A Performing Arts Festival for Everyone (Who Supports Diversity) and the Queer Performance Art Ecosystem in Bangkok
12 March 2025 16.20 - 17.00 at Jim Thompson Art Center
The presentation will be divided into two parts:
1. Introduction to H0M0HAUS
This segment introduces H0M0HAUS, a newly emerging festival dedicated to performative arts and diversity. The festival brings together artists, curators, and individuals interested in performance art and gender diversity to establish a safe space for LGBTQ+ individuals—while also challenging patriarchal power structures. Utilizing experimental performance art as a tool—at times breaking conventions, at times working within them but never conforming to norms—H0M0HAUS embodies resistance at every level, from diplomatic negotiation to radical defiance, from compromise to extremity.
2. Overview of the Queer Performance Art Ecosystem in Bangkok
This section provides a concise overview of the queer performing art community in Bangkok, introducing queer performing artists within the H0M0HAUS network, their works, and their artistic perspectives.
DAY 1
12 MAR
Speakers:
Pathipon (Miss Oat) Mama of the Haus, Festival Director
International producer's networks in Asia and beyond
13 March 2025 11.20 - 12.00 at Jim Thompson Art Center
Over the past decade, numerous independent networks for producers have been initiated across Asia, and internationally. In this session we will hear from three examples including Producers.sg (Singapore); PAMPA (Europe) and the Asian Producers Platform. While each of these networks function differently within their communities, all offer an independent alternative that prioritises peer-led exchange and learning, supports advocacy and builds solidarity, particularly for independent practitioners. Through this discussion we will also highlight similar groups and networks that have proliferated in recent years and consider the challenges of maintaining impact and longevity, and how these how these groups might connect with and learn from each other.
Acting Networks, Act in Networks: Garasi Performance Institute
13 March 2025 11.20 - 11.40 at LIBI Home
Performing arts inherently function within and through networks; they cannot be accomplished as individual efforts. This raises an important question: what if the network itself becomes the foundation for an institution's work and performance? This question serves as the basis for how the Garasi Performance Institute (GPI) operates and develops its programming as an open platform hub.
GPI was officially established as an institution this year, its origins trace back since 2017; individual artists, art workers, and various art collectives began collaborating across multiple cities in Indonesia, including Maumere, Makassar, Madura, Yogyakarta, Jakarta, and Bandung.
GPI based on the paradigm of performing networks, acting as networks, and functioning within networks through its incubation programs and knowledge exchange spaces in the intercultural context with their stake holders (i.e spectators)
DAY 2
13 MAR
Speakers:
Asian Producers Platform, Producers.sg and PAMPA with Shaifulbahri Mohamad, Jin Yim, Freya Waterson and Ian Abbott
Speaker:
Garasi Performance Institute
Futuring the Performing Arts in Thai Higher Education and its relationship with the industry
Asia-Europe Cultural Festival - A new 3 years strategy
13 March 2025 15.10 - 15.50 at Jim Thompson Art Center
This roundtable offers invites the audience to brainstorm images of the future for the Performing Arts (PA) in Thailand in university and industry settings. Questions discussed include:
• How can the Thai PA community redesign 'performing arts' pedagogy in Thai HE to reflect who we are and what we need?
• How can PA teaching and training outside of universities work more effectively with PA programmes in universities?
The roundtable begins with three 7-minute provocations:
• Dr Tanatchaporn Kittikong presents her research on Fine Arts Curriculum design within Thai Higher Education accompanied by an analysis of interviews with Thai lecturers/instructors in PA
• Dr Grisana Punpeng reflects on his theatre practitioner and higher education educator experience, exploring how Thai performer training programmes can integrate cultural heritage into contemporary theatre practices
• Dr Vipavinee Artpradid discusses a Thai-UK academic-industry collaboration on the development of a UK Arts and Humanities Research Council funding proposal
Speakers:
Dr Tanatchaporn Kittikong, Khon Kaen University, Faculty of Fine and Dr Grisana Punpeng, Applied Arts B.F.A. Performance Practice Program,
Thammasat University,
Dr Vipavinee Artpradid, Centre for Dance Research (Coventry University, UK)
13 March 2025 15.10 - 15.50 at LIBI Home
The Asia-Europe Cultural Festival (AECFest) is a multidisciplinary arts festival that celebrates the artistic diversity of Asia and Europe and promotes dialogue and exchange amongst artists from the two regions. Presented by the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF), the festival travels each year to a different country of Asia and Europe offering a diverse range of contemporary art forms and practices. The festival is dedicated to showcasing works that embody deep collaborations between artists across 51 countries of Asia and Europe.
