Assembly

Moderator｜River Lin (Taiwan)

Working in Live Art, dance, and queer culture, River Lin is an artist, curator, and dramaturg based in Paris, Tokyo, and Taipei. He served as curator at the 2023-2025 Taipei Arts Festival. Collaborating with the Taipei Performing Arts Center, he has been curating ADAM and Camping Asia since 2017. His performance work has been presented at Para Site and M+ in Hong Kong, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Live Art Prize in Finland, Centre Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo, Lafayette Anticipation, Centre National de la Danse in France and others. He is also a co-curator of the Indonesian Dance Festival and a guest-curator of the 2025 Biennale de la Danse de Lyon. Currently, Lin is pursuing a PhD in Art Studies and Curatorial Practices at the Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts.

© TR Concept and Visual Atelier

Panelist｜Ratri Anindyajati (Indonesia)

Ratri Anindyajati is an Independent Producer working with both Indonesian and international artists globally. She currently sits as Director for the Indonesian Dance Festival (IDF), Jakarta’s biennial international contemporary dance festival held since 1992 and is the longest standing festival of its kind in Southeast Asia.

With an LA based artist Edgar Arceneaux, she co-founded Rarara!, an interdisciplinary production company consisting of an international ensemble of artists, designers and performers. Ratri’s projects include dance, theater, arts festivals, exhibitions, and her passion lies in bringing Indonesian performance to the globe as well as storytelling and producing works which explore humanity and identity through diversity of cultures.

Ratri holds a Bachelors in Political Science from Parahyangan Catholic University (Bandung, Indonesia) and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Producing and Management from the Theater Department of California Institute of the Arts (Los Angeles, USA).

© Yousef Iskandar

Panelist｜Chiaki Soma (Japan)

Art producer, curator, founder and representative director of NPO Arts Commons Tokyo. Specializes in cross-disciplinary curation and production of contemporary art, socially engaged art, and media art using VR/AR technology, with a focus on theater and performance. Over the past 20 years, she has directed numerous festivals and projects in Japan, Asia, and Europe. Among them, she was the first Program Director of Festival/Tokyo (2009-2013), Curator of the Performing Arts Section of Aichi Triennale 2019 and 2022, Founding president and Artistic Director of Theater Commons Tokyo (2017-present). 

In 2023, she was the first non-Westerner to serve as Program Director (Artistic Director) of the Theater der Welt in Germany. She has been awarded the Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from French Minister of Culture in 2015 and the Art Encouragement Prize from Japanese Minister of Culture in 2021.  She is currently Associate Professor for The Graduate School of Fine Arts at Tokyo University of the Arts since 2021. She is appointed to be the program director of Minato Arts Center m~m, which will open in November 2027.

© NÓI CREW

Panelist｜June Tan (Malaysia)

June Tan is a producer, scriptwriter and member of the arts collective Five Arts Centre, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She studied Biology at Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine and worked in the corporate sector while stage-managing, tour-managing and producing arts projects. June uses her diverse experience to create platforms for artmaking and to enable social activism and change.  In 2026 June became the Artistic Director of KL Festival, a month-long arts and cultural festival organised by the city. From 2018-2020 June was Director for TPAM in Yokohama, an arts platform reflecting contemporary thinking in Asia. June also writes and produces for films and TV and won Best Screenplay for Spilt Gravy on Rice at the Malaysian Film Festival (2022).  She is also active in ReformARTsi, a grassroots coalition seeking arts policy change and sits on the board of the Malaysian National Film Development Corporation (FINAS).

© Mesha

Panelist｜Natsuki Ishigami (Japan)

Natsuki Ishigami is a Japanese theatre-maker whose practice focuses on community-based creation and socially engaged performance. Since 2012, she has created projects with local residents throughout Japan and Asia, including Give Me Chocolate! Payatas (Philippines, 2017) and the Oeshiki Project (Culture City of East Asia 2019). She also works as a director of artistic programs, directing the Stage Art Sector in Culture City of East Asia 2019 Toshima and serving as a guest curator for 2019 ADAM Artist Lab. She has co-created several productions with SPAC since 2021 and became its Artistic Director in 2025.

© Makita Natsumi

Panelist｜Silke Schmickl (Germany/Hong Kong)

Silke Schmickl is the CHANEL Senior Curator, Head of Moving Image at M+ in Hong Kong. She was previously curator at the National Gallery Singapore and the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, a researcher at the German Center for Art History in Paris, and the co-founding director of Lowave, a Paris-based curatorial platform and publishing house for moving image artists. She has initiated and directed numerous art and film projects focusing on emerging art scenes in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, and has curated exhibitions in partnership with museums and biennials around the world. Recent projects at M+ include Shanshui: Echoes and Signals, Ryuichi Sakamoto | seeing sound, hearing time and the yearly Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival.

© Dan Leung

Panelist｜Quito Tembe (Republic of Mozambique)

Quito Abrão Tembe is a Mozambican curator, artistic director, cultural producer and educator working across contemporary performing arts. He is the founder and artistic director of KINANI – International Platform for Contemporary Dance, one of Africa's leading biennials for dance, recognised for fostering artistic creation, professional exchange and international collaboration.

Tembe is artistic committee of Danse Em Afrique, associate curator of  Wiener Festwochen and the Biennale de Lyon - FORUM, and serves as Curator of MITsp – Mostra Internacional de Teatro de São Paulo (Brazil). His curatorial practice is rooted in strengthening artistic networks across the Global South while creating meaningful dialogue between Africa, Europe and Latin America.

Internationally recognised for his commitment to cultural cooperation, he has served as a jury member, advisor and speaker for numerous international programmes and institutions. Awarded the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government, his work advocates for equitable cultural exchange, contemporary African perspectives and sustainable international partnerships in the performing arts.

© Mariano Silva