Research team
Expertise
Kyoko Iwaki is recognized as a specialist in Asian (specifically, Japanese) contemporary theatre and performance who conducts interdisciplinary research on performances in the age of durational catastrophes. The term durational catastrophe refers to those crises that goes beyond the human-scale cognition, such as nuclear fallouts, viral pandemics, and ecological crises. Due to the pseudo-invisible and more-than-human characteristic of these catastrophes, the artists included in my research – such as Ōta Shōgo, Okada Toshiki, Takayama Akira, Tanino Kurō, Ichihara Satoko, Momose Aya, Mark Teh, Sankar Venkateswaran among others – probe forms of dramaturgies that go beyond the restrictive modalities of visually-oriented and human-centric theatres. Instigated by these dramaturgies which reflect the new disposition of sensibilities that are engendered mid- and post-catastrophes, my research interests also gravitate toward those analytical scopes that destabilize the status of heteronormative canons. First, I question the human-centrality of Western theatres (both practice and venues) through the scope of theories of Buddhist-oriented Japanese philosophers (Watsuji Testurō, Izutsu Toshihiko, and Tanabe Hajime) which could be considered as more-than-human theories avant la lettre. Second, by re-assessing theatre history through the lens of Asian feminist, my research queers all binaries based on the almost-already anachronistic notion of the West and the rest. And, third, by extension of the first and second topic which, from different perspectives, inquires on the power of the Human gaze, my research puts more weight on analyzing invisible components in performances such as affect, aural, atmospheric, and the touch. Kyoko’s recent publications include: ‘The Politics of the Senses: Takayama Akira’s Atomized Theatre after Fukushima’ in Fukushima and the Arts: Negotiating Nuclear Disaster (Routledge, 2016); ‘Diffracting the Politicized Spectacle: Queering Censorship in the Aichi Triennale’, Performance Research (2021); ‘On (Not) Being Useful: The Art of Drifting in Asian Contemporary Theatre’, Studies in Theatre and Performance (2021); and ‘The Delegated Performance of the Dead: Performing in Post-Fukushima Phantom Reality,’ The Paper Bridge: Contemporary Intersections of Japanese-Western Theatre (Poznan University Press, 2022). She is also the Associate Editor of Performance Research journal from January 2021. Kyoko was appointed Chief Director of the Scene/Asia Pan-Asian critics and curators’ platform in 2014. The Asian performance research conducted in this platform led her to collaborate on the Spielart Festival Munich’s Asia Focus in 2017. She has also served as a jury for Theater Spektakel Festival, Zurich. Since 2017, she is the Chief Programme Advisor for Theatre Commons Festival, Tokyo. She was appointed the Chief Dramaturge for Theater der Welt 2023 festival in Frankfurt-Offenbach.
Voices of Materials:Probing the Cultural Ecology of Material Finitude.
Abstract
How can jewellery act as a performative medium that tells stories about material finitude on a planetary and local scale? This research question came forth from my decade long design practice, which concerns with the sourcing and valuing of materials, and my role as a jeweller within contemporary environmental discourses. Just as the 'Blue Marble' image shed new view on Earth, can jewellery, with its small scale in this world, be able to create new, caring ways of relating to planetary processes or hyperobjects we are part of, yet which remain, in their complexity, hard to grasp. The subject of this research is material finitude, the planetary limitation of materials. From an eco-critical approach, I propose a spatio-temporal inquiry that goes beyond the human time scale to materiality, which remains hidden in our human-centered world. Working out of the theoretical context of the Anthropocene and the extractive cultural ecology, I will probe material agency and voice. To hear a materials voice, one needs to learn listening first. With the methodology of probing I aim to learn what materials have witnessed and how they have subsequently transformed within their economic and environmental- cultural contexts. The voices that emerge are brought to public conversation in the tactile and visual language of jewellery. Actively listening to three materials - sand, coal and water - forms the basis for three case studies of the environmental and historical relations between materials and humans, and a range of outcomes - objects, public conversations, and recordings - that contributes to wider discourse on the entanglement of humans, materials and ecosystems.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Iwaki Kyoko
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
Hyperwithin: a shy dramaturgy in shadowtime.
