Artist Conversation: Robyn Orlin & Faustin Linyekula
With the Asian Premiere of We wear our wheels with pride and slap your streets with color… we said ‘bonjour’ to satan in 1820 … andMy Body, My Archive at the 2023 Taipei Arts Festival, choreographers and artists Robyn Orlin and Faustin Linyekula together give a post-performance conversation for the very first time spotlighting their ongoing artistic research and practice of performing the notion of decolonization and beyond.
DATE＆TIME
2023/8/6 (Sun) 16:00-17:00
VENUE
2F SUN HALL
Free admission
This session is in conducted in English, with Mandarin conservative interpretation.
Robyn Orlin
Born in 1955 in Johannesburg, Robyn Orlin set out from childhood to develop her choreographic practice and culture in an environment hostile to all discrimination, including aesthetic discrimination: from Zulu dances to Merce Cunningham, from hip-hop to classical ballet... whatever they are and wherever they come from, all dances are favoured. And the aesthetic eclecticism she demonstrates, this "universalism" –choreographic and musical, cinematographic, plastic, literary...– has become one of the salient features of her writing.
Trained at the London School of Contemporary Dance (1975-1980), then at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1990-1995), Robyn Orlin began her career as a dancer, choreographer and teacher in South Africa, where she was quickly spotted, as much for the singularity of her writing, the chaos that reigns in her creations, as for her active commitment in the fight against apartheid.
At the turn of the millennium, her (multiple prize-winning) dance piece Daddy, I have seen this piece six times before and I still don’t know why they’re hurting each other, which mocks the difficulties and shortcomings of the young rainbow nation, but also classical ballet as a vector of discrimination, enabled her to tour in Europe and brought her international recognition. France has since become a creative territory for her: she made her first film, Hidden Beauties, Dirty Stories (Ina/Arte, 2004), her first opera, Handel’s L’Allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato (Opéra Garnier, Paris, 2007), numerous solos for performers from different backgrounds, and her first theatre production, Les Bonnes, by Jean Genet (Théâtre de la Bastille, Paris, 2019). At the same time, she continued to work in South Africa, where she created Still Life with homeless... for the Via Katlehong company (2007), Walking next to our shoes... with the singer-dancers of the Phuphuma Love Minus (2009), Beauty remained for just a moment... (2012) and we wear our wheels with pride... (2021) with the Moving into Dance company.
The universe of this prolific artist is trademarked, as we have said, by the mixture of forms, expressions and genres, by the joyful confusion that she creates on stage and in the audience of her shows, by her critical and political character, and by her strong plastic component. It is also recognisable by the presence of a few motifs that recur obsessively: tutus, for example, oranges, or, perhaps more mysteriously, ducks –alone or in groups and made of all kinds of materials, ducks of all kinds, sizes and colours.
Faustin Linyekula
I’m known as a dancer, choreographer, but I call myself a storyteller.
I tell my stories through writing, theatre, dance, still or moving images. I live and work in Kisangani, Democratic Republic of Congo, former Zaire, former Belgian Congo, former Congo Free State, private property of Leopold II, King of Belgians.
In 2001, after 8 years traveling and working around the world, I returned to the ruins of my country and founded Studios Kabako in Kinshasa, first as a space for theatre and dance. When six years later we moved to Kisangani, in Eastern DRC, Studios Kabako opened up to music and film. Because freeing
ourselves from the colonial gaze to shape our lives in our own terms is the first step towards a future our children can be proud of. And for that no creative energy shall be left out, whatever their art form. Studios Kabako has since been a refuge for young Congolese and African artists, offering long term accompaniment, from training to production and touring.
I have toured in theatres, festivals and museums across Europe, Africa, Oceania and the Americas, including the MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Central Africa Museum in Tervuren, the Tate Modern in London, the MUCEM in Marseille, Festival d’Avignon, the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, New Zealand Festival, Sharjah Biennial, Théâtre de la Ville or Festival d’Automne in Paris.
I was associate artist to the city of Lisbon in 2016, and co-associate artist for Holland Festival in 2019.
I received the 2007 Principal Award from the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, the 2014 CurryStone Design Prize, the 2018 Inaugural Soros Arts Fellowship and the 2019 Tällberg / Eliasson Global Leadership Prize.
