［Member Exclusive Event］Ku Kuang-Yi：Bat Banquet-Work-in-progress part 3

This is the privet event only for the Addict and Trooper player of Taipei Performing Arts Center. RSVP is request. More details will be coming around July.

Bat Banquet is a participatory and discursive program that looks at the Covid pandemic through speculative design, performance, and science. Referencing the legendary Manchu-Han Imperial Banquet of exotic dishes, Ku Kuang-Yi, a dentist-turned-bioartist from Taiwan, and interactive designer Robert Charles Johnson, assemble fellow scientists, artists and animal experts in a forum-feast, taking the bat as the central subject. 

In 2020, media hype linked the source of coronavirus to the custom of eating bats in Asia. In a fictive scenario in which a group of researchers show the audience how their bio-engineered bats can become a superfood for humans, protect this endangered species and prevent future pandemics, the lab discusses controversies in ecological issues, cultural prejudices and racism, food ethics and tech cultures in its culinary workshops. 

The work-in-progress presentation has been within a larger frame of development since 2022; the final work will premiere in London and Taipei in 2024. In this dining event, you’ll not only find out that synthetic bats are nutritious but also how design and science can intervene in our food systems and protect both humans and non-humans alike. 

*This is the privet event only for the Addict and Trooper player of Taipei Performing Arts Center. RSVP is request. More details will be coming around July.

 

Ku Kang-Yi, Taiwan
Assistant Professor, Institute of Applied Arts, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University.
Ku Kuang-Yi was born in Taipei, Taiwan, recently based in the Netherlands and Taiwan. He co-founded TW BioArt (a bioart community in Taiwan) to stimulate the fields of BioArt and Science+Art in Taiwan. He has graduated with triple master degrees with social design from Design Academy Eindhoven, dentistry from National Yang-Ming University and communication design from Shih Chien University. Formerly a dentist, Ku is a bio-artist and speculative designer. He attempts to expand the possibilities of combining arts, design and science. His works often focus on clinical medicine, human body, interspecies interaction and sexuality. He tries to explore ethical issues in the scientific field through artistic practice and design methods, aiming to investigate the relationships among technology, individual and environment. 
Kuang-Yi Ku’s “Tiger Penis Project” has been awarded Gijs Bakker Award 2018, the annual prize for the best project by a graduating master’s student in Design Academy Eindhoven. He has also won the 1st prize of Taipei Digital Art Awards in 2015 with “The Fellatio Modification Project”, where he involves body modification, gender studies, queer theories, and dentistry all together. His works were featured in international medias such as New Scientist, The Huffington Post, Elephant Magazine, DAMN° Magazine, Dezeen, Designboom, VICE, Dazed Digital, Daily Mail, New York Post and so on.

Website of Ku Kang-Yi：https://www.kukuangyi.com

Robert Charles Johnson, England
Robert Johnson is a British designer with an MA in Social Design from the Design Academy Eindhoven and founder of Studio Ficta, a creative start-up that fuses film, interactive design, and design research across anthropological, ecological, and social contexts.  
Working with film and interactive design, Johnson's projects create alternative narratives using fictional writing as a design research tool, creating characters and dialogues that highlight issues surrounding social attitudes towards labour, materials, and waste streams within the circular economy. Using this specific approach to researching holistic systems, developed during his Master degree, he explores cross-collaborative methods for human innovation from the most unexpected corners of society. 
In 2020, Johnson completed his residency at the Design Museum, London, where his project titled Fatconomy presented fat as a valuable resource in urban society, illustrating the potential of discarded fats for the economy, material innovation and urban planning.

Website of Robert Johnson：https://www.robertcharlesjohnson.com/