video works via the internet, and at the same time, they will conduct joint research and creation with collaborators in Tokyo and hold theater, sound installations, or lecture performances at BUoY. Each artist will show the results of the projects they have been developing. Two post-performance discussions also will be held with Japanese critics to discuss the works with artists and audiences. All contents will be broadcast live.

Ayu Permata Sari, an Indonesian dancer and choreographer, has been researching the social representation of women in traditional Asian female dances since the 3Cs in 2020. As a result, she went back to her roots in the traditional dance of Lampung and reflected on the thought on the local marriage system, and her relationship with her father, and this year presented a piece called “Load?”. In Tokyo, she will expand on this idea by inviting Mai Endo, the artist questioning gender issues through the scope of marriage and family, as a collaborator.

Chanapon Komkham (nickname: Time) from Thailand is a media artist who creates sound art that intersects action with the natural environment and objects found in everyday life. In his film work in Loei leg, he depicted a spiritual and imaginative exchange with his Thai collaborator who lives in an inaccessible land under lockdown through the exchange of Stones. In Tokyo leg, we would like to see how he will discover the exchange process and create sounds with the collaborator, Atsuhiro Koizumi of Sangatsu, who creates experimental sound expressions while incorporating the environment and space.

Chou Kuan-Jou and Chen Yi-Chin from Taiwan have been conducting a research project called the “Nyu Shu Movement” to understand how Asian women have thought about and confronted gender across different generations since the CLOUD RESIDENCY organized by Thinker’s Studio last year in Taipei. In the 3Cs 2021 Thailand leg, they have disclosed the world of women from various regions and generations through fieldwork and experimental workshops and performances. Based on these researches and methods, in Tokyo leg, they will create a lecture performance focusing on the women’s movement with Tomoko Sato, who explores the possibility of expressive forms through “narration” while interacting with the Japanese audience.

Since the 3Cs of 2020, the playwright and director Kageyama Kishodai and the actor Hiyori Geta of the theater project “NORUHA” in Japan have been thinking about “virtual” of online spaces and cities, and discussing how they can communicate and act through them while creating online works. In Thailand leg, Kishodai re-wrote the Kyogen play “Natorigawa” as a story for the contemporary age, and they used avatars to create an online work that overlaps the anonymity of the virtual space. In Tokyo leg, they will continue to use “Natorigawa” as a motif, deepening his approach to the acting/dancing body with dancer　and choreographer Shizuka Yamaguchi, while exploring new possibilities for theater space with “virtual” as the keyword.

Philippine dancer and choreographer Raul L. Raquitico Jr. (nickname: Buboy) has been focusing on Asian karaoke culture since the 3Cs in 2020, researching its collective meaning and gestures. In Thailand leg, through online karaoke workshops with young people in the Dan Sai district of Loei province, he elicited dialogues among the participants with themselves, others, and the community through the karaoke singing body. In Tokyo leg, he will connect Manila under lockdown and Tokyo via the internet and further expand the karaoke performance by involving the audience with actor Kotaro Yagi, who is active in theater and dance.

Japanese composer Yasuno Miyauchi also started with the 3Cs in 2020 and continues to explore making her music online. In Thailand leg, she experimented with the theme of musical inheritance online, giving instructions to local music professionals in Loui province and asking them to practice the music written in the instructions according to their own interpretation. In Tokyo leg, using the music recorded at that time, she will weave a harmony of sound, shadow, and light in the underground space of BUoY, in collaboration with the members of Tsumugine, and the shadow puppeteer and musician, Kawamura Kouheisai.

Even in writing this, it is still uncertain whether the 3Cs 2021 Tokyo could be completed or not. We do not know when and where the infection will increase again. However, even in the midst of these hopeless changes in our surroundings, the performing arts will continue to mutate and survive by the solid creative will of the artists. It changes its form, invading and expanding into places and areas that were previously unreachable and inaccessible. The mutation of performing arts is a strategy for our survival.

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3Cs @BUoY

The session will be conducted in Japanese and English at BUoY. (A part of the session is only in Japanese.) Check out the time table here.

All sessions will be broadcast live on Karakoa YouTube page available viewing free.

Load? in another skin | Ayu Permata Sari
23 September, 2021, 18:30-20:00(JST) with Artist Talk
25 September, 2021, 13:00-13:30(JST)
Explorations for the ‘Load?’ project will continue for the Tokyo leg. This time, new challenges will be met by having a new collaborator from Japan. ‘Load?’ is based on the idea of ‘negotiation’ and it will be explored broadly and deeply in order to read various phenomena occurring in different cultures within the scope of Ayu and her collaborator’s specific experiences. This will drive the exploration of the concept, and the artistic materials which are based on body (or/and verbal) language. It will become more challenging when Ayu starts working with the Japanese female performance artist whom she has chosen. Based on the idea of ‘negotiation’, the virtual meeting space will turn into a platform for them to have dialogues, and to share their experiences of having defended their perspectives.
They will meet you at the end of their collaboration process when they present their collaborative work created through their ‘different skins’, ie. different cultural backgrounds. See you then!!
loadload
Register to Watch Live Streaming
Artist
Ayu Permata Sari

