The traditional Japanese puppet theatre ‹BUNRAKU› rarely leaves the land of the rising sun. It is therefore a great honour for the CULTURESCAPES festival to kick off this year’s programme ‹Tokyo 2014› with an enthralling artistic Bunraku performance.
‹Josi› or ‹onnanoko›, ‹girls› in Japanese, have been common elements of Japanese animation since its very beginning. These characters with their innocent faces and oversized round eyes have deeply shaped the perception of anime and manga in the West.
In cooperation with CULTURESCAPES, Ensemble Boswil led by guest conductor Seitaro Ishikawa will this year present contemporary Japanese music in its various stylistic forms.
The approach of the sound artist Rie Nakajima (*1976) is anything but ordinary. Plastic cups, ping-pong balls, old toys, cables, unknown electronic devices and batteries: what looks like the contents of a jumble sale box, is actually the artist’s instrument or, more aptly, the musical and tonal components used for her PERFORMANCE.
This year, CULTURESCAPES takes also place in Uster. The city's representative, Peter Pfeifer, welcomes the guests in German and Japanese and presents the upcoming programme.
The shakuhachi, the traditional Japanese flute, has certain similarities to the alphorn: both are simple wooden mono-phone wind instruments manufactured from locally sourced materials, i.e. bamboo and fir wood.
Stories such as as of the man who is on his way, of the red dog who is lucky and of the girl who takes home the sea with her and many more… For children, but also for their parents and other grown-ups. Anita Schorno takes her audience on a journey into to the world of the Japanese Kamishibai, a form of theatre that requires just a suitcase as a stage.
Father and son: an old and a young man who no longer share the same world, as the father is starting to show signs of dementia. When the son decides to look after his father he also becomes part of his fictitious reality.
An eternal student in his mid-forties, overwhelmed by his own life and the world in general, flees from his scolding father into a cupboard that serves as his door into a mysterious parallel universe and an extraordinary journey.
For more than twenty years the Tokyo-born photographer and reporter Kyoichi Tsuzuki (*1956) has been travelling the length and breadth of Japan, capturing the country’s hidden treasures.
Markthalle Basel offers gustatory access to Japan's capital city: the Japanese artist Haruna Nakayama and three events by Kulinarium Basel present culinary aspects of Japan.
European Modern painting would have had a quite other face without Japanese influences - this is art historian Kristina Piwecki's thesis that serves as a starting point to discuss East and West in art.
The Shôsôin, the Japanese imperial treasure house from the 8th century, holds a large collection of art objects from Japan's Nara and Heian time as well as Tang-China.
On 21 to 23 November, HeK (House of Electronic Arts Basel) will celebrate its reopening at new premises at Freilagerplatz on the Dreispitz area in Basel.