Marie-Therese BRUGLACHER

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Marie-Therese BRUGLACHER

Participating Project	Curator Residency Program
Activity Base	Lisbon / Berlin
City / Place stayed	Tokyo
Period	2026.1 - 2026.3

Purpose of the residency

During my time in Japan, I intend to research post-war and contemporary Japanese experimental performance formats, particularly those situated between stage and public urban space. My focus is on how these practices respond to conditions that currently challenge Western performance art, such as the distortion of perception through social media and the dominance of representation and simplified moral frameworks. Against a dialogical history of mutual influence between Western and Japanese performing arts, I ask how performance can structure perception beyond identification and representation, and what role choreographed action, shadows, puppets, and illusion can play in sustaining ambivalence and complexity.       

Plan during the residency

・studio visits, visiting theaters and performances
・exchange with local curators, programmers and cultural organizers
・research local archives around documentation of performance, dance, theater, music
・research programs and festivals, possibly visit  

Activities during the residency

In Tokyo, she examined the genealogy of theatrical form in Noh and Nihon Buyo, tracing their continuities in contemporary theater and dance through engaging with choreographers, dancers, and theater makers. Departing from the tension between representation and construction, she investigates through which aesthetic frameworks performance produces what is perceived as reality. She examined how gesture and copy, stylization and formal precision shape perception, not in opposition to authenticity but as the conditions that produce space for affect and meaning. Her research looks at the potential of redefining theatricality, considering how construction shapes the production and experience of reality today.

Outcome of the residency

I am currently structuring my research into a series of essays that examine performance as a mode of construction, focusing on gesture, copy, and embodiment as formal strategies that shape perception, affect, and the experience of reality across cultural, historical and contemporary contexts. My research has been influencing ongoing artistic collaborations and will form future artistic dialogues. I am in dialogue with two Japananese partners for a follow up residency. Overall, the three-month period led me to reassess my approach to performance, shifting again toward a more empirically research-driven engagement rather than a primarily curatorial and programmatic framing.

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