Manami Okazaki
Manami Okazaki is an author and journalist. She has worked across the globe, lived in several regions and travelled to over 50 countries but now mostly focuses on Japan.
She has produced 12 books (art/ photography coffee-table tomes/ visual culture collectibles) on Japanese culture, art, crafts and fashion, which have been widely acclaimed by international media. She specializes in folk culture, subcultures, crafts, popular culture, regional identity and branding, iconography, and multispecies relationships. Her long-term projects are represented in her books.
Through her work, she hopes to foster cross-cultural understanding and an appreciation of the print medium. As more people consume and participate in Japanese culture across the world, she works with some of the nation's most well known and influential creators, artists, designers and architects to share information and insight straight from the source.
Many of her projects also represent her work with over 250 craftspeople across Japan, ranging from ceramics makers to exclusive kimono ateliers. She gives talks at cultural institutions internationally on Japanese culture and curates accessible and popular exhibitions with Japanese artisans that appeal to a contemporary audience.
Other Guests of the Tables
Stavros Stavrides
Architect and urban theorist
Stavros Stavrides, architect and activist, is Emeritus Professor at the School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens, Greece, where he teaches postgraduate courses on the metropolitan experience of space and supervises many PhDs.
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Silvia Federici
Philosopher
Silvia Federici is a feminist activist and a renowned political theorist. One of the most important voices on the Commons.
Patricia Lannes
Museum educator and community-engagement specialist
Patricia Lannes works at the intersection of museums, art, and education. Recognized as a dynamic leader in the global cultural sector and as an accomplished public speaker, she addresses the vital structural changes required to provide access to the arts and to navigate the distinct challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. She uses art, visual literacy and museums as powerful tools to engage and unite communities.
Roxana Fabius
Director of the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales in Montevideo, Uruguay
Roxana Fabius is an Uruguayan curator and art administrator. She currently is the director of the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Massimo De Angelis
Political economist and founding editor of the web journal The Commoner
Massimo De Angelis is Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at the University of East London and the founding editor of the web journal The Commoner.
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Gladys Tzul Tzul
Maya K'iche' sociologist
Gladys Tzul Tzul is a Maya K'iche’ woman from Totonicapán. She is a writer and essayist. Holding a PhD in Sociology, she has conducted research in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Ecuador, and the United States.
Cheng Ran
video artist and the co-founder of MARTIN GOYA BUSINESS
Cheng Ran, born in Inner Mongolia and currently based in Hangzhou, is a video artist and the co-founder of the artist-run space MARTIN GOYA BUSINESS. He has held a solo exhibition at the New Museum in New York, and his works have been exhibited or screened at institutions including the Sydney Opera House, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, and the Istanbul Biennial.
Ashley Lee Wong
Scholar and Co-Founder of MetaObjects
Ashley Lee Wong, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies and Associate Director of the MA Cultural Management programme at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and she is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of MetaObjects.
Jia Rujun
Researcher on Cooperative Housing and Urban Sustainability Strategies; Architect and Urban Designer; Principal Author of More Than Housing: A Century of Non-Profit Housing Development in Zurich.
Jia Rujun holds a Master’s degree in Architecture from ETH Zurich and is currently a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong. Her long-term research focuses on the institutional frameworks and practices of cooperative housing in China and internationally.
Tang Guanhua
Founder of the China Self-Sufficiency Lab, initiator of several consensus-community experiments
Co-founder of AnotherLand, Director of the China Self-Sufficiency Lab, initiator of the Chi’an Consensus Community Experiment and the Southern Life Consensus Community Experiment, and founder of the United Reborn Project.
Laura Pando
Interim CEO of Julie’s Bicycle
Laura Pando Martínez, is a culture and climate expert practitioner and the Interim CEO of Julie’s Bicycle.
Katsuhito Okubo
Public bath and bookstore owner
In 2019, he took over the family business, the public bathhouse “Denki-yu,” and aims to realize a “society with the least possible unhappiness” at the local level through the public bathhouse. In 2025, he opened the bookstore “kamos” as a place to foster an atmosphere that reflects “the difficulty of living together.”
