2023–2025 Taipei Arts Festival


Invited by the Taipei Performing Arts Center, River Lin has helmed the artistic direction of the 2023-2025 Taipei Arts Festival as Curator, alongside his ongoing curatorial projects ADAM and Camping Asia at the Center.

Titled [Dancing Ecosystems], [Embodying Theirstories], and [Reeling Hyperreality], the festival has been a trio, performing festival-making as dramaturgical work. Each edition’s festival offers a keyword as an invitation or entry point to rethink urgency and embrace advocacy of how contemporary artists respond to pressing issues of the times and what art forms can be retested and reimagined.

Within the framework of the festival, River initiated and launched [Cruising], a collaborative curatorial project that hosted international curators and their artists for research residencies during the festival to rethink how curating can be a method of performing the art ecosystem, bridging festival-making and international collaboration. By ‘cruising’ and applying ‘cruising’ as a curatorial method, this program acknowledges Taiwan as a part of the Pacific ecosystem. It engages the making and network of the Taipei Arts Festival with broader curatorial discourses and practices in the Asia Pacific region and beyond by foregrounding the notions of the south and archipelago.

Together with River’s another artistic direction of ADAM (Asia Discovers Asia Meetin for Contemporary Performance), the Festival and ADAM align and intersect with each other to strengthen the support for artists’ research, development and dissemination of their work, and facilitate encounters and dialogues between artists and international professionals. 

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受台北表演藝中心委託,林人中出任2023-2025台北藝術節策展人。以 「萬物運動 Dancing Ecosystem」、「時間博物館 Embodying Theirstories 」 及「超限動 Reeling Hyperreality」 將藝術節策展視為一劇場構作的過程,以此三重奏/ 三部曲構成台北藝術節的藝術及時代訊息。

林人中在藝術節框架裡發起 「Cruising 流行群島計畫」,將台灣重新錨定於一個海洋及群島集會的策展空間,邀請亞太策展人來台駐節研究交流,碰撞台北藝術節與其他藝術節與獨立策展人之間如何在策展文化產生更深刻的對話。與此同時,台北藝術節及亞當計劃彼此交織互文,支持藝術家的創作研究、發展與傳播,積極搭建藝術家與國際策展人等專業人士交流合作的網絡。


View the program of Taipei Arts Festival:
︎︎︎2025 Reeling Hyperreality
︎︎︎2024 Embodying Theirstories
︎︎︎2023 Dancing Ecosystems











2023 Taipei Arts Festival

Dancing Ecosystem





During the Covid-19 pandemic, people have learned that the human world could crash and fail. The notion of ‘normality’ and ‘naturality’ is eventually a social construction and not everlasting. In the post-pandemic era, when the internet of things and humans has re-networked, we are eager to gather again. Rethinking what we are together for in the arts and festival settings has become critical.

The 2023 Taipei Arts Festival, unfolding a new curatorial chapter, proposes ecological thinking of de-anthropocentrism. It repositions humans ‘inside’ nonhuman and environmental spaces to reflect on how things and the living would anew move, act and coexist. With performances, discursive events of Think Bar, and the new residency program Cruising, the festival brings together artists, thinkers, and activists to present an ecosystem of biodiversity, reimagining relations between entities and states of ocean, land, plants, animals, city, and communities as well as their intersections in flux.

Staged at the rooftop garden of Taipei Performing Arts Center, The Concert for Plants invites citizens to bring their house plants and begin a journey of a dancing ecosystem. In the commissioned sonic events, artists and musicians perform for and with plants as collective exercises of trans-species communication.

Reconsidering the life and death of the ocean and lifeforms and what humans could do to undo climate change, the artists of Sun & Sea, Ocean Island Mine, and The Rite of Lobster variously perform their concern and negotiation in live actions and performative installations to shift normative worldviews of spectators.

