Exhibitors

Project

EE_V/S/P Program

Curator

non-syntax Video Program

"non-syntax" focuses on the contemporary experimentation of images, founded by Jin Qiuyu and Hsu Chun-Yi in 2019. As a curatorial duo based in Taipei and Tokyo, "non-syntax" means events occurring within writing, cancelling out self-syntax in the process of character linkage, seeking creativity within the vacuum of meaning. We intend to connect creative practices across different regions, reorganize existing media and genre classifications, allowing diverse images to engage in dialogue with each other, collectively contemplating the various possibilities of images. "non-syntax" centers its exhibition practices on experimental images and has collaborated with multiple Asian groups and institutions in recent years. Simultaneously, through independent research, we delve into issues related to images, visual culture, and media.

JACKSON kaki Curator

Born in 1996 in Shizuoka Prefecture, currently enrolled at the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences. Active as an artist, DJ, VJ, video artist, and graphic designer. Works with multimedia including VR/AR, 3DCG, video, performance, installation, and sound, focusing on the natural aspects of the body and the concept of virtual reality through production and research. Also active as a director and curator of art projects. In 2022, used the Shibuya club 'CONTACT' for the art project 'Imaginary Line'. In 2023, co-curated the Video/Sound/Performance program at EASTEAST_TOKYO with QIUYU JIN, and served as the director of 'ZOR' held at CALM & PUNK GALLERY.

Program Statement

Video

What Comes to Light is Always Fragile

Can we still imagine a world composed only of images and sounds?
non-syntax continues to traverse and push against boundaries through a range of practices, seeking to explore the potential of images that exist beyond any single narrative framework. Over the past five years, from the pandemic to the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence — perception, language, and modes of documentation have undergone radical transformation, fundamentally reshaping how art and knowledge are happening.
This exhibition takes “weak narrative” as a point of departure, responding to the current condition of storytelling and reflecting on how we describe, sense, and document our everyday life.
The information environment we currently inhabit is dominated by intricate, real-time data flows and mainstream perspectives, constructing a continuously operating structure of "narrative." Whether political upheavals or the most sensitive moments of daily life, all are absorbed into a complex, automatically functioning system of representation: real-time multilingual translation, generative images, and summarizing descriptions create an overwhelming spectacle that appears transparent yet generates new invisibilities beneath the surface of the "visible."
Yet these technologies, in the name of "description" and "narration," continuously the angle from which we perceive the world. The world seems to fall into a kind of silence—not from a poverty of language, but from an aphasia born of excessive narration. What we encounter is not the event itself, but the residue left behind after the world has been narrated.
The video works in this exhibition move beyond established categories of short films, documentaries, experimental cinema, and multi-channel video installations, instead focusing on the flow of images across different sites and perceptual dimensions—from foreign borderlands to corners of small towns, from the gaze of animals to dialogues between identities, or from underground mines extending to distant uninhabited islands. Each work attempts to redefine how people perceive and respond to a history, an event, or those ineffable moments of experience.
"Weak narrative" does not mean not to tell, but rather a process of self-weakening. In contrast to stories filled with statements and explanations, it represents the creator's choice not to speak (through seeing), or even to create invisible (unspeakable) spaces that point toward the occurrence of things. This narrative condition aims to place the audience in a more open position, allowing individual memory and bodily sensation to interweave with images and the worlds they reference, generating a way of viewing that does not end in explanation. Still, it reconnects us to the world in small and slow ways.

Artist
Ahmad Alyaseer
Julia Borderie & Eloïse Le Gallo
An Chu
Yannick Dauby
Tonći Gaćina
Bi Gan
Jess Lau
Brandon Poole
Leah Zhang
Neo Sora
Eri Saito

Sound/Performance

Tokyo has gained its cultural depth by running multiple methodologies simultaneously. In institutional learning spaces such as art universities, techniques are inherited, history is referenced, and critical language is refined. Meanwhile, in alternative spaces like live houses and small theaters, raw initial impulses born outside the system have shaken the space in their unpolished form. The political physicality presented by underground theater, the aesthetic of negation shouted by punk, the nocturnal territory opened by club culture—these have continued to renew the city's expression through methods not found in textbooks.
These two genealogies are not in opposition. Rather, it is precisely this tension that has shaped the richness of Tokyo as a place. Institutions have renewed themselves by incorporating alternative practices, while alternative venues have honed their own aesthetics while maintaining a critical stance toward institutions.
But now, we find ourselves in the midst of a new tectonic shift.
The proliferation of digital devices has fundamentally expanded the space of expression. TikTok, YouTube, Instagram. Within vertical screens, countless bodies perform. Within the framework of 15 seconds, 30 seconds, one minute, the body becomes a formatted language, optimized by algorithms and disseminated across the world. Rooms become studios, smartphones become stages. This is an era when anyone can transmit to the world from their own room.
So where is the meaning of "Tokyo" as a place heading?
While using Tokyo as a stage, we live the reality formed there and explore methods of body and sound. These layers extend not only to physical land but also through the internet and technology. This applies not only to artists but equally to audiences. The audience member is simultaneously a transmitter.
As multiple methodologies intersect, adapting to changes in media environment or intentionally rejecting them—both become expressive choices. The decision itself becomes part of the work. Just as there is no correct answer in art, there is no correct answer in the choices we make in living. Rather, it is through the succession of these choices that contemporary Tokyo is being formed.
We continue to ask in this land called Tokyo: What is the body? What is the site? What does it mean to express, to witness, to be together? This questioning and the practice of choice—that is the SOUND/PERFORMANCE program at EASTEAST_TOKYO 2025

Artists
Cityofbrokendolls
Tasho Ishii
Yuki Ishida
Suzueri x Muku Kobayashi
Ikumi Yang
Yaryu