“This publication assembling the practices and discourses of ‘Asian contemporary performance’ is assuredly a statement of ‘the world we have made’ for the now and the future, as well as a means of connecting TPAC and other ‘worlds.’ ”－Ruo-Yu LIU, Chairwoman of Taipei Performing Arts Center

“While it is now hardly unusual to find choreographers working in an exhibition setting, or visual artists performing on a stage, it is still rare to see practitioners from the different fields working together, as can be found at ADAM.”－John Tain, Head of Research at Asia Art Archive

“With various understandings from multiple disciplines, life journeys and international practices, this publication is neither a collected manifesto, nor an imprint of harmony and integration. On the contrary, it is the very embodiment of incarnations and trajectories of the world history and the network of contemporary corporeality.”－Chun-Yen WANG, Art Critic

“The anthology sheds light on contemporary, situated approaches to ‘the notion of composition,’ breaking with linear processes of gathering through decolonial and collective movement-based practices.”－Madeleine Planeix-Crocker, Associate Curator at Lafayette Anticipations

Asia Discovers Asia Meeting for Contemporary Performance (ADAM) was founded by Taipei Performing Arts Center in 2017. Jointly conceived with River Lin, a Taiwanese artist and curator currently living and working between France and Taiwan, the project aims to build a research and exchange platform for cross-cultural and interdisciplinary performance art in the Asia-Pacific region. Different from other similar networks and art markets that focus on transactions, ADAM emphasizes an ‘artist-led’ concept and practice. It invites artists to disrupt the relationships and dialogues between institutions and artist communities through the ecological processes of conception, research and development, as well as production, and also provides sustenance and companionship to artists while they embark on their journeys in creative research and co-creation.

This book is based on the exchanges, research and practices undertaken by artists from across the Asia-Pacific region and beyond who have worked with performance as a medium, form and method during the 2017-2021 editions of ADAM (Asia Discovers Asia Meeting for Contemporary Performance). It proposes or questions work-in-progress modes of knowledge production in the glocal context of contemporary performance. This publication documents the trajectory of ADAM, and further expands the discursive process for the problematique related to issues such as geopolitics, community and social engagement, cross-cultural studies, and interdisciplinary art.

作者

Editor-in-Chief: River LIN

Authors: I-Wen CHANG, Cheng-Ting CHEN, Betty Yi-Chun CHEN, Enoch CHENG, Xin CHENG, Cheng-Hua CHIANG, Chih-Yung Aaron CHIU, Ling-Chih CHOW, Freda FIALA, Nicole HAITZINGER, Xuemei HAN, Rosemary HINDE, Ding-Yun HUANG, Danielle KHLEANG, Tsung-Hsin LEE, Helly MINARTI, Nanako NAKAJIMA, Jessica OLIVIERI, Hsuan TANG, Cristina SANCHEZ-KOZYREVA, Anador WALSH, Po-Wei WANG 

*Listed in alphabetical order of surname.

Translators: (Mandarin Chinese to English) Elliott Y.N. ChEUNG, Johnny KO, Elizabeth LEE, River LIN, Stephen MA, Cheryl ROBBINS; (English to Mandarin Chinese) Tai-Jung YU, Yen-Ing CHEN

目錄

Preface／The Future and the World We Have Made_______Ruo-Yu LIU
Foreword／
What’s in a Name? _______John TAIN
Calling for (the Absent) Asia_______Chun-Yen WANG
River Gatherings_______Madeleine PLANEIX-CROCKER
Introduction／River LIN
About ADAM

Chapter 1: The Artist’s Bodies and Research

The Archive and Repertoire of Butoh: Takao Kawaguchi’s About Kazuo Ohno_______Nanako NAKAJIMA
The Discursive Body in Fluid Performance Processes: Watan Tusi’s TAI Body Theatre_______Ling-Chih CHOW
The Intersection of the Body, Technology, and Science: Su Wen-Chi’s Interdisciplinary Practice_______Chih-Yung Aaron CHIU
Digital Shamanism: On Half-Spiritual Eyes and the Curation of Existences in Choy Ka Fai’s Oeuvre_______Nicole HAITZINGER
Performance Art: Melati Suryodarmo's Walk of Life_______Cristina SANCHEZ-KOZYREVA
How the Body Moves: Eisa Jocson’s Work and Research_______Betty Yi-Chun CHEN
The Manner and Mind of an Anti-Establishment Girl: Su PinWen and the Trajectory of the Girl’s Notes Trilogy_______Tsung-Hsin LEE
Seven Drifts on the Possibilities of Shared Spaces_______Xin CHENG
Joining the Current of Love: On the Practice of Latai Taumoepeau_______Jessica OLIVIERI