To choreograph shapes, dimensions, and movements of bodies as a living landscape composed of human and nonhuman gestures, Temporary Title, 2015 (Taipei 2023) and SUPER expand the notion and method of choreography in an ecological context while Louver/Shutter/Blinds/Hundred Leaves questions the making and materiality of theatre by choreographing light and darkness of theatrical production. In the work-in-progress sharing of the bio-art project Bat Banquet Lab and Shattered Moon, audiences are also invited to look back on the fear of the virus and confront the social catastrophe during the pandemic.

If thinking ecologically decentralizes heteronormative conditions for queering institutionalized ecosystems, it is also an invitation to look at decolonial enactment to revise our understanding of histories, localities, and identities to dance in plural and heterogenous ‘south.’

Take not only Ocean Island Mine but also the voices and bodies of We wear our wheels with pride and slap your streets with color… we said ‘bonjour’ to satan in 1820… and My body, My Archive, to unfold radical dialogues and re-articulate relations and dialogues between Africa and the Asia pacific. In Speak! Hong Kong and Falling into Dreams, artists reveal voices unheard, and memories erased to review specific histories and the current.  The feminine writing of My Dear and School of the Underworld speculates the life and death of human society and how Yin and Yang construction could become non-binary. Moreover, as a gift for the local community, Pump it! Shihlin celebrates the urban history of Taipei through ballroom dancing.

Curating is a method of performing the art ecosystem. The festival launches Cruising, a new program hosting international curators with their artists to do research residency. It acknowledges Taiwan as a part of the Pacific ecosystem and engages the making and network of Taipei Arts Festival with wider curatorial discourses and practices in the Asia Pacific region and beyond by foregrounding the notions of south and archipelago. 

Welcome to Dancing Ecosystems, in which various bodies work together. Please come dance and be part of our revolution.

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疫情教會我們,人類世界總有無效、失敗並停止正常運轉的時刻。人們習以為常的「自然」與「正常」,不過是一種歷史過程下的社會建構。舊秩序被顛覆後,新常態的藝術行動哲學是什麼;在人類活動按下暫停鍵後,萬物又可以如何重新運動?

在人流與物流再度恢復交通的後疫時代,臺北藝術節渴望倡議「非人類中心」的生態思維,把「人」的位置拉回各種非人類空間的裡面,而非對面。透過策展,邀請觀眾從生物多樣性的角度來重新想像一種生態系統,透過藝術返身海洋、土地、城市、社群與有靈萬物的生活與生存,及其與生/身而為人的我們之間的共生關係,來進一步思辨萬物於這個時代與生態的能動性與對話。

讓我們向植物學習。「給植物的音樂會」系列邀請觀眾帶著家裡的植栽一起來到北藝中心頂樓花園,透過藝術家為植物作樂、與植物密談、聽植物合唱等情境,潛入花草樹木的感官境地,展演跨物種溝通。從海洋的角度看人與自然的關係,2019年威尼斯雙年展金獅獎跨領域歌劇《太陽與海》從上帝視角看人類的休閒行為;東加藝術家拉泰.陶莫的行為藝術《海洋島嶼礦山》以南太平洋原住民知識中心的宇宙觀為冰山融化獻祭;劇場導演陳煜典及藝術家范承宗的裝置藝術劇場《脫殼》,移轉海鮮到海洋視野,在介於展覽、表演與參與藝術之間呈現原本不死之身的龍蝦的求生運動。

以劇場作為辯證人類世的方法,編舞家林祐如與田孝慈的《SUPER》探問極端氣候、社會與物種滅絕情境下的身體寓言與景觀。法國編舞家薩維耶.勒華與香港藝術家余美華的《Temporary Title, 2015 (Taipei 2023)》,以生態學打開人類與動物、礦物、機器等多重生物地形之間的裸地景與擴延編舞。導演李銘宸與視覺藝術家羅智信的《百葉》反思人類造光的行為,叩問劇場景觀性的轉瞬即逝。生物藝術家顧廣毅及英國設計師羅伯特.強森協同泰國藝術家陳業亮、印尼艾莉雅.內薇斯塔的《蝙蝠盛宴》第三階段呈現,及日本編舞家島崎徹《往月的方向去》則激進地回應人類在疫情期間對病毒的恐懼,排演物種與人種在認同與差異之間的身份政治流動。

