Expertise

- Research on the relationship between dance history and contemporary dance, with a specific focus on practices of re-enactment - The reiterative nature of live performance in relation to (embodied) documentation, archivization, and historiography - The transcultural circulation of dance across different continents, with special interest in the migration of choreography through different spaces and times - New methodologies for dance historiography, including collaborative forms of making history and using these as input for contemporary dance practices and dance research

Technique

Oral history; literature study; case analysis; historical research on primary materials

Users

Choreographers and dancers; curators and artistic directors of cultural institutions (theatres, museums, etc.); art schools and conservatoires; performing arts critics; newspapers, radio, and television

Keywords

Dance studies, Dance policy, Dance, Dancers

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.

Technique

Lectures and talks; fieldwork trips and research visits; collaborative workshops and collective writings; dramaturgical practice such as festival curation; academic writing of scholarly books and articles.

Users

Those parties with interest in Japanese or Asian theatre; Japanese contemporary culture after the Fukushima pandemic; Those interested in contemporary theatre festivals and its dramaturgy; Parties interested in philosophy via theatre and performance; Post-colonial and decolonial perspectives from Asia; More-than-human performance and ecocritical philosophy of non-western vein.

Keywords

Japanese theatre, Performance philosophy, Nonhuman dramaturgy

Specialisations and interests: - film history, with specific research interests for the interconnections between film and the visual arts and the cinematic representations of landscapes, cities, and architecture - art history of the 20th and 21st centuries, with specific research interests for photography and late-modernist painting (including the work of Raoul De Keyser)

Technique

- Theoretical study - Archival research

Users

- art and culture

Keywords

Arts, Film

Studies in Theater, Performance, Popular Entertainment and Media Archaeology: with a focus on fin-de-siècle Belgium where technology, commerce, identity and perception are interconnected practices in popular performative spaces like circus, variety, fairground, magic, cinema, museum, world exhibition and café culture. By unveiling their dominant regimes and counter-regimes, new perspectives emerge on modernity, modernism and urban history studies

Technique

Archival and literature research, based on both written sources (newspapers, magazines, books, biographical documents) and unwritten sources (pictures, diapositives, film, visual arts, interviews), resulting in qualitative research

Users

Experts in the field of modernity, performance, visual culture, media and urban studies as well as the general public

Keywords

Media archaeology, Perception studies

- Research of the representation of the body and of the developments in contemporary performance arts.Most important field of interest is the so-called post dramatic theatre, i.e. forms of theatre that are no longer based on dramatic text. Most important case study is the theatre work of Jan Fabre. Next to analysis of the theatre performance also the creative process is central to my expertise: what is the status of the notebook? What kind of rehearsal process is being used? How do actors prepare themselves? What kind of acting method is being used?

Technique

Method of analysis in human sciences. Collaboration with sport sciences and kinesitherapy for analyses of performances of actors and dancers.

Users

- Performance art sector - Federal and sub-federal authorities - Education

Keywords

Media studies, Gender studies, Dramaturgy, Theatre science

His research interests are aimed at a critical analysis of film, television, radio, literature and other forms of media and culture. He has particular research expertise in Belgian and Dutch film history, film adaptations, film policy, and the relation between media and nation-building. He is the author of a monograph on the history of film policy in Flanders (Subsidie, camera, actie! Filmbeleid in Vlaanderen (1964-2002), 2017, Academia Press) and editor of European Film Remakes (with Eduard Cuelenaere and Stijn Joye, 2021, Edinburgh University Press) and an anthology on media and nation-building in Flanders (De verbeelding van de leeuw: Een geschiedenis van media en natievorming in Vlaanderen (with Bruno De Wever, 2020, Peristyle). He published various articles in journals such as the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Journal of Belgian History, Communications, Journal of Popular Film and Television and Literature/Film Quarterly.

Technique

Analysis of film and media

Users

People and organisations with an interest in film en media.

Keywords

Media, Media policy, Film history, Film, Nation building

In my research I focus on the way technology is used in contemporary performing arts and how artists reflect on the impact of technology on society and humanity. This field, in which the human being disappears from the centre, is called 'post-humanism'. An important aspect of this is the study of the agency of non-human entities, such as machines, animals, plants. In addition to post-humanism, my most recent work explores the consequences of the anthropocene and the climate catastrophe for the arts. Extinction, ends of worlds, are not easily captured in a work of art. I look at those performances and installations that have found strategies for this and analyse how they work (their dramaturgy) and how they contemplate on our current state of being.

Technique

Philosophy, performance philosophy, dramaturgy, text analysis, performance analysis, participatory observation, dramaturgy, art criticism.

Users

Art magazines, newspapers, artists, art students, theatres, museums, performance scholars, art critics, dramaturgs.

Keywords

Posthumanisme, Performance, Dramaturgy