PROF. AKIKO KASUYA 

Born 1963 in Tatsuno, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. Doctoral degree in Aesthetics and Art History, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. Studied at Jagiellonian University (Krakόw, Poland), Institute of Philosophy, Aesthetics Laboratory. After working as chief curator at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, she is currently professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Graduate School of Fine Arts, Kyoto City University of Arts. Specialises in modern and contemporary art and aesthetics. Major exhibition projects include 'Art and the environment – from an ecological point of view’, 1998; 'Theatre of Death – Homage to Kantor’, 2015; 'Celebration: Contemporary Art from Poland and Japan’, 2019. 2011 – 2020 Artistic director of the Tatsuno Art Project. Author of 'Poland as a soil for the growth of Contemporary Art: Heritage and Transformation from the Kantor to present day’ (Sogensha, 2021), 'Polish Avant-garde Art – 'Applied Fantasy’ for Survival’ (Sogensha, 2014), etc.

Workshop „House of Day, House of Night” – In Search of the „living academy”.  

In July 2015, the workshop „House of Day, House of Night„ took place in Kyoto, featuring two Polish artists, Paweł Althamer and Artur Żmijewski, as lecturers. In January-February 2016, an exhibition was held to showcase the workshop’s results, providing participants with an opportunity to reflect on the summer workshop and further explore the establishment of a „living academy”.  

The workshop can also be viewed as a collaborative endeavor undertaken by the two artists, who inherit the experimental approach and ideas of Oskar Hansen’s 'Open Form’ and Grzegorz Kowalski’s „Common Space, Individual Space”, alongside Japanese artists.  

In this essay, I will examine the workshop and delve into the essence of a „living academy”.