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ApplicationMorishita StudioSaison AIR
2023/06/14

Open call: Saison Artist in Residence Visiting Fellows 2023

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

ApplicationSaison AIR
2022/06/02

Open call: Saison Artist in Residence Visiting Fellows 2022

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

Saison AIR
2022/03/07

Online Symposium: “Looking Back on 50 Years of Indigenous Cultural and Artistic Activities in Australia and Japan”

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

Saison AIR
2022/02/24

“Turn off the house lights”, a midnight transmission

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/

Saison AIR
2022/02/07

Digital residency: Mapped to the Closest Address

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/

Saison AIR
2022/01/21

Online Research Residency 2021/22 Open Group Session

In the open group session, the participating artists will be all together to share their own research outcomes with some visual and audio materials with audience online. Please join our final open group session on 9 and 10 February 2022.

Date and time
Day1: Wednesday 9 February 2022 5:00 pm–8:00 pm (JST, UTC+9)
– 3M0T1NG by Zander Porter (USA/Germany)
– Presentation and Imagination of Jasmine Town by Zhen Yang (China)
– A lesson for dancing Imaginary Waltz by Nanako Matsumoto (Japan)

Day2: Thursday 10 February 2022 5:00 pm–8:00 pm (JST, UTC+9)
– Aqua Lung by Pat Toh (Singapore)
– Cues – work in progress for Cue by Pijin Neji (Japan)
– Research Sharing on the project Ghostly Swinging Microphone by He Jin Jang (Korea)

After the presentation, there will be a 10-minute break. Then, there will be an open discussion for about 1 hour.

Registration
Please fill in the Google Form: https://forms.gle/GMjYTMF5Q1qEkQUJ8
* We will send a link of the Zoom meeting via email a few days before the session.
* The detailed timetable for the day will be attached to the email sent to you.

ORR_2021OGS_Eのサムネイル

Saison AIR
2021/12/15

Online Research Residency 2021/22 Online Workshop

This workshop aims to share the artists’ original dance practices, methods and training with the participating artists and the general public online.

Saturday, 8 January, 2022
“Emoting:[webcam*webcam](^z)” by Zander Porter
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm (JST/UTC+9)
A lesson for dancing Imaginary Waltz” by Nanako Matsumoto
6:30 pm – 7:40 pm (JST/UTC+9)

Saturday, 15 January, 2022
“Howling” by Pijin Neji
5:00 pm – 6:10 pm (JST/UTC+9)
“Weekly Weakly #128” by He Jin Jang
6:40 pm – 8:00 pm (JST/UTC+9)

Saturday, 22 January, 2022
“Air Ways” by Pat Toh
5:00 pm – 6:10 pm (JST/UTC+9)
“Moving out of the Body from History” by Zhen Yang
6:40 pm – 8:10 pm (JST/UTC+9)
*Please check your local time carefully

To register for the workshop, please fill in the Google Form:
https://forms.gle/UiKgTFsHUJzSd3px7
*Free of charge

For the details of the other online workshops, please see the following link,
https://www.saison.or.jp/orr_2021ws_e

ORR_WSoutline_Enのサムネイル

Saison AIR
2021/11/10

Online Research Residency 2021/22

Check out the participating artists for Online Research Residency 2021/22.
orr_2021artists_enのサムネイル

ApplicationSaison AIR
2021/07/14

Online Research Residency 2021/22

The Saison Foundation is a private grant-making foundation established by Seiji Tsutsumi in July 1987. The foundation supports projects and activities related to contemporary Japanese theater and dance. In order to increase the visibility of contemporary Japanese performing arts on a worldwide level, The Saison Foundation awards grants and priority use of its rehearsal/workshop and residence facilities at Morishita Studio in Tokyo.

This program supports creative research for international dance/performance/interdisciplinary artists who are expected to play an important role in the international performing arts scene, with aims to build an international network for contemporary performing arts and to enhance mutual understanding.
Online Research Residency offers artistic development opportunities to research and spend time building links with the other participating artists.

For details, please see the following program guidelines.

– Online residency period: November 10, 2021, and February 10, 2022
– Grant: 350,000 yen (JPY)
– 5 international artists will be selected for this online research residency including a Japanese artist

[Online Research Residency]

2021 Online Research Residency Program Guidelines

Please find out more about our current and past programs at our website.
Saison Artist in Residence
Online Research Residency 2020/21

The Saison Foundation extends its sincere gratitude to the following Legal Entity Support members and for their generous contributions (as of March 2023/in alphabetical order):