Allen S. Weiss is a writer, editor, trans¬lator, curator, playwright and photographer, and is the author and editor of over forty volumes in the fields of art history, performance theory, landscape architecture, gastronomy, sound art and experimental theater. While residing in New York, Paris and Nice, he is also a passionate kyotophile, where he has returned every year since 2006. His writings on Japanese culture include: Zen Landscapes: Perspectives on Japanese Gardens and Ceramics (Reaktion Books, 2013); The Grain of the Clay: Reflections on Ceramics and the Art of Collecting (Reaktion Books, 2016); Le goȗt de Kyoto (Mercure de France, 2013); Guide anachronique de Kyoto (Éditions Arléa, 2023); and Illusory Dwellings: Aesthetic Meditations in Kyoto (Stone Bridge Press, 2024); and he has produced a Kyoto soundscape, Radio Gidayū (Deutschlandradio Kultur, 2014). He is also the author of two culinary autobiographies: Métaphysique de la miette (Éditioons Argol, 2013) and Autobiographie dans un chou farci (Mercure de France, 2006), and is committed to interdisciplinary research and experimental performance across the media; his creative work includes Theater of the Ears (a play for electronic marionette and taped voice based on the writings of Valère Novarina), which premiered at CalArts (1999) and ended its tour at the Avignon Off Festival (2001); Danse Macabre (a marionette theater for the dolls of Michel Nedjar), which premiered as part of the Poupées (Dolls) exhibition that ASW curated at the Halle Saint Pierre in Paris (2004), and was subsequently shown at the In Transit festival at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin (2009) and the Centre Pompidou Metz (2022); and a novel, Le livre bouffon : Baudelaire à l’Académie (Éditions du Seuil, 2009). His radio productions include L’Indomptable (with Gregory Whitehead) for France Culture (1996); the Hörspiel Glissando for the Klangkunst program of Deutschlandradio Kultur (2010), and Carmignano, an essay on wine for Radio Papesse in Florence (2012). Among his films is is Poupées des ténèbres / Dolls of Darkness (2016), a documentary film about the dolls of Michel Nedjar and the Holocaust. He has been the recipient of Fulbright, Étant Donnés and Japan Foundation grants, and is Distinguished Teacher in the departments of Performance Studies and Cinema Studies in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.