Thursdays at Villa Kujoyama: the program for November 6, 2025

14:00–18:00 – Studios
Open studio by Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust & Grégoire Schaller, Agathe Charnet, Mark Geffriaud, Mona Oren, Vincent Tuset-Anrès, and Théo Mouzard & Marine Royer

16:00–16:15 – Salon
“#2 – The Return” : performance and screen printing on aluminum, by Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust & Grégoire Schaller

16:45-17:00 – Alley
“#1 – Reiko”: performance and textile pieces by Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust & Grégoire Schaller

17:00 – Terrace
Screening of the film “Kujoyama sur Mer” by Mark Geffriaud (FR–JP)

17:30–18:00 – Entrance Hall and Auditorium
“Faire Famille.s (2): Apart from Lotus Flowers, Nothing Grows from My Womb”, performance conceived by Agathe Charnet, with Meri Otoshi, Yoko Kuroki, and Mona Oren’s artworks (with FR-ENG-JP surtitles)

18:30–20:00 – Auditorium
“Facing Disasters: New Narratives in Japanese Community Based Design”: Lecture by Théo Mouzard & Marine Royer with Chie Konno, architect and director of teco, and Kiichiro Hagino, architect and professor at the University of Toyama (ENG)

20:00–21:00 – Salon
Cocktail reception

TORO café will be selling snacks from 3 pm to 7 pm !

Mona Oren (2025, crafts)

Haze wax, a treasure to explore

Mona Oren’s work revolves around an emotional core woven from impermanence and memory, embodied in a material that reflects this sensitivity: white wax. For her, wax is not merely a substance, but a living material. Her encounter with haze wax in 2022 led to numerous experiments aimed at finding blends that would allow her to sculpt this highly singular, plant-based material. She now wishes to continue this exploration, focusing on wax, hazé trees, and other materials unique to Japan—such as rice wax, washi paper, and sumi ink sticks. The resulting body of work will highlight the poetry of the creative process itself, with the final pieces acting as mirrors of original artifacts—echoes of their memory and transformation.

Agathe Charnet (2025, theater)

“HIMONO-ONNA: What to bring into the world today?”

Based on a series of interviews on the theme of “Making Family/ies” conducted by Agathe Charnet since August 2025, the author and stage director is presenting, through December, performances created especially for the Villa’s spaces. These performances intertwine the sounds of Japanese and French languages and bring together different artistic families — dance, music, theatre, and contemporary art. Following an initial experiment, “Go-en, What Connects Us”, centered on the theme of connection, the dance performance by Meri Otoshi and acting by Yoko Kuroki, “Except for Lotus Flowers, Nothing Grows from My Belly”, explores the desire — or the refusal — to become a mother, through stories of women encountered in Japan, an unpublished poem by the author, and artworks by visual artist Mona Oren.

Love to Death

Love to Death draws upon Yūkoku (Rite of Love and Death), the only film directed by Yukio Mishima, shot in 1966. It is a closed-door drama set in a Noh theatre, in which Mishima plays a lieutenant who chooses seppuku after the failure of a coup d’état, joined in death by his wife. Darius and Grégoire’s project will take the form of a series of five performances that follow the structure of the film—not to recreate its narrative, but to explore a performative vocabulary around the representation of death. Nourished by a plurality of mediums—dance, photography, metalwork, text, textile, video, and costume—as well as the practice of butoh, the performances will use the film’s photograms as choreographic molds, distorted and unfolded in space, in search of a dense presence specific to the quest to embody the image.

Théo Mouzard and Marine Royer (2025, architecture/landscape architecture/urbanism)

The architecture of afterwards – Post-disaster care and repair in rural Japan: from resource to place, from landscape to object

Since the triple disaster of 2011, the themes of care and repair appear to have led to a reconfiguration of the practices of certain Japanese architects and designers. As part of an ecological redirection, it has become imperative to rethink the ways in which the architectural profession is practiced, especially in a context where new construction is no longer seen as the most desirable option. This calls for the exploration of more frugal strategies, particularly those aimed at transforming collective spaces through the active involvement of local communities. These approaches are evident both in Japan and in Europe, through direct engagement in the field, the use of collaborative practices, and a reflection on the resources and know-how specific to the territories undergoing transformation.

Mark Geffriaud (2025, visual arts)

L’architecture traditionnelle japonaise, une écologie contemporaine

Mark Geffriaud works with sculpture, photography, film, and performance. During his residency in Japan, he researches traditional abandoned houses that have the particular feature of being able to be dismantled, reassembled, or dispersed into parts. The potential for reuse and transformation of these structures forms the starting point for his reflection on artworks whose preservation would rely on mobility and evolution rather than on maintaining their individual components. Lately, his attention has focused more specifically on sliding doors as a cinematographic device.

Vincent Tuset-Anrès (2025, design)

Monogatari

Using the artist’s book as a jumping board, Vincent Tuset-Anrès proposes to examine the entire ecosystem of Japanese art publishing. His project sets out to shed light on its procedures and know-how; its technical, aesthetic and conceptual particularities, and the relationship that artists and designers have with publishing. By working in Japan, he will be in contact with people who work in the art publishing world whose expertise will add to his research. Following this period of fieldwork, he hopes to present his project to a wider public, with the aim of eliciting new models for a sector that is currently in transition. In this way, Vincent Tuset-Anrès seeks to showcase the rich tradition of art publishing in Japan, the excellence of its artisans, and the inventiveness and vitality of the contemporary scene.

Visuel : La Villa, photo de Marine Royer (2025, architecture) d’après la projection “Kujoyama sur Mer” de Mark Geffriaud (2025, arts plastiques)