Seiji Shimoda, director of the Nippon International Performance Art Festival (NIPAF) spoke yesterday evening with guests at Atelier Wonderful about the festival in Japan, the challenges of performance art in Asia and his own experience with the avant-garde movements in Japan in the sixties and seventies from which NIPAF emerged.

I was interested when Seiji said few critics can speak about contemporary performance art in Japan, despite Japan having an established and well-documented avant-garde art history dating back to the Gutai movement in the 1950's. He claimed this history is precisely what prevents many critics from engaging with the contemporary art performance practice. Critics have tended to specialize in these established historical movements or forms. Several of the directors of such large international art events as the Fukuoka and Yokohama triennials were colleagues of Seiji many years before and they remain close. Yet performance has still to be fully integrated into these venues.

It was also refreshing to hear Seiji's own perspective on NIPAF and his reply to critics of various performance art festivals in Asia. NIPAF was founded and continues to be a venue for emerging artists, including currently enrolled university students. As such it is less interested in highlighting large performance works or established big names. In fact, NIPAf has been an enabler for such well-known artists as Ma Liuming (China) where it worked to provide him his first entry to perform outside of China. Many of the organizers of other peformance art festivals in Asia such as PIPAF and Asiatopia were first participants in NIPAF years ago. Ly Hoang Ly, Ngo Thai Uyen and Bui Cong Khanh - three of the five members of ProjectOne, have performed in Japan with NIPAF in different festivals.

NIPAF, founded in 1993, now moves to its seventh festival this June. Rather than perform at the next festival I've instead opted to assist Seiji in organizing a future event in Southeast Asia. I hope to be able to recommend a young artist or student that has yet to interact outside of Vietnam in my place.

I would also like to thank artist Sandrine Llouquet (above in pink, with artist Ly Hoang Ly), Co-director of Atelier Wonderful, for providing a forum for Seiji. 

REMINDER
Sue Hadju performs MAGMA at Galerie Quynh at 7PM. See entry below for details