Artist
Seiji Shimoda

Japan
https://www.asa.de/magazine/iss2/27seiji.htm

Seiji Shimoda is one of Japan’s most active, well-known and respected performance artists. He is a performer, a poet, an arts advocate, organizer, curator and lecturer at the Musashino Art University in Tokyo. Since graduating Osaka City University in 1977, Shimoda’s work has been presented at over 100 international festivals, conferences and galleries, in more than 30 countries across western and central Europe, North and Central America and throughout Asia. Shimoda is the Director of NIPAF (Nippon International Performance Art Festival, established in 1993) and has presented the work of over 300 international and Asian performance artists from 45 countries around the world in two annual festivals that take place in several cities in Japan. Under Shimoda’s direction, NIPAF has become one of the most influential festivals in the global performance art community and is a sought after destination for performance artists from around the world. Shimoda also organizes tours under the umbrella of NIPAF to promote art exchange and dialogue about performance art to the US, Poland, Philippines, Germany and Spain. In 2000, Shimoda was the first Asian artist to receive a prized Bessie Award (New York Dance and Performance). Shimoda’s own performance work is a combination of action poetry, performance and movement, and employing simple objects like chopsticks, a chair, a table and his physical body in unique ways. 

Performance
On the Table by Seiji Shimoda

Over fifteen years since he first performed On the Table in Toronto at the Ontario College of Art, Seiji Shimoda returns to present this seminal work again. Audiences are invited to experience this rare and unique opportunity to witness, in person, the work of one of Japan’s most respected and established performance artists. More so, the invitation is an opportunity to experience a performance work that has stood – quite literally – the test of time. Shimoda has been travelling and working with this performance, often (in the early years) bringing his own table, for over two decades. 

Thanks to Marilyn Arsem, Mobius and the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston for their support in helping to bring Seiji Shimoda to North America.

© Seiji Shimoda, On the Table, 2008. Photo Miklos Legrady.

Performance Yellow

This fragrance opens us to the question, has the show started? It's winter, the theatre is colder than the street and the room is filled with people and all their winter smells: wet faux leather, down, too much shampoo, and beer breath. The atmosphere is a trickster. Am I late, am I early?

Top Notes

yellow mandarin, mimosa

Middle Notes

honey, chamomile, salt

Base Notes

narcissus, guaiac wood, piss, beer