Collaborators

Cindy Mochizuki
Artist

Cindy Mochizuki has created installation, multi-media, performance, animation, drawings, and community-engaged projects that consider spaces that embody both fiction and documentary.  Her projects are often site-specific and engage historical memory, displacement and the invisible. Her community-engaged projects consider social practice, performance, memory, magic and the manifestation of story. She has most recently presented her work at Wakayama Museum and Media Art Gallery, the grunt gallery, Contemporary Art Gallery, AIR 475 and Koganecho Bazaar. She has received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies from the School For Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University.

Antoine Bédard
Sound Design

Antoine Bédard is a composer and musician from Montréal. Also known for his electro-pop solo music project called Montag, he has released several albums and has toured internationally. He started working as a sound designer for theatre in 2005 while living in Vancouver. He collaborated with a number of companies such as Rumble Theatre, Théâtre La Seizième and Theatre Replacement. After moving back to Montreal in 2008, he worked with notorious theatre directors such as Robert Lepage (Ex Machina, Quebec City), Chris Abraham (Crow's Theatre, Toronto) and Serge Denoncourt. In 2013, he co-founded Portrait sonore, a non-profit organization that has produced a number of audioguides about Canadian architecture, public art and heritage buildings, all available on a multi-platform application.

Asa Mori
Stop Motion Camera & Editing Assistance/Technical on Installation

Asa Mori was born in Nagano, Japan and currently based in Vancouver, Canada. Primarily working with media installation and animation, her performances and short films have been exhibited internationally. She holds a BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.  

Caroline Liffmann
Movement Assistance for Scissors 

(www.carolineliffmann.com) Caroline Liffmann is a contemporary performance maker and choreographer. Her practice is influenced by over 20 years of dance and movement training, including contemporary dance, improvisation, and multi-disciplinary collaboration, and she holds an undergraduate degree in Philosophy from McMaster University.  Her dance theatre work has been presented at BC festivals and series such as Dancing on the Edge, Dances for a Small Stage, Pop Up Dances, and with Nervous System System at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival’s Club PuSh.  She has facilitated and performed in community-based dance projects with Sylvain Émard Danse, MovEnt, Joe Ink, the Roundhouse Community Dancers, Made in BC – Dance on Tour, Julie Lebel and Foolish Operations, and the Little Chamber Music Series that Could.  Currently she coordinates Arts & Health: Healthy Aging Through the Arts, a seniors’ arts partnership with the Vancouver Park Board and Vancouver Coastal Health.

Cherry Wen Wen Lu
Project Assistant

Cherry Wen Wen Lu is an emerging artist interested in installation, sculpture, and painting with dabblings in film, animation, book art, print, digital, and web works. She thinks of her practice as a conceptual dance where each movement requires its own set of research and material choice. Wen Wen often gravitate towards exploring the hidden and the in-between. Or in the metaphor of dance, the possibility between one movement to another is more intriguing than the arrival of a finale. Her work has been shown in UBC Student Nest, Jericho Beach, New Westminster Museum and Gallery, Access Gallery, and Burnaby Art Gallery. Currently she is finishing up her studies in visual art at Emily Carr University. Wen Wen is also an art teacher to a vibrant age group of kids ages three to eighteen; they and those around her know her as Cherry.

Due to her virgo nature, she has been picked up by Cindy Mochizuki as project assistant.

James Proudfoot
Lighting for Scissors

From Edinburgh, Scotland where he received his initial theatre training, James has been living in Vancouver since 1993.

Self taught in the realm of dance lighting, James has contributed lighting designs for dance works to many companies including ;

Ballet BC, Lola Dance, 605 Collective, Co. Erasga, Wen Wei Dance, Joe Ink, EDAM, The Contingency Plan, battery opera, Kinesis Dance, Restless Productions, Holy Body Tattoo, Dumb Instrument, Anatomica, Tara Cheyenne Performance, Les Productions Figlio, Trial & Eros, Out inner spade, BJM, the Plastic Orchid Factory, Justine A Chambers, Action at a Distance and the Firehall Theatre Company.

