The performance Sticky Hands, Stitched Mountains opened the main program of the 2024 Kyoto Experiment Festival (京都国際舞台芸術祭, KEX) through an artistic-curatorial dialogue. Staging the process of relating to each other and learning about each other’s artistic and sociocultural backgrounds, Anchi Lin (林安琪, Ciwas Tahos) and Nanako Matsumoto (松本奈々子) developed a proposal for a queer-feminist geopoetics: Matsumoto, a well-known contemporary dance artist in Japan, recounts how she and Ciwasns[1]—an Indigenous artist of Atayal/Itaṟal and Taiwanese Hō-ló descent—met in Taipei and gradually developed a working relationship that culminated in this piece. While Matsumoto speaks, Ciwas tears down large slices of handmade paper from frames where they were drying, piling them into a mountain beside her. She later explains her action as "creating a mountain cross-border". The stage itself resembles an exhibition, with carefully selected objects that embody this attempt: a camphor tree (native to both Japan and Taiwan), garden gloves suspended over a water basin like an ancient well, and sheets of handmade paper.[2]

Intricately interwoven with references, Sticky Hands, Stitched Mountains grounds itself in pan-ecological research and a queer interpretation from narratives in the Atayal legend Temahahoi and the Japanese mythological figure Yamamba (山姥). Matsumoto performs movement patterns inspired by Yamamba from Noh theatre, dragging her foot in circular motions as she explores themes of rejection, fear, and disgust projected onto Yamamba’s solitary "female demon" in the mountains— revealing these attitudes as reflections of misogyny within patriarchal structures[3]. This figure intersects with Temahahoi’s stories, which likewise feature secluded women inhabiting a mountain space. The handmade paper on-stage highlights a sensitive theme in Ciwas’ ancestral research: the role of Japanese anthropologists in recording Atayal and other Indigenous Peoples’ histories, as Japan’s ethnological research intensified during its Pacific colonial expansion. These written records have an ambiguous significance because, unlike the Atayal oral histories, they have provided the artist with insights into cultural narratives that are otherwise inaccessible to the embodied memory of largely urbanized and Sinicized Indigenous communities in Taiwanese society.

Sticky Hands, Stitched Mountains exemplifies not only the collaborative potential of artistic endeavors but also reflects a growing commitment to collectivity in curatorial practices across the region in recent years. It marks the first co-production between two major organizations, Kyoto Experiment—a festival held annually in Japan’s historic capital since 2010—and the Taipei Performing Arts Center (臺北表演藝術中心, TPAC), a landmark institution of Taiwan’s democratic era which opened in 2022[4]. The latter’s annual "Asia Discovers Asia Meeting for Contemporary Performance" (ADAM, 亞當計畫) originally enabled the artists to meet, with Matsumoto participating in an edition guest-curated by Ciwas in 2023. ADAM embodies a commitment to intra-Asian dialogue as a foundation for regional collaborative practice, focusing on artistic peer networking[5]. Each August, it disrupts the Taipei Performing Arts Center’s proscenium model by leaving its three stages "empty",[6] while filling rehearsal studios with a cohort of international creators—artists and artist-curators—who engage with curators, programmers, and producers to present work-in-progress. Established by River Lin (林人中), ADAM, which is discussed in more detail below, operates as an artist-led model where past participants can co-curate subsequent editions. Its integrative, collectivizing dynamic seeks to offer a perspective on transforming not only how performance-making works, but also how social and professional relationships in the field are understood, created and sustained. Exploring Kyoto Experiment and ADAM, which is affiliated with the Taipei Arts Festival (臺北藝術節), this article traces two collectively curated frameworks that not only expand but partially invert the roles of artist and curator, reimagining performing arts production and festival organization in contemporary East Asia. By exploring the interplay between artistic research and curatorial processes, it analyzes how these frameworks structure collaborative practice, ultimately broadening the discourse on artist-curator dynamics within institutional contexts.

The festival as a platform: Collective curation in Kyoto Experiment since 2020

Since its founding by Yusuke Hashimoto 橋本裕介 in 2010, Kyoto Experiment has established itself as a major platform for theater, dance, and cross-disciplinary performance in the Kansai region, while presenting a predominantly European international program. When he decided to hand over the position of director after a decade, Hashimoto recognized the need to distribute curatorial responsibilities to further engage with the festival in relation to local geography and proposed that the festival be placed in the hands of a collective directorship. Since 2020, it has been led by the trio of Yoko Kawasaki (川崎陽子), Yuya Tsukahara (塚原悠也) and Juliet Reiko Knapp (ジュリエット・礼子・ナップ). Although curatorial decisions are now made collaboratively, the model has drawn on each of their individual strengths: Tsukahara, an artist from the contact Gonzo collective, in dramaturgy; Kawasaki, the festival’s longtime production manager, in organizational management; and Knapp, who is bilingual in Japanese and English, in international communications. They expanded the concept by creating space for artistic research and expert discussions, alongside the performance program.[7] With the inclusion of these research-based formats, the festival’s relation to the Kansai region has come into focus—to question its potentials and differences from the Kanto region, where the capital, Tokyo, is situated and where the majority of arts resources and international networking have been concentrated.[8]

