Check out The Saison Foundation’s Annual Report for 2022:

https://www.saison.or.jp/en/library#p02

Check out The Saison Foundation’s Annual Report for 2022.

The open call for the 2024 International Program, which supports projects and activities related to contemporary performing arts, has been announced.

Ⅰ International Project Support Program (for medium to long term collaboration projects)

Deadline for requesting an application form: September 21, 2023

→Application

Saison Artist in Residence Visiting Fellow aims to build up an international network for contemporary performing arts and to enhance mutual understanding, and gives opportunities for international artists and arts managers to research the contemporary performing arts scene in Japan. The program supports research visits to Japan for those who are expected to play an important role in the international performing arts scene.

Saison Artist in Residence Visiting Fellow offers the following support:
– Research Residency for Artists
– Research Residency for Arts Managers

Residency period: October 5 to December 28, 2023 and January 24 to February 29, 2024

Grant: one round-trip Economy-class ticket up to 275,000 yen and/or living expenses (5,000 yen per day excluding the days of arrival and departure) and/or research & activities costs (up to 5,000 yen per day excluding the days of arrival and departure) for each artist and arts managers as applicants who meet the requirements outlined in the application guidelines

Residents: one international artists and one international arts manager will be selected for Visiting Fellows 2023

Application deadlines: Thursday, July 13 2023
* Please download an application form by Monday, July 10 2023.

For details, please see the following program guidelines.
https://www.saison.or.jp/2023_VF_ApplicationGuidelines

Check out The Saison Foundation’s Annual Report for 2021:

https://www.saison.or.jp/en/library#p02

Check out The Saison Foundation’s Annual Report for 2021.

The open call for the 2023 International Program, which supports projects and activities related to contemporary performing arts, has been announced.

Ⅰ International Project Support Program (for medium to long term collaboration projects)

Deadline for requesting an application form: October 20, 2022

→Application

Saison Artist in Residence Visiting Fellow aims to build up an international network for contemporary performing arts and to enhance mutual understanding, and gives opportunities for artists and arts managers to research the contemporary performing arts scene in Japan. The program supports research visits to Japan for those who are expected to play an important role in the international performing arts scene.

Saison Artist in Residence Visiting Fellow offers the following support:
– Research Residency for Artists
– Research Residency for Arts Managers

Residency period: October 3 to December 28, 2022, and January 6 to February 19, 2023

Grant: one round-trip Economy-class ticket up to 200,000 yen and/or living expenses (4,000 yen per day excluding the days of arrival and departure) and/or research & activities costs (up to 5,000 yen per day excluding the days of arrival and departure) for each artist and arts managers as applicants who meet the requirements outlined in the application guidelines

Residents: two artists and one arts manager will be selected for Visiting Fellows 2022

Application deadlines: Thursday, 30 June 2022
* Please download an application form by Monday, 27 June 2022.

For details, please see the following program guidelines.
https://www.saison.or.jp/2022_vf_applicationguidelines

The English version of the Saison Foundation’s press release on its 2022 grantees and Independently Organized and Co-Organized Programs can be downloaded from the following link:

https://www.saison.or.jp/en/library#p01

As part of its exchange program with the Footscray Community Arts, a cultural institution located in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, The Saison Foundation will co-host an online symposium to deepen understanding of indigenous cultural and artistic activities in Japan and Australia.

The symposium will introduce the activities and indigenous cultural programs of Footscray Community Arts, which opened in 1974, as an example of indigenous cultural and artistic activities in Japan and Australia. It will also look back on the cultural activities of Porotokotan (formerly the Ainu Museum) in Shiraoi, Hokkaido, from its opening to the present, and exchange opinions on the possibilities and prospects for the future international exchange program.

Thursday, March 17, 2022
4:00 pm – 6:30 pm (JST/UTC+9), 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm (AEDT/UTC+11)

Speakers:
Vicki Couzens (Artist, Footscray Community Arts Indigenous Advisory Group)
Dan Mitchell (Senior Producer: Indigenous Cultural Program, Footscray Community Arts)
Masahiro Nomoto (Director of Culture Promotion Department, National Ainu Museum and Park UPOPOY)

Where:
Zoom Webinar

How to register:
To register for the online symposium, please fill in the Zoom Webinar Registration Form:
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_OWWRrDB6SHGx6uCOWpC00A　

Participation cost:
Free

Profile of Speakers:
Vicki Couzens (Artist, Footscray Community Arts Indigenous Advisory Group)
Vicki Couzens is a Gunditjmara woman from the Western Districts of Victoria. Vicki acknowledges her Ancestors and Elders who guide her work. She has worked in Aboriginal community affairs for almost 40 years. Vicki’s contributions in the reclamation, regeneration and revitalisation of cultural knowledge and practice extend across the ‘arts and creative cultural expression’ spectrum including language revitalisation, ceremony, community arts, public art, visual and performing arts, and writing. She is Senior Knowledge Custodian for Possum Skin Cloak Story and Language Reclamation and Revival in her Keerray Woorroong Mother Tongue. Vicki is employed at RMIT as a Vice Chancellor’s Indigenous Research Fellow, developing her project ‘watnanda koong meerreeng , tyama-ngan malayeetoo (together body and country, we know long time)’. The key objective of this project is to produce model/s, pathways and resources for continuing the reinvigoration of Aboriginal Ways of Knowing Being and Doing with a special focus on language revitalisation.