Fanny Fontaine
Art Curator
Fanny Fontaine is a Doctor in Comparative Literature and writer, translator. As a critic, she has been writing on contemporary artists in Tokyo.
Tengyo Kura
Vagabond greeter and culture diver
Tengyo Kura is a social vagabond currently and temporarily based in Kyojima, Sumida, Tokyo. Through projects such as Sumida Mukojima EXPO and activities at the 100-year-old Barber Araki, he creates spaces for cultural exchange, using art, storytelling, and coffee to connect people and cultivate new forms of community with oshaberi (friendly conversations).
Cléo Verstrepen
Art curator and researcher
Cléo Verstrepen is an independent curator and researcher, holding a PhD in art from Tokyo University of the Arts.
Rafael A. Balboa
Architect
Rafael A. Balboa is an architect (PhD) who works and resides in Kyojima, where he has been actively involved in the neighborhood over time.
Manami Okazaki
Author and journalist
Manami Okazaki is an author and journalist. She has worked across the globe, lived in several regions and travelled to over 50 countries but now mostly focuses on Japan. She has produced 12 books (art/ photography coffee-table tomes/ visual culture collectibles) on Japanese culture, art, crafts and fashion, which have been widely acclaimed by international media. She specializes in folk culture, subcultures, crafts, popular culture, regional identity and branding, iconography, and multispecies relationships. Her long-term projects are represented in her books.
farid rakun
Art Curator and member of ruangrupa
farid rakun, trained as an architect (B.Arch from Universitas Indonesia and M.Arch from Cranbrook Academy of Art), wears different hats dependent on who is asking. He is a part of the artists’ collective ruangrupa with whom he co-curated TRANSaction: Sonsbeek 2016 in Arnhem NL and provided a collective Artistic Direction for documenta fifteen (Kassel, 2022).
David Bollier
Writer and activist
David Bollier is an American activist and scholar whose work studies and promotes the commons as a paradigm for re-imagining political economy, culture, and society. Director of the Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, he is the author of more than a dozen books on the commons.
Gertrude Flentge
Cultural operator
Gertrude Flentge is a cultural operator working for the commons. She co-developed various collaborative interlocal ecosystems such as the RAIN Artists' Initiatives Network, Arts Collaboratory and Lumbung - documenta fifteen.
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Clara Mattei
Economist and historian of capitalism and austerity policy
Clara E. Mattei is Professor of Economics at The University of Tulsa and Founding President of FREE: Forum for Real Economic Emancipation. She is the author of Capital Order (2022), one of the Financial Times' Ten Best Economics Books of the year, and the recent Escape from Capitalism (2026); she writes regularly for Il Fatto Quotidiano, The Guardian and Jacobin.
Massimo De Angelis
Political economist and founding editor of the web journal The Commoner
Massimo De Angelis is Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at the University of East London and the founding editor of the web journal The Commoner.
Kathrin Böhm
Artist
Kathrin Böhm works as an artist and organiser across interdependent realms of cultural production, including art worlds. Her organisational and spatial work supports collective forms of (re-)producing public space, reclaiming the economy for more-than-capitalist futures, and enabling a new trans-localism that acknowledges the rural. As a researcher, she contributes to the broader topics of New Economies, Cultural Democracy, Usership of Art and Commons-based World Building.
Keir Milburn
Writer, researcher, and consultant
Dr. Keir Milburn is a writer, researcher, and consultant. He has a background as an academic in political economy and organisation theory and is currently a director of the action-research think tank Abundance.
Masaki Fujihata
Media Artist
Masaki Fujihata, born in Tokyo, is one of the pioneers of Japanese new media art.
Silvia Sacchetti
Silvia Sacchetti is Full Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Trento, where she coordinates the Cives research unit — Economic Institutions and the Common Good. She collaborates with Euricse and co-edits the Journal of Entrepreneurial and Organizational Diversity; her research explores the links between social economy, cooperatives, and shared value for communities.
Silvia Sacchetti is Full Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Trento, where she coordinates the Cives research unit — Economic Institutions and the Common Good. She collaborates with Euricse and co-edits the Journal of Entrepreneurial and Organizational Diversity; her research explores the links between social economy, cooperatives, and shared value for communities.
