An alternative band consisting of Akira Kawasaki (drums), Daisuke Niitome (piano/keyboard), and Takumi Shiroeda (piano/keyboard). Blending post-punk, post-hardcore, techno minimalism, and contemporary music, the band crafts a distinctive sound through the interplay of two pianos and drums. Their live performances, accompanied by minimalist, geometrically abstract visuals, have received critical acclaim not only in Japan but also across Europe and America.

Akira Kawasaki

Emerging from the live house scene in the late 1990s, Akira Kawasaki founded the instrumental band mouse on the keys (motk) in 2006. Their innovative musical style, fusing math rock with NuJazz, has earned high acclaim both in Japan and internationally. With motk, Kawasaki has led extensive international tours in over 230 venues across 20 countries, performed at major festivals such as Fuji Rock, composed for TV dramas and commercials, and collaborated with renowned architect Tadao Ando—demonstrating a career that transcends genres and national boundaries.

Daisuke Niitome

Having played in various bands as a guitarist and drummer, Daisuke Niitome joined mouse on the keys in 2008 as a keyboardist. Alongside releasing works and touring both domestically and internationally, he has composed for a wide range of media, including TV dramas, commercial video games, and museum art installations. Since 2019, he has also launched his solo artist career under the name DNAAK, producing and performing works that uniquely interpret electronic genres such as techno, ambient, and IDM.

Takumi Shiroeda

Having studied piano from an early age and later immersed in jazz during his university years, Takumi Shiroeda joined mouse on the keys as a new member in October 2022. He officially began his career with the group’s performance at "Hirashin" held at the Hirashin Hiratsuka Hall of Culture and Art in December of the same year. Known for his emotionally nuanced and profound piano playing, Shiroeda excels at portraying inner landscapes through music, leaving a lasting impression that resonates deeply with listeners’ memories and emotions.

Life Was All Silence (LWAS) is a collective based in Hong Kong that exists for sonic expression. Cultivated by an environment of free improvisation, LWAS explores the innate qualities of sound by blending live instrumentation with electro-acoustic elements as a means of communication and emancipation.

Born in Hong Kong in 1991, Jess Lau Ching Wa gained her BA (Honours) in Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong. Lau’s work addresses narrative fragments, bodily memory, iterative manual processes, and the aggregation of time. It involves a wide range of mediums, such as video, animation, and installation, and explores the uniqueness and the malleability of each. The material that comprises Lau’s works is constantly reorganised, shaped, and dismantled in video, connecting and extending with the memory and imagination of the city as well as the individual. At the same time, she aims to break the cold impression of much media art, to portray the temperature and traces of human bodies, and to emphasise the process of creation and imaging.

Lau’s artworks have been exhibited and screened internationally at Ars Electronica, Animatou – International Animation Film Festival, Image Forum Festival, Two Temple Place in London, Ben Brown Gallery in Hong Kong, IFVA Media Art Festival, Tai Kwun Contemporary, FreeSpace at the West Kowloon Cultural District, and elsewhere. She was selected for Tai Kwun Contemporary’s Artist’s Studio Residency in 2020 and was awarded the Nanying Prize in 2022.

Sylvie Cox, born and raised in Hong Kong, began her dance training at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts before continuing her training in the United Kingdom and her professional development in Israel. She lives in Hong Kong and works as a freelance contemporary dancer and performance artist. She has experience with theatre performances, site-specific work, live durational performances, immersive events, and performance art exhibitions. Between 2018 and 2019, she participated in the Hong Kong International Choreography Festival, created her own work, and collaborated with the artists Isaac Chong Wai, Manuel Pelmus, Marge Monko, and Cao Fei. Between 2020 and 2022, she worked extensively at Tai Kwun Contemporary on several different works, including Zoo by Eisa Jocson, Still in Hong Kong by Scarlet Yu and Xavier Le Roy, This Variation by Tino Sehgal, and Echo, Moss, and Spill by Pan Daijing. She continued exploring her own choreographic work Fragments for Eaton’s movement festival in 2022 and participated in Maria Hassabi’s work White Out for the exhibition I’ll Be Your Mirror at Tai Kwun Contemporary in 2023.

