衛武營國家藝術文化中心 National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying)

#People #Identity #Equality

The 2019 International Symposium focuses on the civic role of the art center. The role in transmitting social relevance and empowerment through conversations with people in the community, and in triggering imagination and creativity based on the values of equality and diversity.

Date & time: December 14-15, 2019, 10:00-17:30
Location: Lecture Hall
*Sign language arranged on December 15 (Sun.)

How to register

This symposium is suitable for arts managers, producers, festival programmers, curators, artists, urban planners, architects and peers in public sectors.

• Registration deadline: 12:00pm, November 29, 2019.
• Number of participants is limited to 80. Places are limited and strictly first come first serve basis.
• Registration: Weiwuying website online registration → pay deposit →registration successful.
• NT$500 deposit is required for each day, deposit will be returned to the participant at the end of the event after full attendance. Deposit must be paid within a limited time after registration on Weiwuying website. Otherwise, the system will automatically cancel your booking. ( Please note that there is no need to fill the tax ID number for the deposit payment)

Agenda

※Each day could be registered seperately.

keynote Spaeakers and Panelists

CHIEN Wen-pin | General and Artistic Director of National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying), Taiwan

Conductor CHIEN Wen-pin is the General and Artistic Director of National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weuwuying) in Taiwan. He was Kapellmeister of Deutsche Oper am Rhein since 1996, the first in Asia to hold this position. Other positions he has held included Resident Conductor of Pacific Music Festival in Japan (1998–2004), Music Director of National Symphony Orchestra (NSO, 2001–2007) and Artistic Advisor of National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra (2014–2016).

Apart from conducting operas at major opera houses in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland, CHIEN frequently appears as guest conductor with well-known orchestras in Europe and Asia including Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Russian Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Philharmonic and NHK Symphony Orchestra. During his tenure as the Music Director of NSO, CHIEN led the orchestra in the critically acclaimed production of Wagner’s complete Ring cycle in 2006, which was the first-ever production in the Chinese speaking regions.

Born in Taipei, CHIEN obtained his master’s degree in conducting from National University for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. He was a prizewinner of a number of conducting competitions in Europe, including the only Special Mention in the 1st Leonard Bernstein Jerusalem International Conducting Competition in 1995. CHIEN was also a recipient of the 18th National Awards of Art, the highest cultural and creative sector honor in Taiwan, in 2014.

Ulrich LENZ | Chefdramaturg of Komische Oper Berlin, Germany

Ulrich LENZ studied musicology, theatre studies and art history in Munich, Berlin and Milan. During his stay in Italy, he worked as a correspondent for the newspaper Die Welt and reported regularly on cultural events in northern Italy. He began his drama career in the season 1997/98 as a dramaturge assistant at the Stuttgart State Opera. In the years following he worked as an opera dramaturge at the theatres in Linz and Mannheim. In 2006 he became chief dramaturge at the Hannover State Opera, where he worked until 2011. Since 2012/13 he is head dramaturge in the team of Barrie Kosky at the Komische Oper Berlin with whom he collaborated as a guest dramaturge in several theatres in Europa like the English National Opera London, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden London or the Bayreuth Festival.

Gwen Hsin-Yi CHANG | Head of International Partnerships, National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying), Taiwan

Born in Taipei, Gwen Hsin-Yi Chang was local in Europe for eight years and has been contributing her talents of multiple languages, creativity and professional skills for carrying out intercultural projects in government organizations and private sectors. She has been actively engaging in arts communities and joined the Artistic Planning and Production team of Weiwuying for international development in 2017 to enhance sustainable collaborations for contemporary dance and circus.

Gwen had founded the AxE Arts Management while being based in Europe. As producer, she aimed at enhancing cultural exchange through arts and strengthening mutual understanding beyond cultural differences. Such as a 3-year Artist in Residency project in collaboration with Ten Drum Cultural Creative Group to present interdisciplinary artists from Europe and commissioned site specific works in ancient sugar factories in southern Taiwan. She also presented Taiwanese dance artists with the support of Taiwanese Cultural centers and brought successful tours across Europe, such as Legend Lin Dance Theatre in the Maison de la danse, Chaillot - Théâtre national de la Danse; B.DANCE in the Ferme de Buisson; Anarchy Dance Theatre in the opening of European Capital of Culture Wroclaw, Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis, Festival d’Avignon Off and Edinburgh Fringe.