ADAM’s roots in the ”performance art festival” and the ”performing arts market” model

Although the ADAM platform was only launched in Taiwan in 2017, the Taipei Arts Festival has been an established event since the late 1990s. During the construction of the Taipei Performing Arts Center—a new cultural landmark in Taipei— a strategic decision was made to integrate the Festival into the Center in 2018. ADAM thus emerged to increase the international visibility and networks of both the festival and the new institution; working with an annual theme and two main formats, an "Artist Lab" and a "Gathering." The Artist Lab is a three-week artist residency where regional and local artists get to know each other, participating in discussions, workshops and field trips. As suggested above, a multi-year circulation allows former participants to return the following year to either present the next step in their work-in-progress trajectories or to act as facilitators for the next edition of the Lab.[9] Following the Lab, the Gathering invites a cohort of international professionals and collaborators to Taipei, where participating artists present work-in-progress performances, among other networking formats. Unlike in Kyoto, these formats are not part of the festival program itself but form an extended research and conversation base. Combining residency and work-in-progress presentations, ADAM draws on artist-led practices in performance art (such as the work of Seiji Shimoda (霜田 誠二), Lee Wen (李文) and Boris Nieslony),[10] but is also linked to the development of more market-driven networks in the region and beyond.[11]

To understand this shift in curatorial engagement – marked increasingly by collaboration and networking in recent years—one must consider the broader historical context. Taiwan’s path to democratization, initiated by the lifting of Martial Law in 1987, has coincided with a sustained commitment to enhancing the international visibility of its arts sector. Retrospectively, the period from the 1990s to the 2010s reflects what Chen Ya-ping (陳雅萍) terms the “aesthetics of the Eastern body” that emerged alongside a rising market for Taiwanese modern dance defined by troupes such as Cloud Gate Dance Theater (雲門舞集), U-Theatre (優人神鼓) and Legend Lin Dance Theatre 無垢舞蹈劇場).[12] While their portrayals of an exoticized ”East” have rightly drawn critique, the ongoing debate around practices of Othering also brings to light the genuine attempts during this period to redefine cultural identity and forge distinct artistic approaches within Taiwan’s emerging democratic landscape. Since the 2010s, a younger generation of artists has increasingly recognized the need to address these troupes’ "trade show structure" (商展系統, shang zhan xitong) approach, where large-scale international tours and structurally imbalanced co-productions with Euro-American directors and local casts often dominated.[13] Following a range of attempts, the ADAM platform emerged in response, proposing new pathways for collaboration by emphasizing artist-led curation.[14]

Out of Asia: Intra-Asian referencing and curatorial work

Collaborative curating has gained traction in Asia over the past decade more generally, particularly for fostering intra-Asian co-productions. Despite ongoing challenges to regional equity, initiatives like the Indonesian Dance Festival (IDF) and Bangkok International Performing Arts Meeting (BIPAM) reveal similar curatorial approaches. Expanding such comparisons to include visual arts and grassroots collaborations could further explore relational curatorial practices and cross-regional solidarities.[15] The "crossing methodologies" employed in these intersecting frameworks provoke a rethinking of localized responses to global issues, navigating boundaries of nation, culture, language, and (de-)colonial trajectories.[16] A comparative approach offers promising potential for exploring the interdependent dynamics between different curatorial practices in contemporary performance. By exploring a spectrum ranging from more formalized institutional models to informal, collaborative ones, such an approach can shed light on how these diverse practices shape understandings of curation, collaboration and co-curation in selected cases.[17] While comparisons could in principle include similar examples from Europe, this would expose the limitations of a "global perspective" and highlights the importance of particularising and "provincializing" regional contexts of collaboration.[18] In this regard, Shih Shu-mei’s (史書美) call to reframe comparative studies states an important point in critiquing the Eurocentric bias in traditional comparative frameworks, which often portray the ”East” as an unknowable ”Other” or as a precursor to the ”West.” Such a vertical model imposes a rigid hierarchy that organizes various cultural expressions along a developmental continuum, implicitly positioning them within a trajectory toward a singular ideal or ultimate form. In response, Shih advocates for a Relational (capital "R") rather than hierarchical approach, encouraging a shift from traditional, vertically structured toward an interconnected view that emphasizes simultaneity, structure, and interconnection.[19]

