Round Table 2:
Post Pandemic Art and Transnational Ecosystems

Can international collaborative creation take place without moving across national borders?
TERASIA set off from this question and has continued its activities mainly through online communication. Although this was initially a temporary method to cope with the coronavirus pandemic, today, in 2024, when international travel is once again possible with almost no restrictions, it is time to take a fresh look at the value of remote collaboration.

TERASIA’s practice is closely related to multiple issues surrounding the contemporary creative environment, such as changes in the political and social climate in various regions, disparities in access to grants and other funding opportunities, and the problem of freedom of expression. In a time where various new forms of collaboration are emerging around the world as “artist collectives,” we open a space to think together about the kinds of ecosystems that would enable and support future creative initiatives without being constrained by existing schemes.

In the first half of this roundtable, we will revisit models of presentation and production such as international art festivals, tour performances, and international coproductions, that were widely practiced since before the pandemic. Comparing them to the activities of TERASIA, we will attempt to examine the ecosystem that has made them possible. In the second half, we will discuss ideas for new ecosystems that can sustainably develop, nurture and incubate transnational collectives or collaborative projects such as TERASIA, which was born out of the pandemic.

Speakers:
Kaku Nagashima (Dramaturg, Japan)
Yudi Ahmad Tajudin (Director/Actor/Producer, Indonesia)
Yola Yulfianti (Interdisciplinary Artist, Indonesia)

Moderator:
Maho Watanabe (TERASIA Collective, Japan)

[Overview]
- Jakarta
Venue: Komunitas Utan Kayu - Beranda
Time and Date: 12:30-14:30, January 14, 2024
Language: Indonesian and English

Kaku Nagashima

A pioneering dramaturg in Japan, Kaku Nagashima has worked with a wide range of directors and choreographers. He translated plays by Samuel Beckett and other modern and contemporary playwrights. Recent years he got interested in bringing theatrical ideas and techniques out of the theatre to the town and takes actively part in art projects. He was appointed director of Festival/Tokyo from 2018 to 2020; one of the directors of Tokyo Festival from 2021 to 2023. He teaches dramaturgy and curatorial practice in the performing arts at Tokyo University of the Arts.

Yudi Ahmad Tajudin

Yudi Ahmad Tajudin is an Indonesian theater director, actor, curator, and producer who has presented his works on international performing arts stages and in forums. He is a co-founder of Teater Garasi, an interdisciplinary artist collective in Yogyakarta, and a co-initiator of this collective’s transformation into the Garasi Performance Institute—an open knowledge exchange platform for critical thinking and performance in Indonesia and Asia. Yudi has received various awards and fellowships, such as the Prince Claus Award in 2013 representing Teater Garasi, the Indonesian Minister of Education and Culture’s Arts Award (2014), Best Director in 2006 and 2022 by Tempo magazine, Asian Cultural Council (ACC) fellowship for contemporary theater studies in New York (2011-2012), and the 2019 Ibsen Scholarship for a cross-Asian collaborative project that he directed and co-produced.

Yola Yulfianti

Yola Yulfianti is an interdisciplinary artist based and living in Jakarta, Indonesia. Graduated from the Dance Department, Jakarta Institute of Arts, in 2004, she continued her studies five years later at the same campus at the Postgraduate School of Urban Arts and Culture Industry. Her dance film, Suku Yola, received the Pearl Winner Award at the Internationale Tanz Film Pool Festival, in Germany, 2012. She completed her doctoral studies at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts Surakarta in 2017 and has worked since as a lecturer at the Postgraduate School of the Jakarta Institute of Arts. From 2020 to 2023, she was chairman of the dance committee at the Jakarta Arts Council. In 2021, together with Josh Marcy and Siko Setyanto, she initiated Dansity—a choreographer collective based on exploration and experimentation. She is also a member of the Translocal Performative Academy, an Asian-European artistic research collective initiated by Claudia Bosse, an Austrian artist. Yola’s dance works have been performed at various festivals and arts projects, with artistic research often focusing on urban and virtual reality experiences.

Maho Watanabe

Maho Watanabe is a translator and dramaturg who works in and around art, media, and humanitarian work. In 2014, during her year abroad in the West Bank as an Arabic Studies student, she joined the director Yukari Sakata in Rashomon | Yabunonaka, a theatre co-production by Palestinian and Japanese artists. This marked her first involvement in performing arts, followed by numerous international collaboration projects, festivals, and workshops. Her translation of Lilac Duhaa (Death in the Era of IS) by Palestinian playwright Ghannam Ghannam won the 2019 Odashima Yushi Award for Drama Translation. She served as dramaturg for the original production of TERA (2018), and in May 2020, she was part of initiating TERASIA with Kop in Thailand and other artists. She is an Asian Cultural Council fellow for 2022.