Justin Saint
Make-Up for the Giant for Scissors

Justin Saint is a Vancouver-based makeup artist specializing in character transformations. He has worked on both film and stage productions including the makeup-award winning film, Peelers. He is also known for his Cosplay transformations on himself, turning into a wide range of pop culture characters including Maleficent, Khal Drogo, Queen Amidala and Lord Voldemort, among others. His work can be found on www.justinsaintmakeup.com or facebook.com/justinsaintmakeup

Kazuho Yamamoto
Translation & Project Assistance

Originally from Shizuoka, Japan, Kazuho is a Vancouver-based independent arts administrator. She has been working for Cindy Mochizuki's projects in various capacities since 2013. A graduate of Simon Fraser University with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication, she also completed Japanese/English Translation Workshop at SFU. Kazuho has worked as a production coordinator for multiple projects including Powell Street Festival, Oppenheimer Park Community Art Show, and DTES Small Arts Grants. Currently, she works at Vancouver Civic Theatres’ booking and event department and is one of the Japanese editors of The Bulletin/Geppo.

Leah Weinstein
Costume Design for Scissors

Leah Weinstein is a Vancouver-based artist working in sculpture, costume, installation and performance. Using everyday objects and readymade materials, her work explores relationships between individuals and collectives, subjects and objects, action and display. She is currently creating a mobile gallery in a converted school bus called SiteFactory, which explores the intersection of contemporary art and collaborative action. Weinstein's work has been supported by the BC Arts Council, Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, Touchstones Nelson Museum of Art & History, Banff Centre, and Richmond Public Art Commissions. She completed a Masters of Applied Arts degree from Emily Carr University in 2014. 

Lexi Vajda
Performer

Originally from North Vancouver, Lexi Vajda is a Vancouver based independent dance artist and choreographer. She received her contemporary dance training from Modus Operandi in Vancouver and has traveled internationally to workshops including Impulstanz, P.A.R.T.S., and Ohad Naharin’s Gaga technique in Tel Aviv, Israel. Lexi has had the pleasure of working and performing locally with Shay Keubler Radical System Arts, Outinnerspace Dance Theatre, the response, Company 605, Theatre Replacement, plastic orchid factory, Mascall Dance, Emmalena Frederiksson, Delia Brett, Wen Wei Wang and Karissa Barry among others. Alongside her performing work, she collaborates and makes work independently. She was one of four artists in residence during An Exact Vertigo, a critical text and contemporary dance series at the Unit/Pitt gallery where she developed an immersive installation work. Lexi teaches contemporary technique regularly, choreographing for various dance schools throughout the lower mainland and rehearsal directing for Modus Operandi contemporary training program. She is also working towards her BA in psychology at UBC. Recently, Lexi was awarded the Mayor’s Arts Award for emerging dance artist.

Linda Hoffman
Performer

Linda Hoffman has been a taiko (Japanese drum) player for 30 years. She was a founding member of Katari Taiko, the first taiko group in Canada, and of Sawagi Taiko, the first all-women’s taiko group in North America. She has performed as a folksinger/guitarist in coffee houses in Vancouver, BC, the San Francisco Bay area, and Dayton, Ohio. Hoffman has narrated two short documentary films, Petroglyphs: Images in Stone, directed by Marianne Kaplan, and One of Many—Dr. Nhan, directed by Jan-Marie Martell. On the Radio Canada show Vents d’Ouest, she read a Japanese folk story in French, which she had translated from English. She has done three workshop readings of the play Love Lies Bleeding by Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Tom Cone for the Playwrights Theatre Centre and the Arts Club Theatre, Vancouver, BC. Hoffman has given vocal workshops covering speaking, singing and vocal improvisation at taiko conferences in Seattle, WA, Los Angeles, CA, Portland, OR and Vancouver, BC. She performed in the Women in View production of Lear with three other taiko players, for which they received a Jessie nomination in Sound Design. She drummed and sang at the aboriginal Talking Stick Festival in a collaborative improvisation with performers from different cultures (First Nations, Ukrainian, South Asian, Korean and Japanese) organized by Russell Wallace, Lilwat singer, drummer and dancer. Her most recent engagement was in a film, Year of the Carnivore directed by Sook Yin Lee, where she played Miss Nakamura, a principal role.