Marah Arcilla began her dance training with classical ballet. She has received scholarships from various dance institutions and companies in the Philippines, her home country, where she trained and worked with Myra Beltran, Donna Miranda, and Julie Alagde. In Hong Kong, she has worked with artists including Kirsten Ho and Isaac Chong Wai, and her own works were part of IDance Festival in Hong Kong and the Shenzhen Fringe Festival. In 2021, she worked with Xavier Le Roy and Scarlet Yu for Still in Hong Kong and Tino Sehgal for This Variation as part of the exhibition trust & confusion at Tai Kwun Contemporary. She was also part of Maria Hassabi’s White Out at the exhibition I’ll Be Your Mirror at Tai Kwun Contemporary in 2023. Her most recent solo work is Graceful Dissociations, produced for Manila International Dance Day in May 2024. She is a full time hatha yoga teacher and also is passionate about sharing the Flying Low dance technique, developed by David Zambrano, whom she met in Chiang Mai in 2016 for a month-long residency. She continues to travel to Europe to train with him.

Sylvie Cox and Marah Arcilla’s most recent collaborative creations include Drifting amongst Crossings, a site-specific performance for Eaton’s movement festival in 2024. A re-interpretation of this piece was performed for Neptune Tai Hang, a weekend festival held during Art Basel Hong Kong in 2025.

Shane Aspegren is known for his work with music and sound, which frequently serve as foundational elements in his installations, images, videos, objects, and performances. Approaching his practice from a cross-disciplinary and relational perspective, he juxtaposes improvisational processes within carefully constructed frameworks. He works through interactive modes of creation, exploring the practical application of meditative and holistic practices to the physicality of sound and its impact on the bodymind.

As a composer, writer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist (percussion, electronics, synthesisers, voice, and more), Aspegren has released dozens of studio albums and performed extensively around the world—from DIY venues to major music festivals and esteemed institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Venice Biennale. After relocating to Paris in 2000, he co-founded the experimental electronic duo the Berg Sans Nipple (and its later offshoot Ça Va Chéri) with Lori Sean Berg (currently of Zombie Zombie), releasing three full-length albums and several EPs to international acclaim and leading to multiple world tours. In 2014, following a move to Hong Kong, he co-founded Blood Wine or Honey, whose 2018 album Fear & Celebration received critical praise, before leaving the group in 2019.

He is the founder of ONDO, a platform for his holistic sound and coaching practice. He lives in Los Angeles.

Lisa and Pat are sisters and co-founders of Taboocha. They produced the shows Dear Labia (2021), which explored positive female sexuality, and Scoby Room (2025), an immersive experience of fermentation.

Lisa started brewing kombucha at home as a remedy for digestive problems associated with work stress, which led to a pivotal career change from fashion buying to creating a kombucha brand and brewing full time. Influenced by her Hong Kong upbringing, her kombucha creations feature a wide array of single-origin teas and funky infusions, such as Tom Yum Pineapple and Rice Puer. Kombucha represents a creative medium in which time, ingredients, and personal craft all contribute to an ever-evolving outcome.

Pat hustled as a solicitor for a couple of years before she switched to help with the family’s laminates business. This humbled her, as it made her realise how much blood and sweat went into each dollar that was made. In 2014, she and her sister Lisa started a kombucha brewery named after their mongrel (Taboocha!)—a 100% made-in-Hong Kong health drink which rocked her world.
Since she became the mother of two Chinese Colombian baby girls, Pat’s life has turned 180 degrees. She has come to rethink her priorities, values, perceptions, and motivations on pressing social issues. Today, Pat strives to balance keeping the two businesses afloat whilst making positive changes in the community.