Contemporary Performance and Transdisciplinary Art 1: The Performativity and Liveness in Contemporary Art
Today's contemporary art and performance are becoming increasingly intertwined in terms of performance frameworks and vocabularies. In the performance of live exhibition, event, or choreography, it is evident that the artists have placed their body's way of being, the dimension of time, theatrical situations, and sensory experiences between the expanded white cube and black box. This forum invites Chuang Wei-Tzu and Jo Hsiao to talk about liveness and performativity as the keywords from the perspective of curatorial practice, and the cultural patterns and texture of live art and contemporary performance, as well as the present and future of curating performance in visual arts institutions.
DATE＆TIME
2023/8/11 (Fri.) 19:30-21:00
VENUE
11F Studio 3
*Online registration.
Chuang Wei-Tzu
The curator of C-LAB and the former Editor in Chief of Artist Magazine. Chuang Wei-Tzu has been highly interested in the diversity of contemporary art in Taiwan. Her research focuses on the change of artistic ideas and technology rendered in the exhibition and performance, as well as the gender issues in art history. Her recent curatorial projects include “Display on Live” in C-LAB Annual Exhibition Re: Play (2020), Project: The Folly (2021, nominated for the 20th Taishin Arts Award), (de)phallocentrism (2022) and The Unrestricted Society (2022).
Jo Hsiao
Jo Hsiao earned a master’s degree in museum studies from the University of Leicester in England and is currently a senior curator at Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Since 2015, she has curated several mixed-form exhibitions, including Testimony of Food: Ideas and Food (2015), Alice’s Rabbit Hole: Everyday Life Comprehensible and Incomprehensible (2015), Life between Delight and Discomfort (2016), Arena – An Adventurous Expression of the Dual Engagement of Exhibition and Performance (2017), Cross through the Magical Mirror, and Enter a New World! (2018), Ryoji Ikeda Solo Exhibition (2019), Between Earth and the Sky: The Spiritual State of Our Times (2020), and The Modern Exorcist (2021).
Contemporary Performance and Transdisciplinary Art 2: Performing the Everyday as Art, Nature as the Body
Today's contemporary art and performance are becoming increasingly intertwined in terms of performance frameworks and vocabularies, with dance exhibition or live installation demonstrating how artists and choreographers are mixing and reflecting white cube and black box performance cultures, body techniques and concepts. This forum invites Wu Meng-Hsuan and Wang Po-Wei to discuss how art and everyday life alternate performativity, and how the materiality of the body and the immateriality of time can become a kind of theatrical nature through the practice of choreography and performance art, taking Sun and Sea, Temporary Title, 2015 (Taipei 2023) and SUPER as examples.
DATE＆TIME
2023/8/15 (Tue) 19:30-21:00
VENUE
2F SUN HALL
*Online registration.
Wu Meng-Hsuan
Meng-Hsuan is a dance critic, dance dramaturg, and performance researcher. She recently participated in the following projects with different position including: Dance dramaturg of Cracking by Ning Wang (2023), Nominator of Taishin Arts Award (2021-2022), Co-curator of C-lab PLAYARTS Festival (2021), Host of research project: Disco and Dancing Ban (2022) and Choreographic Curating (2021). Her dance reviews and critiques were published at PAR Performing arts redefined, Reviewing Performing Arts Taiwan, ARTalks, ARTouch, and Critique in the Front Line of IATC Hong Kong.
Wang Po-Wei
Wang Po-Wei is the artistic director of Digital Art Foundation, Taiwan. His research interests include Media Theory, History of Contemporary Art, Sociology of Culture and Art, and Art/Science/Technology (AST). Translated Niklas Luhmann’s Liebe als Passion: Zur Codierung von Intimität into Chinese together with Chang Chin-Hui.
Artist Talk of Temporary Title, 2015 (Taipei, 2023)
Invited by the 2023 Taipei Arts Festival, Temporary Title (2015) by Xavier Le Roy in collaboration with Scarlet Yu has become Temporary Title, 2015 (Taipei, 2023), through working with the Taiwan-based casts. In this discussion, the artists will elaborate on the thoughts and trajectory of this creation and reflect on the relationship between lifeforms and performance-making.
DATE＆TIME
2023/8/18 (Fri) 20:15-21:15
VENUE
11F Studio1
*Free admission for ticket holders of this performance.
*This session is in conducted in English.