She has dedicated to international communications for Taishin Arts Award and CSR project in the Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture. By the time she has successfully carried out the arts & community project for south-east Asian immigrants and their family in Taiwan.

KENG Yi-Wei| Dramaturg of National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying), Taiwan

The dramaturg of National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying), visiting assistant professor of theatre arts at Taipei National University of the Arts and National Taiwan University of Arts. He was the Artistic Director of Taipei Arts Festival (2012-17). He was awarded the Freundshcaftsmedaille and Chevalier dans l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
KENG Yi-Wei has written the books which include Tips for Story Writing‚ Robert Wilson: The Infinite Power of Lights‚ The Short History of Modern Mime. He translates the books from Letters to Felice, Empty Space, and Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Studies.
Recently, he did the performace lecutre-performance-installation Laharmpa in the Art Museum for the exihibtion Everyday Life Comprehensible and Incomprehensible (2015), and installation Last Summer you didn’t stay I am here for the exhibition Arena(2017), all in Taipei Fine Arts Museum.

Ljuzem MADILJIN | Artistic Director and Founder of Tjimur Dance Theatre

Born in Sandimen village, Pingtung, Ljuzem MADILJIN is a native of the Paiwan tribe of Tjimur. She graduated from the Dance Department of Tainan University of Technology and went on to pursue a degree at the Graduate Institute of Cultural and Creative Industries at National Pingtung University. She commits herself to passing on traditional culture, teaching singing and dancing, administration, education, and the artistic direction and choreography of Tjimur Dance Theatre.

Her teaching career began in 1998, when she returned to the tribe to teach culture and arts at Laiyi Junior High School, Pingtung. In 2006 she founded an arts program at Laiyi High School and Tjimur Dance Theatre, the first dance company that foregrounds the cultural subjectivity of Paiwanese culture. From 2009 to 2019, produced thirteen shows across countries in Europe and Asia. In 2013 she launched a pedagogical system dedicated to Paiwan contemporary dance such that the Paiwan method of breathing and fusing song with dance can strengthen the training of dancers by pressing beyond their habitual way of using the body and maximizing their potentials.

Tjimur Dance Theatre has devoted itself to the beauty and philosophy of Taiwanese culture through performing arts. It never stops creating possibilities for the multi-dimensional development of contemporary indigenous theater. In 2017 the theatre organized TJIMUR Arts & Life Festival to stimulate dialogue between local culture and the international audience. It plays an active role in communicating the richness of Taiwanese art by touring regularly from tribe to tribe and taking part in residence programs and promotional events.

CHANG Shih-Chieh| Director of Chiayi Performing Arts Center, Taiwan

Born in Chiayi County, CHANG Shih-Chieh’s career of public service began in 1991 with positions held in the Taiwan Provincial Government and the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, Executive Yuan. After his return to hometown in 1998, he served in the local departments of civil affairs and information. In 2003 he took up the responsibility for the division of arts and exhibits at the bureau of cultural affairs and worked on the performance facilities and landscape architecture of the Chiayi Performing Arts Center. As these projects completed in 2005, he became the Director of the center and set up “agitation · fusion · rebirth” as the center’s first phase of development goals. In 2010 the center invited seven performing groups to occupy its idle space and launch residence programs in traditional puppetry, orchestral music, Chinese music, dance, and modern drama.

In 2013 the center modified its developmental paradigm as the symbiotic trio of “theater · team · audience” to strengthen what might be perceived as the weak spot of linear strategies. It collaborated with residence artists from Our Theatre and Wen Shyang Dance Company to organize festivals that have gained considerable recognition. The idea of symbiosis will continue to be the center’s guiding principle, with the year 2014 dedicated to the theme of “Evolution” and the years 2017-2019 “Evolving Together.” The phase 2020-2022 revolves tentatively around the idea of “Incubator” in hopes of building up artistic strengths from the center’s identity as a local cultural hub where artists can develop and realize their creativity for the benefit of the whole performing arts sector.