Starting in 2025, ASEF is launching a three-year Strategic Action Plan (2025–2027) for the AECFest to further strengthen its impact and sustainability. This plan aims to deepen artistic collaborations, expand audience engagement, and enhance the festival’s presence across Asia and Europe. ASEF is actively seeking partners to develop key festival activities, including artist showcases, a residency programme, and co-productions that foster meaningful creative exchanges.
Speakers:Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) - Culture Department
One Dance, Multiple Cities, Long Festival: When a creative process is stretched across time and borders
Bumantara: Platforming the In-Betweenness of Southeast Asia
13 March 2025 16.00 - 16.40 at Jim Thompson Art Center
To facilitate cultural and knowledge exchange and create sustainable co-production network, Thinkers' Studio (Taiwan) and Unlock Dancing Plaza (Hong Kong) have worked together with three other regional partners to establish an Asia-Pacific circuit in the format of a festival namely #DANCELESS complex for organic exchange and flexible support system. They will take this model as an example to unpack their curatorial practice and production model in response to the diminishing cultural funding across the region and further explore the way how organization can work as a cultural agent to support artistic development.
Speakers:
:Kao Yi-Kai (Thinkers’ Studio, Taiwan)
Joseph Lee (Unlock Dancing Plaza, Hong Kong)
Cybernetics Subinnimit: On Natasin, Cultural Evolution, and Human-AI Co-Dancing
13 March 2025 16.00 - 16.40 at LIBI Home
Bumantara is a futurist concept coined by Indonesian intellectual Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana (STA), combining bumi (land/earth) and antara (in-between) to chart Southeast Asia as a fluid geopolitical entity. Introduced in 1975 amid post-ASEAN debates and Cold War tensions, Bumantara offers an ingenious vision of internationalism that challenges the marginalization of Southeast Asia within the hegemonic world order.
For the 2025–2027 edition, Djakarta International Theater Platform (D_Theater Platform) adopts Bumantara as a critical compass for navigating connections, collaborations, and conviviality across artistic disciplines, national borders, and cultural imaginaries. Orienting itself within the in-between-ness of Southeast Asia, D_Theater Platform seeks to reconfigure how we experience and perform the region—not as a rigid geopolitical entity but as a space of intimacy and possibility.
The D_Theater Platform Table at BIPAM will serve as a launch pad, inviting participants to reflect on what it means to think and perform through Southeast Asia’s in-betweenness. How do we inhabit the in-between? What new solidarities and artistic languages emerge from this shifting terrain?
Speakers:
Yustiansyah Lesmana (Director),
Akbar Yumni and Brigitta Isabella (Co-curators)
Asian Identity in French Canadian Theater
13 March 2025 16.50 - 17.10 at Jim Thompson Art Center
The talk examines how Thai classical dance calcified from a living art form into rigid stereotypes a century ago, stripping away the dynamic knowledge embedded in its movement systems. Through Project No. 60, Pichet Klunchun reverse-engineered traditional dance's underlying principles into six parameters, laying the groundwork for the following project, "Cyber Subin" - where human dancers now improvise alongside AI partners that manipulate classical vocabulary in real-time. This fusion suggests a third path beyond mere preservation or abandonment: using technology to rekindle the adaptive spirit that birthed these dance forms, pointing toward new possibilities for cultural evolution.
Chayapatr Archiwaranguprok builds experimental technologies at the intersection of art and technology as an HCI researcher and creative technologist at Creatorsgarten. His work includes "Cyber Subin," an AI-augmented dance performance; "A Bit of Thai Tunes," a digital deconstruction of traditional music; and "MESSE," which encoded music into DNA for space exploration. His projects have been exhibited in venues such as Ars Electronica, Taiwan International Arts Festival, and Bangkok Design Week. His academic contributions include published research papers in applied computing and human-computer interaction on ACM and IEEE.