Xavier Le Roy
Xavier Le Roy holds a doctorate in molecular biology at the University of Montpellier, France, and has worked as an artist since 1991. Since 2018, he has worked as Professor at the Institute for Applied Theater Studies in Giessen (Germany). He was artist-in-residence at the Podewil in Berlin (1996-2003), Associated Artist at Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier (2007-2008), Artist in Residence fellow at the MIT Program in Art Culture and Technology (Cambridge, MA) (2010), and Artist-in-residence at Théâtre de la Cité Internationale, Paris (2012-2015). Through his solo works such as Self Unfinished (1998), Product of Circumstances (1999) and Le sacre du printemps. He has opened new perspectives in the field of choreography. His latest works investigate the time and space of exhibitions as well as the specificity of the relationships between spectators and live art works that exhibition spaces, museum or other public spaces allow. His work has been presented internationally, including Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017, Taikwun Contemporary Art Center (Hong Kong), Tapiès Foundation (Barcelona), MoMA PS1 (New York), Kaldor Public Art Projects (Sydney), Centre Pompidou (Paris), and La Biennale di Venezia Danza among others.
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Scarlet Yu
Hong Kong-born Berlin-based dance artist. Her work navigates the in-betweenness of the politic and the poetic of the narrative listening and telling. Using Autobiography and Memory as a tool to reexamine private/public embodied narration. Her collaborative and solo works have been presented in various contexts includes IsLand Bar with ADAM artists, Temporary Title 2015, For The Unfaithful Replica, For Performance and Still Untitled at Sculpture Projects Münster 2017, Still in Hong Kong together with Xavier Le Roy, A Performance curated by Enoch Cheng and one-on-one solo works such as Read MEmory, The Act of Passing and The Act of Memory. Yu was a jury member for Tanzplattform Germany 2018, artist in residency at Hombroich Summer Fellows, and ADAM-Asia Discovers Asia Meeting for Contemporary Performance in 2017.
Artist & Curator Talk of Sun & Sea
With the Asian Premiere of Sun & Sea at the 2023 Taipei Arts Festival, the artists Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, and Lina Lapelytė and the curator Lucia Pietroiusti in conversation with the festival curator River Lin invite audiences to rethink every little thing of the quotidian, what arguably defines climates crisis and the intersection of ecology and art.
DATE＆TIME
2023/8/19 (Sat) 18:45-19:45
VENUE
2F SUN HALL
*Free admission
*This session is in conducted in English, with Mandarin conservative interpretation.
Lucia Pietroiusti
Lucia Pietroiusti (b. 1985) is a curator working at the intersection of art, ecology and systems, usually outside of the gallery space. Pietroiusti is the founder of the General Ecology project at Serpentine, London, where she is currently Strategic Advisor for Ecology. Current curatorial projects include Sun & Sea (since 2019), The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish (with Filipa Ramos, since 2018). Recent projects include Persones Persons, the 8th Biennale Gherdeïna (May-September 2022, with Filipa Ramos). Recent publications include More-than-Human (with Andrés Jaque and Marina Otero Verzier, 2020); Microhabitable (with Fernando García-Dory, 2022) and PLANTSEX (2019).
Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė
Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė (b.1983, based in Vilnius) works as a filmmaker, theater director and visual artist. In her creative practice, Barzdžiukaitė explores the gap between objective and imagined realities, while challenging an anthropocentric way of thinking in a playful way. Her recent full-length documentary film-essay Acid Forest was awarded at the Locarno International Film Festival among others, was shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Lincoln Center in NYC, American Film Institute festival in LA and many other events and venues for cinema and contemporary art. Sun & Sea is her latest collaboration in the medium of performance.
Vaiva Grainytė
Vaiva Grainytė‘s (b. 1984, based in Lithuania) text-based practice shifts between genres, interdisciplinary theatre works and publications. As a writer, playwright, and poet she takes action as an observant anthropologist: challenged by Grainyte's poetic interpretation, mundane social issues take on a paradoxical and defamiliarized nature. Her book of essays Beijing Diaries (2012) and the poetry collection Gorilla’s Archives (2019) were nominated for the Book of the Year awards, and included in the top twelve listings of the most creative books in Lithuania. Her oeuvre has been translated into over 10 languages. Her bilingual, cross-genre novel, Roses and Potatoes (2022), playfully and phantasmagorically deconstructs the stereotypical concept of happiness embedded in contemporary culture.
Lina Lapelytė
Lina Lapelytė's (b.1984, works in Vilnius and London) performance-based practice is rooted in music and flirts with pop culture, gender stereotypes and nostalgia. Her works engage trained and untrained performers often in an act of singing through a wide range of genres such as mainstream music and opera. The singing takes the form of a collective and affective event that questions vulnerability and silencing. Her recent and upcoming shows include Cartier Foundation, Paris, Tel Aviv Museum of Art; RIBOCA2 – Riga biennale; Tai Kwun, Hong Kong; Glasgow International; Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels; Kaunas Biennale, Lithuania; Pompeii Commitment and Castello di Rivoli, Italy.