Dan Mitchell (Senior Producer: Indigenous Cultural Program, Footscray Community Arts)
Festivals, circus, theatre, music and public art are some of the many mediums Dan has worked in during his 30-year career as a creative producer. A person with Whadjuk Noongar and European heritage, Dan has instinctively been drawn to the tension, dysfunction and contradiction inherent in Australian culture. Dan is principally interested in our shared narratives, experience and journeys through both displacement from, and connection to, place. Through this, he navigates his way in the hope of coalescing an understanding of shared identity through art, ritual and story. Arriving at Footscray Community Arts in 2019 to co-produce the Due West Arts Festival, he now oversees the Indigenous Cultural Program.

Masahiro Nomoto (Director of Culture Promotion Department, National Ainu Museum and Park UPOPOY)
Born in 1963 in Shiraoi Town. He was the director of the Ainu Museum (Porotokotan) from 2012 to 2018. He has been involved in the planning and production of Ainu cultural exhibitions in Japan and abroad and has created Ainu crafts himself. In 1999, he produced an Ainu oceangoing boat itaomacip for the exhibition “AINU: Spirit of Northern People” at the Smithsonian National Museum, which later became a part of permanent exhibit for the section of ‘history of culture and exchange’ among the peoples of the North Pacific.
In recent years, he has been working on the exhibition and exchange of indigenous peoples in museums and art galleries around the world. Since 2018 he has been working as the Director of Culture Promotion Department, National Ainu Museum and Park UPOPOY.

About Footscray Community Arts
Footscray Community Arts is an independent creative precinct in the western suburbs of Melbourne. It’s a place for artistic vibrancy, new work, big ideas and important conversations. Our programs focus on the nexus between creativity and social justice. We platform and prioritise the voices of artists from Indigenous, migrant and refugee, disability and LGBTQIA+ communities. Our year-round program offers unique performances, exhibitions, collaborative art workshops and community events.
https://footscrayarts.com/

Co-hosted by Footscray Community Arts, The Saison Foundation
Supported by The Foundation for Ainu Culture
Supported by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan in fiscal 2021

The Saison Foundation has started a digital residency program, “Turn off the house lights” to connect art activities between Tokyo and Berlin in collaboration with an art collective, Mapped to the closest Address.

Mapped to the Closest Address “Turn off the house lights”, a midnight transmission
Friday, 4th March 2022, 10:15 am (EST) / 16:15 pm (CET) / 24:15 midnight (JST)
Online: connection from Cordillera’s dance studio in Berlin
Artists: Alex Viteri Arturo, Shuntaro Yoshida, Catalina Fernándeze, Maharu Maeno, Violeta

Registration
Please fill in the Google Form: https://forms.gle/JDit1U3N5P1DpdFb7
*The registration deadline is 17:00 pm (JST), 4th March, 2022

Outline of the event
For our last project, we created a digital archive that follows a rhizomatic structure, something like the body of an octopus with many legs and pods. In this episode, we want to keep exploring with sound and storytelling. Over the past two years, we’ve met and collected stories from fellow gardeners, tree doctors, community garden members, farmers and viticulturists, friends, and family. We wish to integrate these stories. In Cordillera, we will reorganize the various materials we’ve accumulated as a collective to share our working process with our guests. (Mapped to the Closest Address)

For the details of the work-in-progress sharing, please see the following link,
https://www.mappedtotheclosestaddress.com/projects/event/

Artist Introduction
Mapped to the Closest Address
Mapped to the Closest Address is an interspecies dance collective composed of four human animals and a cat, Violeta. Through choreographic practices, the humans wish to interrogate their orientation towards modernity/coloniality, to question their understanding/entanglement/devotion/administration of/for nature and to shift their anthropocentric perspectives. Collectively, we sew practices to enter in contact with other nonhuman lifeforms. We use various devices to record our encounters and translate them into otherwise sound/landscapes. (quoted by Mapped to the Closest Address’s website)
Artists: Alex Viteri, Shuntaro Yoshida, Catalina Fernandez, Maharu Maeno, Violeta
https://www.mappedtotheclosestaddress.com/

Outline of the project
In collaboration with the art collective Mapped to the Closest Address, The Saison Foundation will conduct “Turn off the house lights”, a digital residency connecting art activities in Tokyo and Berlin.
Mapped to the Closest Address is based in Berlin’s Cordillera Garden, where they will record environmental sounds and landscape images as a practice to unravel awe, faith, and conflict with nature. The work-in-progress will be held on Friday, March 4, and they will share the experience of swaying in nature like building a fire and watching the sunset with participants.
Details of the work-in-progress will be announced on the Foundation’s website later.

Artist Information
Mapped to the Closest Address
Mapped to the Closest Address is an interspecies dance collective composed of four human animals and a cat, Violeta. Through choreographic practices, the humans wish to interrogate their orientation towards modernity/coloniality, to question their understanding/entanglement/devotion/administration of/for nature and to shift their anthropocentric perspectives. Collectively, we sew practices to enter in contact with other nonhuman lifeforms. We use various devices to record our encounters and translate them into otherwise sound/landscapes. (quoted by Mapped to the Closest Address)
Participating Artists: Alex Viteri, Shuntaro Yoshida, Catalina Fernandez, Maharu Maeno, Violeta
https://www.mappedtotheclosestaddress.com/