Speaker:
Chayapatr Archiwaranguprok (Pub)
13 March 2025 16.50 - 17.30 at LIBI Home
In my theatrical practice, I explore Asian identity within a Québecois French environment, shaped by my experience as a Kazakh adoptee. Navigating a space where Asian narratives remain marginal, I question notions of race, language, and belonging. My work blends personal history with fiction to interrogate displacement, cultural hybridity, and the gaze imposed on Asian bodies in a predominantly white theatrical landscape.
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I propose a reimagining of Victor Hugo’s Lucrèce Borgia from Gennaro’s perspective—an orphan who idolizes his birth mother until the truth shatters his world. This adaptation mirrors my experience as a Kazakh adoptee, where maturity brings a reckoning with adoption, war, racism, and genealogy.
Born up in the former Soviet Union, I inherited a fragmented history. Like Gennaro, my journey has been shaped by the tension between myth and reality, between longing and truth. This work will explore how uncovering one’s origins can be both revelatory and destabilizing, challenging the narratives imposed upon us.
Speaker:
Production YUZU
Palu Menari Festival
13 March 2025 17.20 - 17.40 at Jim Thompson Art Center
Palu Menari Festival was initiated in 2019 as an activation space for choreographers and dancers in Central Sulawesi after the earthquake, tsunami and liquefaction that occurred on September 28, 2018. In 2022, as a new journey in developing contemporary dance in Central Sulawesi and slowly building a sustainable dance ecosystem in Palu.
Palu Menari Festival, a dance space located in public space by synergizing the spirit of local residents with the value of culture and tourism. The festival also initiated a writing activation for choreographers and a dance archive exhibition. Held in the middle of a village where the community is still unfamiliar with contemporary dance.
Speakers:
Iin Ainar Lawide (Komunitas Seni Lobo, Indonesia)
Morlam Reinvented: Integrating Cultures and Expanding Artistic Boundaries
15 March 2025 11.00 - 11.30 at Jim Thompson Art Center
Morlam is a traditional folk performance art of the Isan region with deep-rooted history. It originated from "lam (ลำ)" which is the act of vocalizing with melodic intonation, emphasizing the use of the Isan dialect to convey stories, thoughts, philosophies, beliefs, and folk traditions of the Isan people, with the main instrument being the "Khan (แคน)" (a bamboo flute). However, Morlam performances have continuously evolved in response to changes in the audience across different eras, resulting in diverse and varied performance styles.
In this presentation, the speaker aims to discuss the creative process of reinventing Morlam performances, starting with the question: "How can the 'essence' of traditional Morlam performance still be preserved as the 'heart' of creating contemporary performance?" As an artist-creator, the speaker has chosen to employ the method of cultural integration by combining the concepts of Modern theatre with Morlam performance, to experiment, explore, and create a new form of Morlam performance that expands the boundaries of performing arts beyond its traditional cultural roots.
DAY 4
15 MAR
Speaker:
Assistant Professor Dr. Pachaya Akkapram
Artistic Journey in a Contemporary Tradition of Dance Offerings
15 March 2025 11.40 - 12.00 at Jim Thompson Art Center
This session delves into the artistic journey of emerging Thai artist Kornkarn Rungsawang, who draws from her Thai traditional dance background to create her latest work, Malibucha: Dance Offering. Inspired by the Thai traditional performance known as RUM-KEA-BON, this art form utilizes dance as a means of negotiation between humans and sacred or higher beings. In Malibucha: Dance Offering, Kornkarn reimagines RUM-KEA-BON for a contemporary audience, blending physical and digital realities with the use of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies.
Joining her is Kanpong Thaweesuk, an entrepreneur exploring how to support and empower the artist in bridging the gap between traditional heritage and contemporary practice. Together, they will discuss the evolution of the project—covering conceptualization, production tours, and the potential for future opportunities—while highlighting how Malibucha: Dance Offering pushes the boundaries between tradition and the contemporary performing arts.
Speakers:
Kornkarn Rungsawang,
Kanpong Thaweesuk
The Kinnari Ecological Theatre Project (KETEP)
Dramaturgical thinking as a way to smash capitalism!
