Sensing the World

Born in Tokyo in 1977, Hiroaki Umeda is a choreographer and a multidisciplinary artist recognised as one of the leading figures of the Japanese avant-garde art scene. Since the launch of his company S20, his subtle yet violent dance pieces have toured around the world to audience and critical acclaim. His work is acknowledged for the highly holistic artistic methodology with strong digital background, which considers not only physical elements as dance, but also optical, sensorial and, above all, spatiotemporal components as part of the choreography. Read more...

The Avoca Project: Propositions and provocations for an uncertain Future

Norie asked “What are you waiting for exactly?” “To discover what it is that I am doing here”, I found myself saying. I had realised that all of the actions to date had been diversions, distractions, undertaken to reassure others that something was happening. All those artworks, the many residencies for other artists, the historically sound and environmentally experimental repairs to the buildings and grounds, the community projects I had led were really all part of waiting… Read more...

Diary entries

The thing is: marginalised communities exist to a certain extent as discreet ecosystems. We are symbiotic. We are bioregional. And, like any ecosystem, we are vulnerable to exploitation and degradation. What am I trying to say here? I guess, maybe: don’t trade your life in the forest to become a fucking pot-plant. Especially now that we have never been so tradeable. We have never been so identified as a commodity. It’s unprecedented. This has its advantages: we can make a fucking living, for one thing. Read more...

Is There a Way Out of Self-Exploitation?

After having served capital as agents for gentrification in all big cities, artists serve capital as agents and explorers for colonising the rest of the world. Artists are the expression and incarnation of western values like free individualism. They carry these values inherently, transporting and transferring them almost innocently. They are missionaries of capital often disguised as its opponents. In this sense, they are representatives of capital’s perversity. Read more...

Art and Money

Art and money are a volatile combination. Putting the two together immediately emphasises the tensions fuelling our contradictory attitudes towards art: we believe it musn’t be a commodity – indeed, one of the most common beliefs about art is that it trascends the commodity and is, in its purest forms, an argument against commodification. And on the other, every arts institution in the country exists because of art’s value as a commodity. Read more...

Evolution(s) of Ethics

This article addresses the evolution of ethics in dance, proposing that the post modern movement and its influences heralded the birth of an emerging dialogue that catapulted dance into the intellectual domain. For without a dialogue or a framed “mise-en scene”, the ethics are hard to pinpoint. Conversely, part of the strength and weakness of dance lies in its corporeality; for a long time, it had not found a language, and yet, its ongoing presence ensured an existence of peripheral enquiry. The birth of ethics in dance lay in its success in developing a language around its corporeality, and its ongoing concerns continue be gleaned from the ever- evolving dialogue both personally and collectively, from current cultural and political movements. Read more...