生態思維也同時重組、想像歷史及地方記憶書寫的過程,讓我們進入多重異質的全球在地南方。為藝術節揭開序幕、首度登台的南非編舞家羅賓.奧林《我們腳踩無敵風火輪,五光十射你的路,與魔鬼共舞在1820》與剛果導演福斯坦.林耶庫拉《我的身體.我的檔案》,將翻轉我們慣常北半球列強建構的世界觀,連結起東亞與非洲對話的機會。導演黃思農與香港詩人廖偉棠的《說吧,香港!》及林芳宜策劃主持的《夢廻春閨》將以詩歌音樂會的形式叩問、回看戰爭、人性的脆弱與被消失的眾聲喧嘩。編舞家何曉玫《親愛的》及周玉軒編劇、許栢昂導演的《鬼島學苑進修部》綺想陰陽兩界流動的第三空間,而《飆舞士林2.0》則將舞動1930年代至今士林地方敘事,獻上一場士林考的盛大舞會。

從關鍵字「生態」開始,未來三年藝術節將計畫性地為這座城市操演藝術與生態系統的知識生產,透過藝術展演來重新想像台灣在地方及海洋政治上與世界對話的更多可能。「共想吧」將聚焦呈現系列由國內外藝術家、策展人主持的講座、論壇、工作坊等公眾參與及學習空間;全新項目「流行群島」將每年邀集國際策展人及藝術家進行駐節研究,串起臺北藝術節與亞太地區不同藝術節的文化行動式對話、合作與共製。

萬物運動,將是各種身體互相支持的生態網絡。今年臺北藝術節邀請你一起來體驗人與非人互相運動、舞蹈與擁抱的眾生百態。


2024 Taipei Arts Festival

Embodying Theirstories


What does it mean to perform histories in theatre today? Rather than Historical accounts, the 2024 Taipei Arts Festival introduces their-stories to shift our focus toward understanding and experiencing notions of time(s) and world(s).

Unveiling the festival by speculating theirstories of theatre, Li Huang-Hsiung revisits his first work Intruder made in the late 1980s when Taiwan’s democracy and contemporary theatre scene burgeoned and intertwined. In collaboration with young artist Jing Wu to ‘intrude’ his play, this commission sees the intergenerational cultural tactics and production of theatre-making in contemporary Taiwan. Intertexually, responding to intersections of personal and theatrical history, Miet Warlop’s ONE SONG, as part of Histoire(s) du Théâtre conceived by Milo Rau, performs musical and choreographic movements of human labor that celebrate embodiments of theatre and the everyday.

Challenging the dominant narratives, The Loser of Legend by Wang Rong-Yu and Father Mother by Chiu An-Chen bring to light untold stories from Taiwan's history during Japanese colonization and the authoritarian regime of Chiang Kai-Shek. Similarly, questioning the formulation and legacy of national identity, Wichaya Artamat’s Baan Cult, Muang Cult confronts the haunting unrest of everyday lives in today’s Thailand. Written by Maekawa Tomohiro and directed by Tora Hsu, The Sun investigates the human future in a fictional yet real post-pandemic era and the fall of a world.

Their-stories are present when artists embody knowledge and archival materials through live actions and performances, expanding the horizon of biopolitics. In Gold Shower, Maro Akaji and François Chaignaud conjure encounters of collective joy and dance conflating cabaret, butoh, drag, and carnival. Olivier Saillard and Tilda Swinton’s Embodying Pasolini exhibits a curated selection of costumes designed by Danilo Donati, paying tribute to Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini through a captivating montage of living images, sculptures, and gestures that intertwine discourses of fashion, cinema, and the arts.  Drawing inspiration from the script of the television series H24, which vividly depicts the harrowing experiences of women subjected to various forms of violence, Mathilde Monnier’s Black Lights emerges as a poignant exploration that places freedom and equality at the forefront of feminist practice. This sentiment is echoed in Leftover Market by Su Pin-Wen, where the pervasive misogynistic culture in East Asia and beyond is thoroughly examined and questioned.

