2026 Artists

Nathaniel Brown is a filmmaker & photographer making work about place, belonging and community. A former Fulbright Scholar, his work has been supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Mellon Foundation and has been featured in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Vice, Vogue, Nowness, Dazed, Hypebeast, Sabukaru and the South China Morning Post.

Often existing in the edges of documentary space, Nathaniel’s film work focuses on decentralizing cultural narratives; it has been shown at festivals including DOC NYC, Hawaii, Cleveland and Big Sky, and has won awards for best cinematography, best documentary and the audience choice award.

Nathaniel graduated Magna Cum Laude from Middlebury College, and attended both National Taiwan University in Taipei and Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Nathaniel will work on a hybrid documentary exploring contemporary Okinawan identity and its evolving relationship with the sea. Building on my prior work with ocean communities in Asia and the Pacific, the project seeks to challenge reductive portrayals of Okinawa through collaborative storytelling with local cultural practitioners across Ishigaki, Miyakojima, Amami, and Okinawa’s main island.

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As collaborating interdisciplinary dance artists, Isak Immanuel and Marina Fukushima have created numerous projects engaging areas of precarity, home, silence, and intergenerational relationships. Since 2013, their activities have developed through experiential research, site-specific performances, video installations, and communal social arts practices in the San Francisco Bay Area and nomadically, with immersive residencies in different parts of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States.

Marina Fukushima was born in Tokyo and immigrated to the US in her teens. Specializing in dance, she received a BFA from Butler University and an MFA from the University of Iowa. Since 2005, along with creating her own artistic works, she has performed and worked collaboratively with numerous dance companies and choreographers internationally, including with KUNST-STOFF, ODC, project agora, Lenora Lee Dance, and Tableau Stations.

Isak Immanuel grew up in the contrasting environments of the mesas of Taos, New Mexico and East Los Angeles. Since receiving a BFA in interdisciplinary practices from California College of the Arts (1999), he has worked with several visual and movement artists, including Anna Halprin, Yuko Kaseki, Koichi and Hiroko Tamano, Suzanne Lacy, and Katsura Kan. Began in 2004, Immanuel is the artistic director of Tableau Stations, an intercultural arts platform engaging local and global questions of place.

During their time in Japan, they plan to develop an immersive series of place-based research activities and interdisciplinary dance creations with the theme “Landscapes of Youth”. A key layer of exploration is with local aspects of kodomo fudoki (こども風土記) as folk customs and contemporary outdoor records of childhood. As fellow artists and parents, the proposed project is looking into the varied ways of listening to different generations, family, elders, youth, and a sense of place in contrasting urban and rural areas of Japan. Composed from a social practice process engaging oral histories, outdoor sensory explorations, local festivals, and collaborative site-specific video/performance creations with other artists/parents, a central motive is cultivating relationships to place-based intergenerational arts practices.

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Mike Vernusky creates music for live performance, radiophonic sound, and audiovisual experiences. His music is described as “brash” (The New York Times), “isolationist” (The Wire), and “especially otherworldly” (New Music USA). Mike is an avid field recordist, having recorded calving glaciers in the high arctic, relentless chainsawing in the Amazon to the snake charmers of Marrakech; from the beautiful cacophony that is India to the deadly hippo pools in South Africa. Combining electronic and indigenous instruments, field recordings, and found sounds across various forms of physical media, he creates large-scale, often transcontinental musical works and releases them in album format.

Vernusky has presented his music and ideas at Shanghai Conservatory, İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Institut Français Tokyo, Salon Alte Schmiede in Vienna, El Centro para la Música y las Artes Sonoras in Mexico, Harvard University, and The University of Huddersfield. His music is published on BBC Audio, MIT Press, The Wire, NEUS-318 (JP), Ferns Recordings (FR), Audiobulb (UK), Quiet Design (TX), and many other imprints. He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, percussionist & figure skater Carolyn Trowbridge. After 16 years of living a double life as an independent artist and Experience Analyst for Apple, he is currently a freelance composer for mixed media.

Mike will be living in Kyoto and Tokyo and be focused on completing a new ensemble work for shakuhachi, early Japanese instruments, and field recordings with electronic sound. His collaborators will comprise Japanese instrumentalists across several generations, all of who are passionate about creating contemporary sounds on their instruments.

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Micah Wiles is a farmer and craftsperson living in Kentucky in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. He has been weaving baskets for over twelve years with a focus on traditional white oak basket making during the past seven years. His practice of craft is place based and involves a connection with the land, utilizing local materials found in the landscape around him. He has studied the traditional baskets of Kentucky and Tennessee and has travelled internationally learning from basket makers in Romania, Ireland, England and Japan. Passing on knowledge and keeping traditional skills alive is important to Micah and he teaches a variety of classes on his farm as well as at craft schools throughout the region.

Micah will be traveling through Japan visiting various basket makers and crafts people, learning about traditional basketry techniques unique to different areas. He will also share his own culture’s traditions and techniques through demonstrations and workshops.

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Wu Hanyen is a Taiwanese American artist and maker based in Providence, Rhode Island. Their practice is rooted in woodworking and guided by an ongoing interest in how our bodies move through the world. After experiencing an injury, Wu began exploring the connections between physical care and craft, a path that led to a collection of movement tools designed for everyday use. Community and collaboration are central to Wu’s work. They often build alongside other makers, sharing techniques, teaching, and creating space for collective learning. Wu spent five years working as a production furniture maker in New York City before earning an MFA in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. They are now an Associate Professor in the 3D Arts Department at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Wu will travel through Japan to study traditional and contemporary woodworking practices, taking workshops in chair making, coopering, knife making, and brush making. Along the way, Wu visit studios, schools, and museums to learn from craftspeople across regions and share my own approach to furniture and object making as a visiting artist at the Toyama Glass Institute.

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