Directors’ Forum

OGAWA Nozomu

From 2002 to 2006, Ogawa organized "Ongoing," a large-scale exhibition that publicly recruited young artists, at various locations in Tokyo and Yokohama, on an annual pace. Based on the network of hundreds of young artists formed by its unique open recruitment and mutual selection system, in January 2008 Ogawa established Art Center Ongoing, an art complex in Tokyo’s Kichijoji neighborhood which is designed to be a place for the ongoing practice and dissemination of new cultural experiments unbound by existing values. He currently serves as the Center’s director. Between 2009 and 2020 he was chief director of TERATOTERA, a series of art projects closely connected with the area between the Koenji and Kokubunji stations on the JR Chuo Line. In 2016, Ogawa received a fellowship from the Japan Foundation to conduct research on 83 art spaces in 9 countries across Southeast Asia. In 2021, Ogawa went to Austria for one year under the Agency for Cultural Affairs’ Program of Overseas Study for Upcoming Artists. From 2020 to 2022, he was curator of the Letter / Art / Project,“TODOKU.”

Martine DENNEWALD

Co-Artistic Director of Festival TransAmériques
After completing studies in dramaturgy (Leipzig, Germany) and arts management (London, UK), Martine Dennewald worked for theatres and theatre festivals in Luxembourg, Germany, the United Kingdom, Hungary, Switzerland and Austria. She then joined Niels Ewerbeck for a few years as dramaturg at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt. Between 2015 and 2020, she was the artistic director of Festival Theaterformen – an eleven-day performing arts festival which takes place alternately in the cities of Hanover and Braunschweig (Germany). Since mid-June 2021 Martine Dennewald co-directs Festival TransAmériques in Montreal (Canada) together with Jessie Mill.

River LIN

Artist, ADAM Curator
River Lin is a performance artist working across the contexts of visual art, dance and queer culture through making, researching, and curating. He works collaboratively and collectively with conditions of cultural communities, sites and institutional critiques to stage live works as choreography, durational installations, encounters or situations to investigate heteronormative narratives and settings of art history and contemporary society. His work has been presented by Centre Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo, Lafayette Anticipations, Centre National de la Danse (Paris), KANAL Centre Pompidou (Brussels), and Live Art Development Agency (London) among others. Since 2017 he has directed ADAM (Asia Discovers Asia Meeting for Contemporary) with Taipei Performing Arts Centre to facilitate artists from across the Asia-Pacific region and beyond in exchange.

KAWASAKI Yoko, TSUKAHARA Yuya, Juliet KNAPP

Co-Directors of KYOTO EXPERIMENT

KAWASAKI Yoko
After working at CAN Inc. and as an art coordinator for Kyoto Art Center from 2011-2014, she was a fellow for the Program of Overseas Study by the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan and studied at HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin. In recent years she has planned and produced interdisciplinary performing arts projects. She has been involved as production coordinator at KYOTO EXPERIMENT since 2011 and is co-director since 2020.

TSUKAHARA Yuya
After graduating with a master’s degree in Aesthetics and Art Studies from Kwansei Gakuin University, he joined NPO DANCEBOX as a volunteer and later became a staff member. In 2006, he began activities as an artist as a member of the performance group contact Gonzo. In 2020, he received the Best staff award at the Yomiuri Theater Awards for his scenography and choreography in the theater work Pratthana – A Portrait of Possession. Since 2020 he is also a part-time lecturer at the Department of Sculpture at Kyoto City University of Arts.


Juliet KNAPP
Born in Fukuoka. Graduated Oxford University with a BA in English Literature and Language. From 2015-2017 she worked as communications manager and project manager for music and performance at Ryoji Ikeda Studio. She has been involved as a member of the PR team at KYOTO EXPERIMENT since 2017 and is co-director since 2020.