The 5th Floor in Tokyo is hosting "Stilllive Documents 2019–2025," a retrospective exhibition running from May 14 to June 7, 2026, that reviews the activities of the performance platform Stilllive. The show features unpublished photographs and video materials from 2019 to 2025, presenting them not as mere traces of events but as records of relationships, tensions, and responses that emerged in each moment. Stilllive was founded in 2016 by Yuki Kobayashi and graduates of the Royal College of Art's Performance program, and has held annual events since 2019 at venues including the Goethe-Institut Tokyo. A new performance, "Stilllive 2026," will take place on May 16–17 at BUoY in Senju Nakamachi, Tokyo, connecting past accumulations to future practice.
This exhibition matters because it documents a sustained, collaborative experiment in performance art that interrogates human existence and relationality through the body. By juxtaposing temporally separated works in one space, it reveals the evolving methodology and generative processes of Stilllive, a platform that fosters mutual critique and shared creative processes among artists. The show underscores the importance of documenting ephemeral performance art and the ongoing dialogue between individual bodies and collective practice in contemporary Japanese art.