Chapter 2: Working Collaboratively in Transcultural Practices

A Waffle Named ‘What is chinese?’ _______Cheng-Ting CHEN
Down the Garden Path: The Work, Origin and Legacy of Paeonia Drive_______Anador WALSH    
Behalf : Chen Wu-Kang and Pichet Klunchun’s ‘Non-Western-Centric’ Transcultural Performance_______I-Wen CHANG
Bound Together: Luke George and Daniel Kok’s Collaborative Artistic Practice_______Betty Yi-Chun CHEN
In Search of Similarities amid Differences: International Collaboration and Local Participation of Disappearing Island_______Tsung-Hsin LEE
Collective and Collaborative Work and Its Pre- and Post-Performance: IsLand Bar (2017-2021) _______Ding-Yun HUANG
Thinking Borders, Oceanically: On The Past is a Foreign Country by Michikazu Matsune and Jun Yang_______Freda FIALA

Chapter 3: Mapping the Art Ecosystem

Curating/Rethinking Arts Ecosystems in Asia with Networks and Gatherings_______Rosemary HINDE
The Lab-ing Must Go On…_______Ding-Yun HUANG
Call and Response: A Practice in Dialogue, an Exercise in Imagination, a Rehearsal for a Different Future―A Look Back on Drama Box’s IgnorLAND of its Loss_______Xuemei HAN
KOREOGRAFI, An Indonesian (Missing) Biography_______Helly MINARTI
Vuth Lyno, Moeng Meta, Prumsodun Ok and Community Arts Education in Cambodia_______Danielle KHLEANG
Ten Years of Transformation: The Positioning and Evolution of the Pulima Art Festival_______Cheng-Hua CHIANG
Dancing in Museums: Choreographing Live Art in Taiwan_______I-Wen CHANG
When Shows Must Go Online: The Framing of the Visual Interface and Its Extension_______An interview with Po-Wei WANG by Hsuan TANG
Notes on Enquiries into Asia(s) _______Enoch CHENG
Responding to the Shifting Worlds: Chiaki Soma’s Curatorial Practice_______Betty Yi-Chun CHEN

Appendix
Programs of ADAM 2017-2021
Writers’ Biographies

序／導讀

【推薦序】
Foreword/ What’s in a Name?
John TAIN

Unlike the visual arts, the performing arts has always enjoyed a much more ephemeral existence. While a painting or a sculpture generally enjoys a stable existence once completed, a piece of theater, dance, or music occupies space only during the course of a certain duration of time. Once over, it continues to exist, but only in the mind of its viewers and participants.

And yet, somewhat improbably, something lasting seems to have taken hold with the founding of Asia Discovers Asia Meeting for Contemporary Performance at the Taipei Performing Arts Center (TPAC) by artist and curator River Lin. ADAM – as the annual event is popularly and affectionately known among the larger community – has managed to foster a wide-ranging network of artists and programmers from across the Asia Pacific region, and beyond, over its five annual iterations despite its being dedicated to the ephemeral arts. This is no mean feat, as by the time of its founding in 2017, the field was already thick with festivals, professional meetings, culture industry markets, and other forms of gatherings that, since the 1990s, have encouraged the growth of performing arts networks across Asia and fostered a more tightly interconnected performing arts scene around the world.

If ADAM has proven to have staying power, and to be more than just a face in the crowd, it is partly because it has distinguished itself as an opportunity, not just for networking among industry professionals, but also for artists to meet one another and to spend sustained time together in the workshopping of ideas and in-progress pieces. Thus, as it took place in August 2018 (which was when I experienced it in person), the formal meetings were preceded by Artist Lab, in which a number of creators got to know one another, partly by making, thinking, and just living together for the couple of weeks of the residence. The meetings were also bookended by several presentations by the participating artists, in which they could showcase collaboratively developed pieces, often of startling freshness and inventiveness, especially considering that they were produced in a short amount of time. This emphasis on artist development is also what has sustained ADAM and allowed it to persevere in the face of the immobility imposed by the pandemic. Shedding the more meeting-related functions of its first iterations, the event honed in on serving as a platform for artistic fertilization, with the 2021 ‘meeting’ re-imagined as three separate in-person and on-line modules spread throughout the year.