The example of Sticky Hands, Stitched Mountains, which developed over a two-year period within diverse co-production frameworks, highlights a complex research-based approach that, given its political sensitivity regarding colonial histories, could have easily taken a problematic direction.[20] It demonstrates that transnational collaboration or co-production structures are not predefined pathways but rather evolve as case-by-case projects within frameworks that embrace the collective dimension and require a great deal of dialogue and trust between those involved. In the broader Asian context, several factors shape these frameworks, with geographical distance and socio-cultural diversity being particularly significant. In the absence of overarching funding schemes for intra-regional artist networks and performing arts production—especially those equally accessible across countries—production methods tend to be agent-centered and context-specific. Addressing these practices, therefore, requires recognizing how strongly they are shaped by geographical and historical conditions, as well as by the tension between national dependencies on cultural funding policies and broader international structuring processes designed to foster cross-border collaboration (e.g. Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy). Curators in this context occupy a complex and often paradoxical position that, in the words of Chua Beng Huat (蔡明發), can lend "good reasons for bad practices"[21]. Their work, drawing on local and empirical insights, is still frequently appropriated to reinforce or expand "global" Western terminologies and curatorial frameworks. The discussion of collaborative aspects in such work introduces a similar challenge, as it risks falling into essentialist comparisons. It also seems only fair to note here that I am writing as a white European woman entering a non-European context. Although I bring years of study and experience in the region, I recognize that such writing inherently risks becoming yet another "centering machine" within theory discourse. This awareness, as it is addressed, won’t prevent at least an attempt at decentralization as the horizon of this task of writing, which may be far out of reach, but remains productive to strive for precisely in this sense.

Moving towards collective curating

The above considerations suggest that decentralized, collaborative curatorial practices have gained momentum as alternative models within the interregional pathways of artistic collaboration discussed—shaped by a recognition of the limitations inherent in singularly authored concepts. ADAM exemplifies this shift, serving as a platform where principles of "curating curators" have taken shape. Here, artists are encouraged to engage in networking activities, with the role of artist-curator designed to support their growth as artists rather than to cultivate them as formal curators. This model emphasizes community as a counter-narrative to globalized frameworks of art and performance, as each year’s artist-curator shapes themes based on their own artistic trajectory, deepening the shared knowledge of regional performance practices and centering embodied, locally rooted epistemologies.[22] Expanding beyond Taiwan, ADAM’s 2024 edition, titled Theirborhood, marked its first trans-regional collaboration with Bangkok International Performing Arts Meeting (BIPAM), setting a precedent for future partnerships, including one with Australia’s Asia TOPA in 2025. In this light, the 2024 Kyoto Experiment edition also exemplifies the shift towards decentralizing curatorial practices and anchoring them within regional contexts. Yet, this year’s festival program also faced setbacks in this direction: nearly half of the performances were part of Dance Reflections, a francophile "festival-within-a-festival" curated by Serge Laurent and sponsored by Van Cleef & Arpels. This sub-program featured French works that were generally accessible but also included pieces that would have required more careful curatorial attention, particularly in the context of presenting them in Japan. One such example is Bombyx Mori and Loïe Fuller: Research by Ola Maciejewska, which, while inspired by Fuller’s Serpentine Dance, entirely failed to engage with Fuller’s European tours of Japanese performers such as Sada Yacco (川上 貞奴), who were promoted through an exoticized Japonism.[23] Kyoto Experiment’s decision to include Dance Reflections as part of the program could certainly be interpreted as an attempt to bolster the festival’s reach, despite the challenge of maintaining artistic integrity.

The persistence of such problematic frameworks underscores the urgent need to consider curating as a relational, situated and dialogical endeavor. While in recent developments in Asian regions, collaborative approaches to institutionalized curatorial practice have become more prominent, these also reflect the pursuit of a collective dimension—as an aspirational paradigm. In reimagined non-Western contexts, such practices often carry the hope of dismantling entrenched structures and artist-curator hierarchies, while opening up to horizontal concepts of networking that stimulate intra-regional epistemologies and emergent practices of mutual engagement. The shift towards collectively curated, relational practices thus offers a crucial opportunity to rethink not only how artistic visibility is constructed, but also how curatorial interactions themselves are shaped and nurtured, and to develop organizational practices that are more attuned to the complex, layered nature of intersecting contexts.

Freda Fiala, a wayfarer between Performance and East Asian Studies, works at the University of the Arts Linz. Informed by stays in Berlin, Hong Kong, and Taipei, she writes on transcontemporary arts ecologies.