In this edition, the curator-in-resident project Cruising spotlights Kyoto Experiment with Traveling Tongues delves into the intricate narratives surrounding food and its cultural connections across Japan, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, Helly Minarti and artists Ginoe, Watan Tusi, and Uehara Sayaka return to the festival with The Sea Within as a work in progress emerging from the collective residency last year. Following its successful world premiere in London, the co-commissioned project with LIFT, Bat Night Market by Ku Kuang-Yi and Robert Johnson, promises audiences an immersive and playful bio-art performance not to be missed.

Theatre has become a place where we can come together. Their stories and creations empower our times, reminding and illuminating the urgent need to perform heterogeneous narratives. Their stories would become our stories, encouraging us to question, empathize, and reimagine what is possible and embody how we live with and feel about the time(s) and world(s).

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我們生活在一個極度好奇自己從何而來又將何去何從的年代。歷史不再只是「他的」(History),各種非典、小寫、地方、媒介及社群的生命政治以「他們的」(theirstories)歷史眾聲喧嘩,擴延我們認識並解釋世界的方式。當表演藝術家複訪歷史,校準當刻,透過時間、身體及語言的臨在,每一次無可複製的展演、行動及經驗都成了一次活檔案的現身,讓記憶與想像再次聚集與對話。

今年臺北藝術節邀請藝術家為我們旋轉、擾動、擘劃並體現時間與時代的聚會。以劇場史作為交織藝術家回憶錄與回顧創作美學的方法,我們邀請黎煥雄回望1986年河左岸劇團的第一部劇場作品《闖入者》,攜手新生代導演吳子敬跨世代對話,再次叩問及闖入台灣小劇場運動的彼時與此岸為何處。比利時視覺藝術家米耶・瓦洛普回應瑞士導演米洛勞的劇場史命題,亦複訪自己早年作品,《ONE SONG》在無限循環的演唱、編舞及體操,將劇場及社會發展史編排為時延性的跨領域藝術勞動。

《親愛的帕索里尼》由紐約時報評為21世紀最偉大女演員之一的蒂妲史雲頓及巴黎時尚博物館前館長奧利維耶薩亞聯手創作。他們將打開帕索里尼的衣櫃,展示、穿戴、演繹其電影裡的高訂服飾與經典影像,拼貼一部藝術、時尚及電影回顧展的蒙太奇劇場。日本傳奇舞踏團大駱駝艦的麿磨赤兒與法國編舞家馮莎・夏紐的《黃金雨》,以卡巴萊歌廳秀形式串起兩地神話、舞蹈史及扮裝史的跨文化對話。

劇場亦是重塑身份認同的所在。王榮裕重返1915年漢人及平埔原民武裝抗日事件《西來庵》,召喚庶民記憶與族群意識的重構;邱安枕《父親母親》則以布袋戲在政局變異中的轉向及家族身世追尋,再探台灣人權歷程。日本劇作家前川知大《太陽》特邀許哲彬執導,藉一場大疫滅國的科幻寓言,看政體的失能及災後倖存者何以為繼的精神樣態;近年於國際藝壇備受矚目的泰國新銳劇場導演維帢亞阿塔瑪,重製10年前的《曼谷公寓》,領我們一窺歷史的遺緒及底層人物的崩世光景。

從他(們)的到她(們)的歷史,跨渡文學、哲學與戲劇的大師編舞家瑪蒂德莫尼葉新作《黑暗之光》改編法國電視影集《H24》,將24名女性在一日生活及職場上的遭遇及獨白轉化為劇場作品。蘇品文《剩女經濟》由臺北藝術節委託創作,法國舞蹈中心、波爾多城市劇院及雪梨Performance Space聯合共製,思辨女性的身體與文化價值在新自由主義經濟下的流動與倡議。