15 March 2025 13.00 - 13.20 at Jim Thompson Art Center
We would like to introduce the Kinnari Ecological Theatre Project (KETEP) http://kinnarieco-theatre.org, which started in 2010 at a festival in Yangon, Myanmar, and has performed around Southeast Asia during the past ten years. KETEP uses famous local Southeast Asian stories, both traditional and modern, and adapts them to create new plays about local environmental problems such as plastic pollution, deforestation, marine degradation, animal extinction, and alternative energy. In the productions, we incorporate any local talents that are available—singers, musicians, dancers, puppeteers. We have collaborated with festivals, theatre academies, and university drama departments, and are looking for more collaborators in theatres, schools, communities, and NGOs. We would like to make contact with potential collaborators, and learn more about what other troupes and performers are creating in regard to climate change and the natural environment in the region.
15 March 2025 13.00 - 13.40 at LIBI Home
Capitalism divides and breaks connections. Dramaturgy is about relations in the context of performances. The power of dramaturgy lies also in its way to bring the gaze into the in-betweens, to stretch our attention span in this time of fast-information.
In this presentation, Orenius talks about the history of western dramaturgy in order to be in the present and move to the future. In what ways has western thinking impacted dramaturgy? This question has its relevance when thinking of dramaturgy from a decolonial perspective. Storytelling and connection-building is not western since it has existed in all cultures throughout time, long before western civilizations. What use is of something we name dramaturgical thinking and how could it smash contemporary capitalism? Does it need to do so? The presentation is divided into two parts. The first part is a conversation starting talk by Orenius and the second part is a talk & brain-storming between everyone.
Speakers:
Catherine Diamond
Speakers:
Susi Siriya Orenius
Upholder
Japan’s Emerging Performing Arts: Perspectives from Tokyo, Osaka, and Okinawa
15 March 2025 13.30 - 13.50 at Jim Thompson Art Center
During the ADAM8 (Asia Discovers Asia Meeting for Contemporary Performance) residency in Bangkok last year, the question I asked in my previous work was: ""What is Eternal Life?""
After two weeks of on-site observation, the most direct reference to ""eternal life"" is the king. Pictures of the king, flags, and memorial altars with the words ""LONG LIVE THE KING"" can be seen everywhere on the road, one of the Thai capital's strongest features.
These ""yellow installations"" were seen as a deified and ongoing public propaganda, which led to the discovery of interesting research: ""upholder."" To uphold is to support a specific thing/spirit to continue, which is the exact meaning of eternal life: to exist forever. Then, I researched this upholding gesture and presented it with the ice flag holder.
(This sharing will be the second phase of research)
15 March 2025 13.50 - 14.30 at LIBI Home
Three performing arts producers based in Tokyo, Osaka, and Okinawa will share insights into the creative landscape of their respective regions. Particularly, the presentation will focus on puppet and object theatre around Tokyo, emerging playwrights around Osaka, and the contemporary traditional theatre scene in Okinawa.
These producers are taking part in the Training Programme for International Performing Arts Coordinators of Ko-Bun-Kyo, The Association of Public Theatres and Halls in Japan, and YPAM, Yokohama Performing Arts Meetings.
Speakers:
Chen,Yu Dien
Speakers:
Keisuke Ogawa (Art producer)
Kensuke Seto Cameron (Dramaturg / Ogimachi Museum Cube, Theatre Workshop）
Yoko Yamaguchi (Director of Shimokitazawa International Puppet Festival)
Immersive work - Art Beyond Borders
Myanmar Performing Arts: A Bridge Between Tradition and Modernity
15 March 2025 14.00 - 14.40 at Jim Thompson Art Center
Immersive work can be a process to generate a new audience, to start or further develop a new art ecology in an under-served community and to implicate an audience more vitally into the topic or artistic discourse through active interaction. While most immersive attractions continue to be urban-based events, it can also more interestingly be a community intervention in non-traditional locales (educational, smaller, remote, under-appreciated, etc.) and innovate with the function of an audience to serve the narrative, exposing the excitement of the artistic process and growing attachment to creativity and art.