Collaborator and Performer
Mai Endo

Curator
Sekar Putri Handayani

Dramaturg
Nia Agustina

Videographer
M Adji Nugroho

Watch the artist’s 3Cs online work here
Instant Images, Instant Sounds (Live) | Chanapon Komkham
24 September, 2021, 16:30-18:00(JST) with Artist Talk
26 September, 2021, 13:00-13:30(JST)
The ‘Instant Images, Instant Sounds’ series are explorations on time perceptions and relationship between the bodies and the surrounding environments in different setups that generate visuals and sound waves which philosophically influence perception of the receivers. Derived from the previous collaboration process of lives connected through objects and stories exchanged between Dan Sai and Sangkhlaburi, we will carry out experiments through sounds to find out people’s awareness of the speed of life in the metropolis of Tokyo. We will see whether we can extract strangenesses from the city soundscapes by swiftly disturbing their flow.
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Register to Watch Live Streaming
Artist
Chanapon Komkham

Collaborator and Performer
Atsuhiro Koizumi

Curator
Wayla Amatathammachad

Watch the artist’s 3Cs online work here
The Nyu Shu Movement − Female Resonance Across Generations | Chou Kuan-Jou, Chen Yi-Chi
25 September, 2021, 14:30-16:30(JST) with Artist Talk
26 September, 2021, 14:30-15:30(JST)
The ‘Nyu Shu Movement’ (Zyo Syu undou) is a conceptual research project that focuses on the experiences of Asian women across generations (i.e. women aged 50-60 and women aged 20-30) to understand how women across generations think and respond to the gender waves of society. The two artists, Kuan-Jou and Yi-Chin have made attempts to break away from their fixed mindset about gender to enter the world of women, crossing generations, through a series of fieldworks, experimental body workshops and performances. So far, several females across generations have been interviewed through the project, which has been presented in Taiwan and Loei in Thailand.

This time, as part of the BUoY Festival, the project will be presented as a one-hour onsite lecture performance at BUoY Art Centre. The audiences will be invited to see the image of women involved in women’s movements through their interactive experiences and propositional reflections. Get prepared and join us in this revolution for every women!

nyu1nyu1
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Artists
Chou Kuan-Jou
Chen Yi-Chin

Collaborator and Performer
Tomoko Sato

Filming
邱条影室/邱垂仁

Video Provided
Thinkers’ Studio and Low Fat Art Fes

Video Editing
Ng Chi-Wai
Wu Tai-Yun
Wei-Chi Lee

Japanese Subtitles
Wei Pei-Wen
Kasumi Sakakibara

Curator
Yi-Kai, Kao

Producer
Lee Tsz-Wai, Vivien

Sponsor
National Culture and Arts Foundation

Watch the artist’s 3Cs online work here
Natorigawa (Tokyo version） | Geta Hiyori, Kishodai Kageyama
23 September, 2021, 16:00-17:30(JST) with Artist Talk
24 September, 2021, 15:00-15:30(JST)
The theatre collective ‘NORUHA’ has taken various approaches to explore the realities of the world of the ‘virtual’ space and in urban spaces through the programs of the 3Cs project to date. This time, our work will be presented at a physical theater, which will allow us to revalidate the ‘virtual’ and re-question the theatrical space itself. Focusing on theater venues through the keyword ‘virtual’ to explore its unknown possibilities is equivalent to exploring ‘what makes theater venues a theater venue’ and at the same time, we would be verifying ‘what creates rifts in theater venues’. To do so, we will probably have to turn our eyes to the corporeity of the actors and the audience. We are quite sure that we will discover new aspects of a theater venue both when it is working and when it falls apart.
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Register to Watch Live Streaming
Artists
Geta Hiyori
Kishodai Kageyama

Collaborator and Performer
Shizuka Yamaguchi

Curator
Yuka Sugiyama

Watch the artists’ 3Cs online work here
Welcome | Raul L. Raquitico Jr.
23 September, 2021, 13:00-15:00(JST) with Artist Talk
24 September, 2021, 13:00-14:00(JST)
‘Choreographing in the Cloud’ started in 2020 as a series of collaborative movement research activities motivated by investigating karaoke cultures and how existing artifacts and structures present in a community capture collective yet diverse values and identities.

From an auto-videographical account of a Filipino artist locked down in Manila, ‘Choreographing in the Cloud: Welcome’ continues as she opens her home virtually to a Japanese artist in Tokyo. How do both remote bodies (re)present their respective spaces and create a hospitable environment through ‘co-entertainment’?

Through juxtaposing both spatial conditions (domestic space vs. performance space) and synchronizing different modes of performing the body (live vs. virtual), the exchange of hospitalities becomes a seemingly familiar negotiation of constantly mutating blurs.

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Artist and Choreographer
Raul L. Raquitico Jr.

