Tomoaki Hata has more than 10 years of education in law, sociology, media studies, cultural studies, and art criticism in Japan. Tomoaki started his career as a photographer in 1996 at Japan’s ground breaking HIV/AIDS benefit dance parties and with candid still photography of Japan’s gay porn industry. Recently Tomoaki’s photography was highly valued by Eric Mezil, the director of Collection Lambert, the contemporary art museum in Avignon, France. Many of Tomoaki’s photographic works were exhibited in AKIMAHEN and EIJYANAIKA, the biggest exhibition of Japanese young artists in France, including Takashi Murakami, Yayoi Kusama, Yoko Ono, and Nobuyosi Araki.
Jai Arun Ravine is a mixed race Thai American intermedia artist. They received an MFA in Writing & Poetics from Naropa University. Ze is the author of and then entwine (Tinfish Press, 2011), the chapbook Is This January (Corollary Press, 2010), and The Spiderboi Files. A Kundiman fellow, hir short experimental film Tom/Trans/Thai recently exhibited at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center, Thailand.
C.Snatch Z. was trained in jazz, postmodern, and contemporary dance. Since the 90s, she has performed internationally as a member of Dumb Type, a Japanese collective of artists from different creative fields. She has worked on numerous solo and collaborative projects, and started a monthly night club event called Club Luv+ to raise safer sex awareness. Through these events, she founded the three-girl performance group The OK Girls and began her stage life as C.Snatch Z., moving on to found the sex worker performance troupe The Biters in 1998. Known for her provocative, boundary-breaking performances, C.Snatch Z. continues to introduce her artwork crossing over in different worlds, from contemporary art to subculture, from cabaret dance to performing arts.