延續去年啟動的「Cruising」國際策展人駐節研發計畫,印尼策展人海莉米納提攜手太魯閣族藝術家瓦旦督喜、菲律賓藝術家Gino 與日本藝術家上原沙也加潛入島嶼及海洋史觀的《內之海》,將呈現階段發展;此計畫今年迎來京都藝術節策展團隊接棒,以「味之旅」為概念邀請李銘宸與日本藝術家進行食物遷徙與混種史的研究。歷經與倫敦國際劇場藝術節三年研發共製,顧廣毅與英國推測設計師羅伯特強森《蝙蝠祭》,邀請你我一同體驗這場結合裝置、小吃、遊戲、講述及參與式展演的生物藝術宴席。

當日常越來越像一座劇場,讓我們在劇場再度創造真實。今年臺北藝術節,邀請你一同來逛時間博物館,思辨歷史,紀實當下。



2025 Taipei Arts Festival

Reeling Hyperreality

Have you been Spotifying, Netflixing, or Instagramming today? Posting, reposting, commenting, liking, tagging, @ing, memeing, and emojing have become ways they, you, and we communicate with each other. At the same time, our smartphones have been our second body, which collects, preserves, documents, schedules, and consumes everything. #GRWM, when the #world in our pockets and palms goes live or backed up, and has become streamable, shufflable, screenshotted, photoshopped, and algorithmized – they, you, and we not only have never been off-line, but more essentially also living in what Jean Baudrillard called #hyperreality.

What’s reproduced reproduces what it has reproduced, and simulacrum continues to simulate what simulation has simulated–living in the era of expanded hyperreality, what you and I have left is fiction. #POV: Theatre is a form, medium, technology, and art of living fictionalisation. Theatre has been the social ritual of collective spectatorship, the experimentation between technology and humans, and is an embodiment of ‘virtual reality.’ With its one-off setting, ephemerality, liveness, and immersion, performing arts offer experiences directing how you and I spend, experience, and understand time, space, and things. It’s more real than real, than reel(s), and beyond falling down the rabbit hole.

This edition’s Taipei Arts Festival invites them, you, and us to experience and celebrate live arts through the speculative journey of living with/ negotiating with/ resisting the hyperreality with artists coming from various realities. Welcome to the world of ANGELA (a strange loop) forged and streamed by Susanne Kennedy and Markus Selg, screenshotting the life and death of a YouTube influencer, and reeling how a proscenium theatre becomes hyperrealistic spaces of the post-internet era. Dive into the inner and outer space of a black hole or an underground cavern, allowing Wenchi Su to choreograph your mind and brain through the VR experience Sensing Dark Mattr. Moving their body with an AI robot, in jactynogg zontaanacc, contact Gonzo and yang02 go clubbing between improvisation and algorithm.

Blending ongoing practices of their life and work, in Family Triangle, lesbian couple Chien-Han Hung and Ray Tseng “work” with Wei-Yao Hung, the brother (-in-law),  to realise the living (and art) project of having children. We promise, everything you see “played” on stage is for real. Fabulating their-story of food and how to “cuisiner”, Ming-Chen Lee, Jang-Chi, Ness Roque, and Yu-Ju Wen’s  Cruising: Traveling Tongues offers you savory snacks based on Japanese, Korean, Filipino, and Taiwanese tastes, languages, and memories. Meanwhile, in Stcky Hands, Stitched Mountains, Anchi Lin (Ciwas Tahos) and Nanako Matsumoto reveal untold her-story of mythical women of Atayal and Yamato People with camphor trees and yams.