Speakers:
Talk Is Free Theatre/Artistic Producer Arkady Spivak
15 March 2025 14.40 - 15.20 at LIBI Home
Myanmar's performing arts have evolved from traditional forms deeply rooted in history, religion, and social customs to a blend of old and new expressions. Historically shaped by royal patronage, Buddhist rituals, and oral traditions, dance and theater in Myanmar have been central to cultural identity. While traditional forms like Zat Pwe and Yein Dance remain vital, contemporary dance is emerging, despite challenges like limited training opportunities, censorship, and financial constraints. Younger artists are blending traditional movements with modern techniques, using performance as a means of social commentary and resistance. The future of Myanmar’s arts looks promising with opportunities for digital exposure, cross-border collaborations, and increased access to mentorship. To support this growth, global engagement and partnerships are key to preserving traditions while embracing innovation in Myanmar's performance scene.
Speakers:
dwM Dance Academy
Introduction of “IN TRANSIT - A Performing arts Project spanning different cultures”
Artist-led Collaborations in Southeast Asia
15 March 2025 14.50 - 15.30 at Jim Thompson Art Center
IN TRANSIT is a project for nurturing the growth of performing arts principals who are taking aim at new international activity organized by precog co.,LTD based in Japan. In addition to artists, the program comprehensively fosters human resources in the field of international creation and performing arts, including technicians, producers, and critics. In this meeting, producers who are aiming for new international development together will present their respective activities for international development. Participating producers Kana Hayashi and Momo Sakamoto will introduce their projects.
15 March 2025 15.30 - 15.50 at LIBI Home
Why collaborate within Southeast Asia? Aren’t there already commonalities among the Southeast Asian countries? Aren’t collaborations more exciting when one encounters difference, for example between Asia and the West? And aren’t there more possible funding opportunities originating from metropolitan centres in Japan, Europe and North America, which all have more established arts infrastructures?
Drawing upon their experiences of workshops held in Hanoi, artists from Singapore and Vietnam will share on their experiences of working together. They discovered how little they knew of one another’s practices and artistic environments, and how there is negligible circulation of theatrical texts within Southeast Asia. Divergent Cold War histories had also shaped us into strangers to each other.
This sharing session will cover topics such as knowledge diffusion, building communities of practice, intercultural negotiations and processes of translation. Join us as we tackle the complex, yet rewarding, challenges of Southeast-Asian collaborations.
Speakers:
Tamiko Ouki (Precog)
Kana Hayashi (Mum & Gypsy)
Momo Sakamoto (HANCHU-YUEI)
Zhang Yuan
Speakers:
Alfian Sa'at & Friends
Beyond The Shore
15 March 2025 14.50 - 15.30 at Jim Thompson Art Center
“Beyond the shore” is an ongoing oceanic artistic research that delves into the realm of sea myths and legends, livelihoods from ancient times and speculative futures. Focusing on Inter-Asian maritime histories and feminist mythologies, this project reconnects people from in-land to sea civilisation through research, public sharing, and performances, which invites alternative modes of thinking from a land-based to a sea-based perspective. The work also works from a relational approach between various cultures across geographical locations.
This research is initiated by artist Alysa Leung, scholar Dr. Evelyn Wan, and filmmaker Anson Sham. In different editions of the research and performance, we collaborate with other artists and creative partners. It has been presented in Itoshima, Peng Chau, Surabaya, HKPAX in various format, including site specific performance, lecture performance, dance film, etc. It has been received the 2nd prize from FACP Pitch for New Aspects — Clare C. & Friends Fellowship. And the latest version, ""The future of Memories"" will combine art technology such as AI, Video map, sound art, with creative text and movement. For the Bipam session, we would like to share our artistic research as a lead, i.e. the inter-asian female legends, such as Zheng Yi Sao, Lo Ting, Himiko, Haenyeo, old sage woman on Zheng He's fleet, Tin Hau, etc, and our dramaturgical working method ""archipelagic dramaturgy"". Thus invite the conversation in relation to the guest's own culture and decolonial narratives.
Speakers:
If Time's Limited/ Alysa Leung
If Time's Limited/ Evelyn Wan
The Gathering
16 March 2025 14.00 - 14.20 at Jim Thompson Art Center
ICAF Hub (Singapore), a community arts festival and a physical gathering of international community arts practitioners in Singapore between 12-15 June 2025.
This table presentation aims to share about the intent & need of bringing community based & socially engaged artists across the region to Singapore for a first ever physical ICAF Hub Singapore.