Abstract
The Anthropocene, defined by humanity's profound impact on the environment, challenges our role as both creators and observers of our world, oscillating between hubris and humility. Nevertheless, in an era that imperatively calls for a more balanced and integrated presence of the human within its environment, the human voice tries to assert itself more than ever. This research project explores a novel perspective within the Anthropocene, considering the quest for visibility as a contributing factor to ecological devastation. Drawing parallels between the rise of industrialisation and the ascent of the culture of self amidst visual, spectacular culture since the late 18th century, this study posits that a critique of visibility is intrinsically a critique of the self. With this research, I would like to look at us as individuals and understand when, why and how we decided to place the self above all else. Why do we need to see ourselves everywhere and in everything? Does one need to be recognized to be? Do things need to be constantly present to exist? Can one still subsist while choosing not to appear? To explore these questions, this research adopts a multifaceted approach, blending theoretical inquiry with artistic practice. Central to this investigation is the concept of 'shy' as an alternative mindset. 'Shy ', viewed not merely as a personal trait but as something to be performed, an ethical framework in the art world, and a disruptive theoretical concept, invites us to reconsider human behavior and humility in the face of the Anthropocene. This approach introduces ecological considerations into the discourse on representation and the performative arts, challenging traditional paradigms. If 'shy' suggests a shift towards greater humility and a more modest approach to human behaviour, could it potentially offer a more environmentally conscious approach? Given the near-impossibility of representing the Anthropocene experience, could a 'shy' and post-visual performance serve as a viable perspective?Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Iwaki Kyoko
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
More-than-Human Japanese Dramaturgies and their Performative Ends.
Abstract
Since antiquity, theatres as an art form have been considered human-centric, especially in Western cultures. However, this anthropocentric thought and praxis have been challenged in recent years from those more-than-human perspectives that provide more agency to nature, animals, and dead spirits. This research criticises the foundational premise of the current more-than-human philosophy trend as it is primarily an outcome of one strand of Western scholarship and its performative ends. In so doing, the research firmly roots itself in Japanese philosophy and Japanese traditional performances (especially nō and bunraku), which are, from inception, more-than-human par excellence. This research project stands at the intersection of traditional Japanese theatre, more-than-human dramaturgy, Japanese philosophy, and critical analyses of Japanese and/or Japanese-influenced contemporary performances. Although interdisciplinarity is part and parcel of the research, the primary focus is on the last of the four components, that is, contemporary performance. The study's main objective is to develop a compendium of more-than-human dramaturgical vocabularies sustained mainly by non-Western philosophies and Japanese theatre histories. Methodologically, the analyses of traditional Japanese theatre and contemporary performances will be conducted through theoretical readings and empirical and embodied fieldwork research. As many theatres and performances presented in Belgium and wider Europe are crucially lacking in-depth knowledge of non-Western nonhuman perspectives, the research outcomes obtained from this project will contribute to shifting the theoretical mapping of the nonhuman philosophies and introducing a different history of the more-than-human dramaturgies.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Iwaki Kyoko
- Co-promoter: van Baarle Kristof
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
Performing Ends: a theoretical-methodological inquiry on posthumous dramaturgy.
Abstract
In response to the ecocatastrophe, and to the increasing degree of technological surveillance, replacement and manipulation of democracies, contemporary theater makers and choreographers are making performances on 'ends'. Death, ghosts, extinction, collapse, machines fused with more-than-human beings that go on without humans: these themes are key in 'Performing Ends'. This research claims that the posthumanist wave in theory and performing arts is moving towards the 'posthumous'. Under the horizon towards ends, the subject-object divide is blurred, theater moves beyond any meaningful drama, and human performers are lost in a world they can no longer understand. A dramaturgy of ends starts after the catastrophe and unfolds in a durational 'epilogue'. Kris Verdonck's work on extinction and exhaustion, Amanda Piña's decolonial dramaturgies of endangered dances and Arkadi Zaides' spectral performances of the dead and radiation will be at the core of this research. Moreover, this project uses dramaturgy as method and practice: the research develops a methodology for studying dramaturgies of ends and inquiries into posthuman performing arts in general. Building on insights in science and technology studies, posthumanist performativity and "field philosophy", we will work out a theoretical frame to study the creative process, in order to understand how more-than-human actors are intrinsically part of dramaturgies of ends.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Iwaki Kyoko
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
Any Body, My Self: Conceptual Art and Personhood.
Abstract
A work of conceptual art, actively practiced in the late '60s to early '70s, documents a simultaneous full manifestation of the true reality of the world and the true personality of the artist, while inspiring a potential full dissolution of the artist's and the viewer's personhood into a state of self-other unity, all through the artist's depersonalization—toward self-oblivion and embodiment of any-body—performed in the process of executing the work. This proposition is extraordinary in art-theoretical context but a logical conclusion of the initial definition of conceptual art posed by artist Sol LeWitt as a methodology to 'avoid subjectivity' (1967) in order to realize the idea just as conceived, through an instructed simple action, and to see how the world reacts to it. What principle enables this effect? How can the potential be activated? Informed by Alexander Alberro's theoretical articulation of conceptualism (1999), Kitaro Nishida's philosophy of 'absolutely contradictory self-identity' (1939), Lucy Lippard's and Bas Jan Ader's poetic simulations of hive minds (1969–71), and Pierre Bourdieu's 'dispositionalist' research method (2013), this project plays out the proposed conclusion in a self-reflexive manner, with my living body here and now as the sole agent for a four-year-long instructed performance, collectivizing many conceptual artists into one as a personification of the history of conceptual art redefined by depersonalization instead of dematerialization.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Iwaki Kyoko
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project