Collaborator and Performer
Kotaro Yagi

Performer
Deborah Lemuel

Sound Artists
Harold André

Watch the artists’ 3Cs online work here
Gathering on the Stormy Hill | Yasuno Miyauchi
25 September, 2021, 18:30-20:00(JST) with Artist Talk
‘Gathering on the Stormy Hill’ is a collaborative performance that integrates Miyauchi’s vocal performance and the shadow puppeteer Koheysai Kitamura’s artistry using light and shadows. Based on the online workshops carried out during last year’s 3Cs program and the online performance with Kawamura beforehand, Miyauchi will try out performances offline at the physical space in BUoy. Kawamura sees performing art as a philosophy and is concerned about its inheritance, Miyauchi will think about the arts in the future and about how to inherit them.
The members of Tsumugine and the singer Junko Satoh will join Kawamura and Miyauchi in the collaboration. They will all express themselves through light and shadow as well as their voices to represent the sounds we make and the landscapes we create in an attempt to reflect the turbulence that we are experiencing today.
嵐の丘-PRimage2嵐の丘-PRimage2
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Artist
Yasuno Miyauchi

Collaborator and Performer
Koheisai Kawamura

Performers
Tsumugine (Akiko Urahata, Naoko Ogata, Asami Yahata)
Junko Satoh

Curator
Chizuru Matsumoto

Watch the artists’ 3Cs online work here
Post Performance Discussion
24 September, 2021, 18:30-20:30(JST)
26 September, 2021, 16:00-18:00(JST)
In the Post Performance Discussions, Japanese performing arts researchers and critics will discuss with the artists and curators participating in the 3Cs to respond to their experimental art practices and its creative process in the 3Cs 2021 Tokyo .
Register to Watch Live Streaming
Moderator
Hidenaga Otori

24 September 2021

Panelists
Takako Shibata
Manami Maeda

26 September 2021

Panelists
Keisuke Sakurai
Kenta Yamazaki

Kitasenju, Tokyo, where BUoY Arts Center Tokyo is located, has developed as a post town since the Edo period. Before the war, there was a brothel, and after the war, it became a red-light district. There were also many factories in the area, and Kitasenju was also a town of factory workers. Since 2000, the area around the station has been redeveloped, with large commercial facilities and universities being built, creating a neat streetscape, but right next to the station, there is a “bar alley” that retains the old streetscape. We straight down this alley and through a residential area to BUoY Arts Center Tokyo.

BUoY opened in 2017 as an art space in a renovated abandoned space. The first floor was once a bowling alley; the basement, a public bath. Nowadays it has become home to many young artists from a variety of artistic fields.

Partner Festival: BUoY Festival

A BUoY (/ˈbuːiː/) is a signpost that floats in the sea. As a reference point that does not sink even if submerged, it can also serve as a landmark for ships that have lost their way on the open water. This name declares our desire to guide and support young artists. It also represents our intention to disseminate art that is new, yet still immersed in the history of our home in Senjū: a land-ship floating between the Arakawa and Sumidagawa rivers. The idea that BUoY should be a place to encounter other values resonates with the tolerance of diversity that has flourished in this post town since the time of the samurai.

3Cs Tai Dan Intervention: Spiritual connection beyond the lockdown
26rd August – 31th August 2021

On July 9, 2021, the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration announced a national lockdown policy in Thai. The transnation mobile festival Creator’s Credle Circuit has been forced to divert itself from hybrid artistic exchange; online and onground, to online solely. With this challenge, 3Cs artists will present their artistic creations and their stories collaborating with local collaborators; artists, students, and senior citizens of Dan Sai, Loei Province Thailand, who are new to contemporary arts.

Dan Sai District was founded around 1560 by Laotian and Thai kings, the town is located on the Man River. The stupa and Wat Phon Chai have been bound together as sacred places of Dansai since ancient times.  The most renowned Phi Ta Khon festival is the combination of Shamanism, Buddhism, and local entertainment culture that align politically in harmony. It deeps down its roots into daily life of the people of Dai Sai. Derived from the unique history of the town, this area has their own cultures and beliefs in the way of living, cuisines, and ceremonies that differentiate it from other parts of Thailand.

Between 12th to 25th July 2021, co-hosting by Loei Art Fes 2021, the 6 teams of 3Cs pair up with 6 Thai artist collaborators to explore the Dan Sai district though online and make their own quests on how they can use resourceful intuitive art materials from locals that they found along the way to expand the potential of their artistic creations. And also how to contextualize their creation to communicate with local audiences who are unknown to contemporary art.

The Thai collaborators become the avatar or remote body of the 3Cs artists and also artists’ critical consulting mind to connect to the locals and also making the creative space in the real site with the artists.

Partner Festival: Loei Art Fes 2021 (LAF)

A Thai contemporary art festival celebrating Loei spirits. Experience over 30 pieces of multi-disciplinary art from Thailand and abroad exhibiting among public and private spaces in Dansai district of Loei province.

Venue
Zoom/ Facebook Live

Artists
Ayu Permata Sari
Chanapon Komkham
Chen Yi-Chin
Chou Kuan-Jou
Geta Hiyori
Kishodai Kageyama
Raul L. Raquitico Jr
Yasuno Miyauchi