Tomoko Hojo (JPN)

Tomoko Hojo is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher working within the field of experimental music and sound art who’s going to participate on a residency stay here in Košice in October and November within project K.A.I.R. Košice Artist in Residence. Through the experiences of performing historical avant-garde musical works, her current works explore site-specific sound work referring to archival materials, field recordings, and storytelling. Within experimental music and sound art field, Tomoko Hojo’s works take various forms, like a composition, score-based or improvised performance, installation, and academic research. During this residency, Hojo would proceed with an ongoing project, which uses archive materials especially photographs. The question is ‘how those archives can be sounded?’ The archive reflects on the power of people who collected those materials and often the voices, especially female voices have been ignored. Although it seems like an objective record, there is always a subjective choice. The same things could be applied to the documentation of performance. There is always an imbalance power structure between events and its documentation. Whereas the performance is regarded as ‘an original/authentic’, its documents are being a secondary position. How can we convert this relationship in a playful way? Starting from the research about a Slovakian composer and visual artist Milan Adamčiak, collaborative performances based on archival photographs or ephemeras will be created for proposing an alternative narrative. Through researching, discussing, wondering, Hojo would imagine those ignored moments and give a new breath. The documents of this performance will be documented again in different ways and work as a critique of the original archive and its imbalanced power structure.

The residency program is supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council. The stay is also supported by Košice city and Creative Industry Košice. The residency is organized in cooperation with Youkobo Art Space.