Grim Kino with Daisuke Kosugi
We are excited to announce Daisuke Kosugi as the first invited curator of Grim Kino, our new art film program.
Grim Kino is a modular cinema format developed to host curator-led screenings shaped by the needs of individual works. The program is structured as a series of monthly events, where invited curators are given the space to compose film programs that respond to unique installations, artistic practices, and ways of viewing.
We’re opening the GRIM KINO program of 2026 with a one-night performative screening that borrows its rhythm from Japanese Bunraku puppet theatre, curated by Daisuke Kosugi with works by Natalie Price Hafslund, Alice Slyngstad and Anette Gellein. In Bunraku, the puppeteers are fully visible to the audience but dressed in black to appear invisible. This, along with other strategies that break the fourth wall, is something Kosugi has focused on over time in both his curatorial and artistic practice, and it will also be a recurring theme throughout this edition of Grim Kino.
For Double Suicide, Kosugi has chosen three artworks by three artists. All of them draw on theatrical conventions while challenging the framework of the program itself as a “kino” (cinema). The works unfold through characters (the artists) acting and performing in the space, through installations that establish a kind of stage, and through the presentation of moving image.
The evening will take shape as a singular experience where installation art, performance, and film merge into a continuous theatrical sequence, framed by Kosugi’s performative lecture. His point of departure is Japanese filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda’s Double Suicide (1969), a Bunraku-inspired adaptation of the Western classic Romeo and Juliet. In Bunraku theatre, the puppeteers are called Kuroko (“black-clad” stagehands). They are fully present on stage, carrying out their work in plain sight, while the drama between the characters proceeds as if nothing is happening. This presence of the Kuroko creates a particular distance for the audience, who are both immersed in and gently disrupted by the theatrical situation.
Program for the evening:
Daisuke Kosugi – Performative introduction and contextual framing of Double Suicide
Performance by Alice Slyngstad – Soothing Pants (Kuroko version)
Performance by Natalie Price Hafslund – Daddy or Chips? (Reworked, site specific)
Anette Gellein – Film screening: Love and Greed and Pain and Lust (2023)