This festival aims to carve out a space for community arts practitioners committed to socially engaged arts practices from different cities to come together to showcase diversity of arts-based practices, build networks, seed collaborations and partnerships for the community arts sector. In time, the festival aims to deepen impact through the convergence of ideas and practice to benefit diverse communities the artists and groups serve.
ICAF Hub (Singapore) is a partnership between ICAF (The Netherlands) and Drama Box (Singapore) to develop and support a global, community arts Hub in Singapore. 2025 is Drama Box’s 35th Anniversary, and ICAF Hub (Singapore) is a key programme of the year.
DAY 5
16 MAR
Speakers:
Han Xuemei, Drama Box
The Power of Data Mapping Malaysia’s Arts for a Global Future
16 March 2025 14.30 - 14.50 at Jim Thompson Art Center
Withholding and analysing data from Malaysia’s performing arts scene, CloudJoi plays a crucial role in identifying industry trends and visualising an industry health report. More than just a ticketing platform, CloudJoi leverages technology, data analysis, networking initiatives, and industry events to enhance audience development and foster collaboration and sustainability in the arts.
This session will present key insights from Malaysia’s performing arts data in 2024, exploring how these numbers reflect industry growth, challenges, and opportunities. Discover how CloudJoi actively supports the ecosystem, empowering the industry—including arts practitioners, festivals, key players, and audiences. Let’s reimagine the future of the global performing arts together and explore how you can contribute to its evolution.
Speakers:
Soh Chong Hong, CloudJoi
Shifting Points: incubation project by BIPAM x Kyoto Experiment
16 March 2025 15.00 - 15.40 at Jim Thompson Art Center
Shifting Points is an incubation project for the next generation of performing arts artists in Thailand, Japan, and Southeast Asia, jointly organized by BIPAM, Kyoto Experiment, and the Japan Foundation. The project intends to reflect the profound societal and cultural transformations since 2020, urging a re-discovery of our identities within our own contexts rather than through Western reproductions. It emphasizes nurturing emerging artistic voices shaped by these changes and fostering resilience and passion among practitioners. Through this program, we aspire to strengthen regional networks, encourage mutual learning, and create an ecosystem where emerging artists can thrive and shape the future of the performing arts with revolutionary and activist mindsets. Our mission is to challenge the status quo, foster resilience, and amplify emerging voices across Southeast Asia and Japan.
As the program kicks off during BIPAM 2025, the session will introduce the project’s vision and mission and the participating artists of 2025.
Speakers:
Yuya Tsukahara, Yoko Kawasaki, Juliet Knapp (Co-directors of Kyoto Experiment)
Participants of Shifting Points program
(Hidekazu Tamai, Yuka Uchida, Annastasya Verina, Hoang Anh Nguyen, Thanaphon Accawatanyu, and Pongsatorn Phutthakhot)
Between Generations: Transmitting Legacies
16 March 2025 15.50 - 16.30 at Jim Thompson Art Center
In every society there are artistic pioneers and visionaries, founders of significant artistic movements, leaders of organisations. Nothing lasts forever, and “endings” are inevitable, yet surely there is value in transmitting the knowledge gained from the bodies of work of individual artists and organisations to future generations. My own parents are pioneers in traditional Chinese opera in Singapore who now face the reality of closing an organization that has been a part of Chinese cultural life for 40 years. How can artistic and cultural legacies be passed on? How do we articulate the value of artists’ and organizations’ contributions to the cultural life of society? Participants are invited to share stories, images, and examples of transmitting artistic legacies and discuss the work (and challenges) of such endeavours. This is an open, facilitated discussion where participants’ contributions and sharing is vital.
Speakers:
Audrey Wong, LASALLE College of the Arts
Speakers:
Kyu Choi - Artistic Director, Seoul Performing Arts Festival (SPAF)
Jeff Khan - Artistic Director, Asia-Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts (AsiaTOPA)
Mu-Chin - Creative Manager of Program Department, National Theater and Concert Hall (NTCH), Taiwan
Yoko Kawasaki - Co-Director, Kyoto Experiment
Anna Reece - Perth Festival
Sasapin Siriwanij - Artistic Director, Bangkok International Performing Arts Meeting (BIPAM)
Moderator:
Corrie Tan, Director of Asian Dramaturgs’ Network