Forum Ⅱ: International Arts Festival as a Vehicle for Integration of Arts Resources and Training of Theatre Professionals
Moderator: Victoria Wang (Taiwan)/ Executive Director of Taipei Arts Festival
Panelists: Dorita Hannah (New Zealand)/ PQ Architecture Commissioner and Professor of Massey
University
David Fishel (Australia)/ Director, Positive Solutions
Wei-Wen Chang (Taiwan)/ Executive Director, OISTAT
Heng Ping (Taiwan)/ Artistic Director, Crown Arts Center and Dance Forum Taipei Dance
Company
Dorita Hannah (New Zealand)/ PQ Architecture Commissioner and Professor of Massey University
Dorita Hannah's talk looks to design as a means of exhibiting the remote architectures and disappearing acts of performance within public exhibitions and festivals. The aim is to allow the lived participatory experience to persist in exhibition as event. In delineating the performative aspects of the presentational, representational and re-presentational, Dorita will assert strategies that call on spontaneous communal encounters and encourage the creation of new unique productions. Through exhibiting performance, designers as curatorial provocateurs create specific conditions in which viewing privileges and power relations can be challenged and in which meaning is continually questioned.
Dr. Hannah will (re)present a range of performance design exhibitions she has initiated, curated and designed: Fragments Out of the Dark (1998), Landing: 7 Stages Aoteroa (PQ, 1999), SRDCE: Heart of PQ (2003), Dis-Play: re-Membering a Performance Landscape (2004) and Now/Next: Performance Space at the Crossroads (2011). Each project attempts to incorporate the spectator as participant and invites the exhibitor to approach the exhibition site as a found-space for communal action and re-action.
Wei-Wen Chang (Taiwan)/OISTAT Executive Director
The topic of Wei-Wen Chang’s talk is ‘Worldwide International Organization Based in Taiwan-OISTAT Experience’.
With the support of Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA), OISTAT is the first international organization to have relocated its headquarters to
Taiwan and begins an operation of ten years since 2006. In the past 5 years, through the overall organization, planning and facilitating OISTAT affairs and various international projects, we have gained insight on how international non-government organization integrates its international resources and facilitates global transnational projects via its international networks. Meanwhile, OISTAT Headquarters has also employed its international activities as a platform to raise the visibility of performing arts culture of Taiwan. Focused on cultural diplomacy and the mutual exchanges of theatre professionals, OISTAT promotes cooperation among Taiwan and international societies in hopes of benefiting Taiwan for generously accommodating OISTAT Headquarters.
OISTAT Executive Director Wei-Wen Chang will explore how OISTAT has facilitated international projects through its global member network and strategic alliance with other theatre organizations, including OISTAT’s most prominent events such as Scenofest at Prague Quadrennial, World Stage Design (WSD) and publications such as Digital Theatre Words (DTW) and World Scenography.
In return for Taiwanese government’s support, Wei-Wen will also demonstrate how OISTAT Headquarters takes advantage of its international activities as a platform to promote Taiwan-themed cultural diplomacy and professional interactions. With an emphasis on theatre professionals’ mutual exchanges, on one hand we introduce the performing arts in
Taiwan to the international society, on the other hand channeling international resources into Taiwan in the form of workshops and seminars etc.
Heng Ping (Taiwan)/ Artistic Director, Crown Arts Center and Dance Forum Taipei Dance Company
The topic of Heng Ping’s talk is ‘How International Project can help?’
International projects have played an important role since the establishment of Crown Theater in 1984 and Dance Forum Taipei Dance Company in 1989. Although we may always seek for the most “economic” way of doing it, we learned so much from cooperating with each other through production, administration and planning.
In the very beginning stage, the international project of Crown Theatre was the final presentation of foreign guest teacher’s workshop. Later, we presented at least one international program in Crown Arts Festival taken place in our black-box theater.
From 1997-2006, collaborated with theaters from major cities in Asia, we presented 4-6 international programs in Taipei and toured among each other every year. With limited sources, the Little Asia Theater/Dance Exchange Project could successfully run for 10 years was because we set up a mutual rule-every city provided the same conditions for each program. Therefore, we could plan under “equal” basis and limited budget. Little Asia Project helped performing arts groups get to know each other, exchange the idea of production in creation and also in all the design, and most valuable result was to develop into co-production later on.
As for Dance Forum Taipei, in stead of presenting single choreographer’s work, we collaborate with international choreographers from
France, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, Spain etc. since 2007. Dancers are challenged to change “channel” quickly to meet up with artists from different background. The whole experience is quite positive up to now due to the diverse training and open-minded of dancers in Taiwan. The collaboration also brings in new opportunity for Company to tour abroad and be presented in the international festival. In 2011, Dance Forum’s new production Eastern Tale was invited to be the opening program of “Taipei Today” series curate by Anmaro and Tropen Theater in Amsterdam. The collaboration with Kafig Dance Company will be presented at International Festival by the National Theater in Taiwan and Montpelier Dance Festival in France in 2012.
