An unexpected rock spectacle, a solo theatre performance with unknowing collaborators and live animation mixed with sound celebrate Spatial Poetics X, July 7.

Cindy Mochizuki and Miko Hoffman, co-founders of the pre-festival event of the Powell Street Festival, have returned this year to curate Spatial Poetics' 10th year. The Powell Street Festival, an annual celebration of Japanese Canadian arts, culture and heritage, celebrates its 35th anniversary, July 30 and 31.

Like they first did in 2002, Mochizuki and Hoffman, a musician, writer and event organizer, have commissioned three interdisciplinary Asian-Canadian artists to collaborate with partners of their choice to create new, experimental 15-minute performances.

"There were so many different artists working in their own isolated disciplines, so what Miko and I really wanted to do was to bring different artists together and essentially put them into a creative tank," Mochizuki said of the event's origins. "Those spaces are rare and those opportunities are rare."

Mochizuki, an interdisciplinary artist working in drawing, video/animation, performance, web works and installation, says those who attend Spatial Poetics experience singular treats.

"People only get to see it for that one night, so it's a real fleeting moment."

Previous Spatial Poetics spilled onto the street with a dance performance in the window of the now-defunct Hunt and Gather shop that once graced Carrall Street, and a poster project that paid homage to the old signs disappearing due to development in the Downtown Eastside and Chinatown. For the 10th edition, Spatial Poetics is moving back inside, to SFU Woodward's.

Laiwan, one of the first artists who signed on to Spatial Poetics, returns this year. Mochizuki expects those familiar with the playful and poetic interdisciplinary visual artist and writer's work to be surprised by her rocking collaboration with artist and writer Vanessa Kwan and musician Eileen Kage, who will perform together as laiwankwankage.

Maiko Bae Yamamoto, artistic director of Theatre Replacement, one year collaborated with her father for Spatial Poetics to build on a biographical tale of him waiting to meet a lover at a train station. This year, she's fashioned a performance around five gifts--a mathematic body puzzle, a proposition, a song from her childhood, a performance about ghosts and reassurance--from unknowing collaborators.

Finally, animator Asa Mori is collaborating with Sam Scott to produce stop-motion animation and projection with sound.

Interspersed between the performances will be six video shorts by artists including Paul Wong, Leslie Supnet, Lydia Fu and Leslie Loksi Chan.

An after party at Blim will see the launch of Jukkai, a creative memoir of the history of Spatial Poetics, a collaboration with Simon Fraser University's West Coast LINE journal.

More than 30 artists who've contributed to Spatial Poetics recall their past performances with photos, sketches, essays, interviews and process notes for Jukkai, which means 10 times in Japanese.

"Spatial Poetics originally began as an exploration of language and the exchange of poetics and so I think these themes still carry through after 10 years," Mochizuki said. "It's this very underlying element that I still see in all the collaborations."

Video haiku, video collages and other super short works made to be viewed on cellphones and iPods that reveal Toronto filmmaker Midi Onodera's dry sense of humour will be tweeted by the Powell Street Festival Society Twitter feed (@powellstfest) all month.

For more information, see powellstreetfestival.com.

crossi@vancourier.com

Twitter: @Cheryl_Rossi