This emphasis on process and ideas underscores one of ADAM’s unique strengths, alluded to by its reference to ‘contemporary performance.’ That is, aside from its geographical ambitions to bring together Asia, the event spans disciplinary ones as well, moving between the performing arts and the visual arts through the shared but unlike vocabulary of performance. A format that came into its own in the 2000s, performance differs from its predecessor, performance art. Whereas the latter emerged out of the visual arts starting in the late 1960s partly as an outgrowth of happenings and other similar actions, and frequently featured the artist’s own body in a non-art setting, the former takes as its starting point the live experience as a shared commonality between theater, dance, music, and other performing arts. However, while it is now hardly unusual to find choreographers working in an exhibition setting, or visual artists performing on a stage, it is still rare to see practitioners from the different fields working together, as can be found at ADAM. It reflects the increasing convergence between these different genres by adding visual artists to the mix of choreographers, actors, directors, and musicians that it hosts – hardly surprisin

This book is based on the exchanges, research and practices undertaken by artists from across the Asia-Pacific region and beyond who have worked with performance as a medium, form and method during the 2017-2021 editions of ADAM (Asia Discovers Asia Meeting for Contemporary Performance). It proposes or questions work-in-progress modes of knowledge production in the glocal context of contemporary performance. This publication documents the trajectory of ADAM, and further expands the discursive process for the problematique related to issues such as geopolitics, community and social engagement, cross-cultural studies, and interdisciplinary art. As the curator of ADAM, my work is to continuously explore and stir these speculations with artists, and stage how they choreograph, sculpt, concoct and circulate their thoughts and findings performatively.  

Through a point-line-plane approach, Networked Bodies: The Culture and Ecosystem of Contemporary Performance looks at the performance process in three aspects: the individual practices of artists, collaborations between artists, and the art ecosystem. This composition presents how contemporary art, society and culture have intertwined into an intricate network (alas, this publication explores only a part of it).

The first chapter, “The Artist’s Bodies and Research,” examines the creative research and development behind live works and actions of performance, dance, theatre, new media and visual artists. The specific histories, social progresses and contemporary cosmoses connected to the inner recesses of their bodies enlighten us on how the body can be used as a language and instrument of fieldwork, as well as how artistic research is replete with process-oriented performativity. “Working Collaboratively in Transcultural Practices,” meanwhile, is a collection of artists’ firsthand experiences of collaborations and back-and-forth dialogues. The various exchanges and reflections between them catalyze experimental discourses of cross-cultural practices beyond theoretical frameworks. The third chapter, “Mapping the Art Ecosystem”, depicts the intersections of the artist community, contemporary society and the institutional realm in the 21st century context. It charts where we are presently and stimulates our understanding of how different hues of cultural and art practitioners have together colored the ecosystem, including all the contributors to this book:  artists, curators, academics, art critics, producers, members of cultural institutions and the like.

There is, however, no single understanding or consensus of ‘Asia as method’ in these networked bodies. The way a piece is situated and associated with other pieces in the same or another chapter of this publication suggests how discourses could be questioned, rather than being installed. It invites readers and arts practitioners to reflexively rethink about ‘who’ is perceiving and rehearsing the notions of ‘Asia,’ ‘inter-Asianness’ and ‘contemporaneity’ – for ‘what,’ from ‘where’ and ‘how’ – as well as what cultural imaginations have arguably been articulated or withdrawn amidst it all.  

ADAM was initiated in a bid to build a cultural infrastructure that is open-minded and heterogeneous, as well as to seek a decentralized and non-binary discourse on contemporary performance culture through the research and practices of artists. As a publication that transforms on-site happenings, making-of processes and echoes into knowledge production, this book also responds to the social and arts ecosystem impacted by COVID-19. With the opening of Taipei Performing Arts Center in 2022, ADAM continues to investigate the networks and bodies of Asian and global contemporary art and performance through this book.
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