Tomoaki Hata

Tomoaki Hata is a photographer working primarily in Los Angeles and Tokyo. With more than ten years of education in law, sociology, media studies, cultural studies, and art criticism in Japan, Hata started his career as a photographer in 1996, shooting Japan's groundbreaking HIV/AIDS benefit dance parties as well as Japan's gay porn industry. Hata's photography is part of Collection Lambert in Avignon, France and is included in other private collections worldwide. Eric C. Shiner is the Milton Fine Curator of Art at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and an adjunct professor in the History of Art and Architecture department at the University of Pittsburgh. Shiner was an assistant curator of the Yokohama Triennale 2001, Japan's first-ever, large-scale exhibition of international contemporary art, and the curator of Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary Artists in New York at Japan Society in 2007. He is an active writer and translator, and a contributing editor for ArtAsiaPacific magazine. Simone Fukayuki is a chansonnier, party organizer, stage director, columnist, and is deeply fond of bizarreries, Eros, and futile love. Performing as a drag queen since the 1980s, Fukayuki has used deus ex machina, and the themes of authentic romanticism and anti-realism to profoundly affect audiences across Japan.