122nd metaPhorest Seminar
June 22nd, 2026 (Monday) 19:00-20:40
122nd metaPhorest Seminar by Cohen Van Balen
This event will be primarily in English, but questions and comments in Japanese are also welcome.
Our next metaPhorest seminar will feature a talk by the London-based artist duo Cohen Van Ballen (Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen)!
They are renowned artists who have explored the complex interrelationships between animals, minerals, people, daily life, labor, technology, and culture through their unique research and perspectives, expressing these ideas in various forms such as installations, sculptures, and video works. This will be their second appearance at a metaPhorest seminar since 2012. It is a rare opportunity to hear directly about the background of their work and the trajectory of their explorations, so please feel free to join us.
Date and Time/Location
Monday, June 22, 2026, 19:00-21:00 Waseda University Research Facility for Advanced Biomedical Sciences (TWIns), 3rd Floor, Seminar Room 2 https://maps.app.goo.gl/Wy23SqPPMo3P7V8JA
ONLINE
This seminar can also be held online. Zoom Link
the work and working
Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen (b.1981, based in London) work across objects, installation and film. Their work could be thought of as ‘situated’; where the making of the work is performed within particular networks. In this talk, Van Balen will talk about the work and the working. We will follow biological, geological and geopolitical strains within the manufactured landscape; from Chinese factories and a Japanese fish laboratory to casinos in Macau, and a Coltan mine in DR Congo. Animal bodies (human or otherwise) will be a recurring encounter, and we’ll consider how these are shaped by the apparatus they operate in.
Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen
Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen (UK/BE, b.1981, based in London) work across objects, installation and film. Their work looks at materials, processes, behaviours and feelings formed by mass production of objects and animals. Recent exhibitions took place at Mostyn Gallery, Llandudno; Ghost 2565, Bangkok; Serpentine, London; Bodies of Water, 13th Shanghai Biennale; Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; Para Site, Hong Kong; HKW in Berlin and Congo International Film Festival, Goma. Their monograph "Not What I Meant but Anyway" was recently published by Columbia Books on Architecture and the City. Their work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and M+ Museum, Hong Kong, among others.