Life Becomes Art:
Performance, Space, and Everyday Creation

usaginingen is an artist family formed in Berlin, Germany, in 2011, consisting of Shinichi Hirai, Emi Hirai, and Minagu Hirai.

Their work centers on live performances using self-built visual machines and musical instruments, combining video, music, shadow play, and mechanical craftsmanship into a distinctive artistic language. They have performed in more than 30 countries worldwide. In 2014, they received the Grand Prix at the Reykjavik Visual-Music Festival in Iceland. In 2021, supported by a grant from Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs (AFF), they toured nationally with 38 performances and were featured in an advertising campaign for Apple Japan. In 2026, they presented their first solo museum exhibition at the Takamatsu City Museum of Art.

In 2016, usaginingen relocated to Teshima, a small island in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea with fewer than one thousand residents. While continuing to operate a theater and create new work, their practice gradually expanded beyond the stage and into everyday life.

On Teshima, they transformed a former carpenter’s warehouse into the Teshima usaginingen Theater, where they regularly present performances for audiences visiting from Japan and abroad.

They have also reclaimed abandoned land to create a park and cultivated fields, providing a place where children can play freely. Using bamboo, driftwood, and other locally found materials, they have built playground structures, constructed a kiln, and gradually developed the site into a gathering place for the community.

In 2023, they were entrusted with the stewardship of a disused former infant care facility, which they reopened as ShinAiKan. Today it functions as an artist-in-residence program, hosting artists from Japan and overseas while regularly organizing communal meals, exhibitions, film screenings, and workshops.

Since 2025, with support from Tokyo University of the Arts and Kagawa University, they have been developing a community-led festival project. Working closely with families raising children on Teshima, they continue to explore new forms of local cultural practice grounded in everyday participation.

In recent years, Emi has expanded her practice into painting and picture-book publishing. In 2024, usaginingen created their first outdoor installation work, commissioned by the City of Setouchi in Okayama Prefecture.

In 2026, they began revitalizing a building adjacent to the theater that had remained unused for nearly thirty years, establishing it as the usaginingen Kunsthaus. The project is not centered on renovation itself, but on treating the processes of living, making, and ongoing experimentation as forms of expression.

What began in Berlin has gradually expanded through life on Teshima. While each family member continues to develop their own creative practice, together they pursue an art practice rooted in the experiences and rhythms of everyday life.