While this hyperfast and hyperrealistic society has reeled us in, come digest with Melati Suryodarmo through her Lapse, a proposal reflecting on exhaustion and how we have spent time and been spent by time. To close the festival journey, you’re invited to slow down everything with Maria Hassabi On Stage, feeling the artist’s body living in between still and moving images, and reclaiming the reality of theatre that assembles you and me.

Throughout the 2023-2025 editions of the Taipei Arts Festival titled Dancing Ecosystems, Embodying Theirstories, and Reeling Hyperreality, the series of curation has performed festival-making as a dialogic, collective, and collaborative practice while repositioning a festival as a curatorial and producing body to work with artists more closely. Thanks to many partners from across the Asia Pacific region and beyond for making all the projects possible.

Alors, #linkinbio, don’t forget to like and share if you like us. Subscribe and stay reeled. See you in the theatre!

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你我在各式串流平台上聽音樂追劇,滑移於社群媒體之間點讚發限動貼文轉發收藏@打卡不懂就問脆tGPT,表情符號貼圖迷因國際語言化,點餐叫車集點對帳鬧鈴工作排程導航每日走了幾萬步隨時隨地隨身同步 —— #GRWM,當 #世界 變成了無限循環播放可任意瀏覽截圖、可演算可直播可濾鏡可刪除或備份可共享或加密,還可放在口袋裡的東西時,現實是不僅我們未曾下線,更早已活在 #布希亞 說的「超真實」。

複製不斷複製其所複製,仿真擬仿仿真比所擬仿更真,在這個超真實無限擴真的年代,我們只剩下虛構。#POV:劇場展演作為一種虛構,卻越來越真實且更具魅力。這項老派的媒介、技術與藝術,作為人類集體觀看共振情感的社會儀式、古技術與人機關係的實驗場及表演作為類比的 #虛擬現實,還有什麼比走入劇場重新感受一路到底無可演算與回放的 #限時動態 更加真實。

今年臺北藝術節邀請你在蘇珊娜甘迺迪與馬庫斯.塞爾格 #安琪拉拉拉(無限循環中)見證一名網紅的生與死,而鏡框式劇場如何變成後網路時代的超真實空間;讓蘇文琪以VR #暗宇之感 編舞你的身體與腦袋,與宇宙中不可見的黑暗物質相遇;剛左小組與yang02  #演算混亂ㄐㄧㄑㄧˋㄖㄣˊ 展開生成式AI與接觸即興演算人機鬥陣俱樂部;洪千涵、洪唯堯與曾睿琁 #二生三,三生萬物 透過進行中的女同家庭三角關係生育計畫,催生藝術與生命實踐如何虛實合一;李銘宸、張基、奈斯.羅克與溫又柔掌廚 #旅行的舌頭 如日本國民美食壽司來自東南亞,他們將在食物與語言之間萬里尋親——掰惹位本場表演真的可以吃;林安琪Ciwas Tahos與松本奈奈子 #黏著的手、縫合的山體 縫補被遺忘的大和及泰雅族傳說,重新想像女性慾望的虛構;或跟著麥拉蒂.蘇若道默一起 #斷片 ,逃離令人倦怠的功績社會;在這趟超越超真實的旅程尾聲,請來到瑪麗亞.哈薩比 #此時此地,暫離你手機裡疾速碎裂的各種限動,看人的身體圖像如何一幀幀時延緩步在每一瞬當下的劇場行動。

劇場的策展作為集體協作的社群實踐,臺北藝術節亦成為面向國際當代表演網絡的製作型藝術節。今年多部國內外亞洲或臺灣首演作品皆來自與京都藝術節、日本國際交流基金會、墨爾本亞太表演三年展、新加坡濱海中心、香港西九文化區、烏特勒支春天藝術節、巴黎秋天藝術節、布魯塞爾藝術節、曼特斯特國際藝術節等夥伴長期對話下,共同支持藝術家研發、委託創作及國際共製的成果。

好了今天的影片就到這邊,#linkinbio,喜歡的話記得登入 #超限動、轉發分享加訂閱,我們劇場見。

Mark