About

Michikazu Matsune is an artist who explores various practice which ranges from stage-performances, interventions in public and private spaces, to creating text paintings. His approach, characterized both critical and playful at the same time, examines the tension around our cultural ascriptions and social identifications. Matsune is originally from the seaside town of Kobe and has been based in Vienna since the 1990s.

Matsune’s latest solo-work, Mitsouko & Mitsuko (2021) centeres around the stories of two Japanese women, with almost the same name, who lived through the turbulence of global modernization in the first half of the 20th century. Dance, if you want to enter my country! (2015) is based on a true story of an African-American dancer who was forced to dance as part of passport control at an airport. Goodbye (2016) is a performance with farewell letters written by well-known and anonymous people from across the globe. All Together (2018), a trio joined on stage by Frans Poelstra and Elizabeth Ward, recalls stories of people who are or once were close to us but for one or another reason cannot be here with us at this moment. Matsune's work in collaboration with the artist Jun Yang, The past is a foreign country (2018), deals with the stories of two men whose conflict, understanding and friendship are forged in territories and across borders with varying topographies.

Reacting to the situation caused by the pandemic, Matsune organized the project Performance Homework (2020) featuring do-it-yourself-works by over 25 artists that can be realised at home and alone. He is also the initiator of Homesick Festival (since 2017), a unique performance festival that takes place in private homes. Beside his own artisitc projects, Matsune teaches performance-practice and is currently a guest tutor at Art University of Linz and Iceland University of the Arts.