Makiko Hara
Contemporary Art Curator

Hara is an independent curator based in Vancouver. Hara was the chief curator and deputy director (2011-13) at Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art between 2007 and 2013. She has curated numerous contemporary art exhibitions locally and internationally for over twenty-five years in Japan and Canada. Her recent international curatorial projects includes: the Scotiabank Nuit Blanche in Toronto (2009), AIR Yonago Project- Tottori Geijyu-Sai /Art and Living Festival (2014-16), “Fictive Communities Asia”- Koganecho Bazaar (2014), “Mush Up:The Birth of Modern Culture – Vancouver Art Gallery (Contributing Curator). Hara has contributed essays to catalogues and magazines, with recent essays including an entry in Mutations: Perspectives on Photography (Paris Photo, 2011) and “Rethinking of Tokyo Art Speak,” in Institutions by Artists: Volume 1 (Fillip, 2012). Hara has appointed to the Advisor for Akita University of Arts, International Exchange Centre since 2017. 

Over the past 3 years, starting in 2014, Hara has worked with Cindy Mochizuki on a complex ongoing collaborative project, Rock Paper Scissors including the artist-in-residences and exhibitions in Japan and Canada. The project has developed through a flowing method in proceeding without setting any pre-determined goal or plan, but rather sharing intimate time and space where art and life can meet. Trust, respect and friendship guide our relationship and collaboration with the locals, allowing intimate details to become revealed. With this experience, Hara is exploring a new territory of experimental curation, in which creative thinking and art-making interwove with our everyday life.

Marc Hansen
Carpentry

Marc Hansen is an independent carpenter with a background in multi-media and graphic design. He is the sole proprietor of Oak and Burrow Design. 

Minoru Kofu Yamamoto
Carpentry

A certified Master of the Shakuhachi (traditional Japanese bamboo flute), Kofu has performed in numerous performances and recordings in the Lower Mainland and across Canada. His other skills and interests include Japanese Calligraphy, woodworking, building and golf. He is one of the original members of Rakuichi — a group that organizes an annual harvest festival ceremony, the OMIKOSHI, in Richmond and Vancouver as well as being a core member of the Shishimai group (Dragon Dance) for which he plays flute. He speaks both Japanese and English.

Renée Sigouin
Performer

Born in SK, is a contemporary dance artist based in Vancouver with a movement and performance based practice. She received her post-secondary contemporary dance education at Modus Operandi in Vancouver and was a scholarship recipient during her final year, graduating in 2012. During the past five years she has toured locally, nationally, and internationally in several full length works by Vancouver companies Out Innerspace Dance Theatre (Vessel, Major Motion Picture), Company 605 (Inheritor Album, Vital Few), Wen Wei Dance (7th Sense), Kinesis Dance Somateatro (Ulysses Waltz), Constance Cooke (Liminal), and in solo works by Jennifer Mascall (The Outliner Project). She has performed at festivals and events such as Vancouver 2010 Olympic Opening and Closing ceremonies, FUSE at Vancouver Art Gallery, EDAM Choreographic Series, Bloom Choreographic Series, PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, Fall for Dance Festival NYC, Dancing on the Edge Festival, Canada Dance Festival, Fluid Fest, and Sydney Festival. In addition to her work as an interpreter she teaches contemporary dance and sits on the board for CADA/BC.

Sean Marshall Jr.
Performer

An alumnus of SFU’s SCA program, Sean is a devisor, film/theatre performer and aspiring teacher. He makes up one sixth of performance collective O, o, o, o., who is currently preparing for the rEvolver Festival 2017 debut of their horrific yet tantalizing game show, ALL THE WAY. Sean has also trained, devised and performed with local favourites like Fight with a Stick, Theatre Replacement, Radix Theatre, Theatre Elsewhere and Hong Kong Exile. This is Sean’s second collaboration with Cindy and her gang of weirdos. Chances are he’ll join the gang. Ask Cindy, she’s psychic.

Stephen Wichuk
Stop-Motion Technical Assistance

Stephen Wichuk is a visual artist, consultant and educator born in Edmonton, Alberta. His large scale video installations reconstruct film-historical sight gags using precariously built marionettes and trick cinematography. He currently lives in Vancouver, British Columbia where he works as the senior studio technician for the Animation department at Emily Carr University.  Wichuk holds a BMA from Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design (2005) and an MFA from University of British Columbia’s Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory (2013). Recent exhibitions include Magnetic Spasms: The Best of Hymn Video Magazine (Pleasuredome, Toronto)  Sausage Factory (Grunt Gallery, Vancouver), As Seen Here (Morris & Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver).