Curatorial Statement

Since the pandemic, social and art discourses and modes of cultural practices have been continuously varied and reframed, with emergencies of climate change, human rights, natural disasters, mobility, and economic crisis among others.

While living in the ‘now or never', some arts institutions and artists view that intersections of social engagement, art, and activism in the 21st century have been shaping new and alternative dimensions and agencies. But how would these concerns related to the notion of ‘post-pandemic contemporary art’ mean and matter to Taiwan- a bubble of normality? This is beyond going online to make art or any cultural contingencies under the impact of the pandemic. This is to question what kind of art we really need today to speculate and confront the times.

This is also why when I was invited in late 2020 by the National Theatre of Taiwan to conceive a project to celebrate its 35th anniversary, what urged me was to formulate shared spaces and conditions allowing local artists and audiences to think and act together. Therefore the performative production of this project has become a series of drills, exercises, and rehearsals. Drills essentially propose theatrical situations in which people’s bodies and minds warm up and repeatedly rehearse for disasters or accidental emergencies, in order to react, survive and take actions. Drills suggest instructions, storyboards, scripts, choreography, and musical scores.

In the 11 events of 2057: Rehearsing Ways of Living, the artists imagine what the drills would look, feel and sound like if devising rehearsals for sea-level rise, gender equality, food crisis, cyberwarfare, covid-19 baby bust, unknown viruses, endangered cultures and languages, and the ephemeral anthropocene among others.

The invited artists in this project show various social and cultural concerns in their works. However, this project rather conducts those concerns as ways of thinking and doing than issues or subjects of work. Many of the artists are also new bloods that the National Theatre has not worked with. As a fearless try, they will be coming out from here. Regarding the future, voices, movements and perspectives from the young generation must be heard and seen. Charting the times and writing his/herstories of the now and future, through 2057, we are all already living in 2057- now or never.