KAO Yao-Wei | Community development activist of Zhengxing Street, Tainan , Taiwan

KAO Yao-wei moved to Tainan from Taipei nine years ago and started up his business on Zhengxing Street. Deeply involved in the goings-on in the neighborhood, he partners with residents to issue a self-consciously navel-gazing magazine about their community and hold an office chair race with partners from Japan. The unconventional and bottom-up methodology has brought the neighborhood together and attracted attention.

Viewing that the neighborhood’s savory aspect of life has been compromised by soaring house prices and the shifting economy of the area, KAO starts up an independent bookstore named Shuzhou (literally meaning “book porridge”) in the rural placidity of Changbin, Taitung so that he can reflect on and try out another way of social intervention at the local level. He also travels actively around the rural areas and the outlying islands of Taiwan to explore possibilities of “rejuvenating rural life through creatively repurposing abandoned spaces.” Now he is still accumulating experience through trials and errors.

He has collaborated with friends in independent publishing, resulting in a book titled Seven Ways of Bed & Breakfast Travelling. Having authored An Expansive and Abnormal Life, he writes occasionally for CommonWealth Magazine as a columnist interested in community development. At times a café DJ in Tainan, he will be opening a new shop called Wudongtang on Zhengxing Street toward the end of this year.

Adrian BERRY | Artistic Director of Jacksons Lane, United Kingdom

Adrian Berry is the Artistic Director of Jacksons Lane Arts Centre in London, the UK’s leading venue for contemporary circus and visual theatre. He originally trained as an actor and started his career in arts education before developing his passion for circus. Through his role he supports, programmes and produces some 150 artists per year, both UK and internationally, including collaborations with The Roundhouse and London International Mime Festival. He has produced 8 shows at the Edinburgh Festival, is a writer, director, producer and programmer, and previously held director positions at The Bull Theatre, London, and Trinity Theatre, Kent, as well as curating for The National Theatre and The Albany. He is a musician in the BBC6 band Alberteen and also wrote and directed the successful David Bowie play From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads.

Maria Manuela GOYANES | Artistic Director of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, United States

Maria Manuela Goyanes is the Artistic Director of Woolly Mammoth Theater Company in Washington, DC. Prior to Woolly, Maria spent 15 years at The Public Theater in New York City, most recently as The Director of Producing and Artistic Planning. There, she oversaw the planning and execution of a full season of plays and musicals at The Public’s five-theater venue on Astor Place, including the critically successful musicals HAMILTON (Lin-Manuel Miranda), FUN HOME (Jeanine Tesori/ Lisa Kron), and HERE LIES LOVE (David Byrne/ Alex Timbers), as well as every Shakespeare in the Park production during that time, including a 200-person community pageant every year for the Public Works Program.

She has taught in the MFA program at The Juilliard School, and lectured at various universities, such as Yale, Brown, NYU, among others. She was the Executive Producer of Obie-award winning 13P (13 Playwrights, Inc.), a playwrights’ collective that included Sarah Ruhl, Young Jean Lee, Anne Washburn, Lucy Thurber, and Sheila Callaghan, among others. Maria is also a Board Member of the National Alliance for Musical Theatre, and former co-chair of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab. She was the recipient of the Josephine Abady Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women and was recently recognized with the “Women Who Mean Business” Award from the Washington Business Journal. Previously, she was the Associate Producer at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, RI. Maria is a first-generation American of Spanish and Dominican descent and hails from Jamaica, Queens. 

HUNG Chen-Yu | Writer, Taiwan

HUNG Chen-Yu are among the few in Taiwan whose creative work connects the practice of the humanities and business. He has worked as the Deputy Chief Editor and Creative Director of CommonWealth Magazine. The post led to a special coverage about Taiwan’s 319 townships. He has also served as the Deputy Chief Editor of GQ (international Chinese edition. )

A long-time advocate for putting the notion of terroir into practice, he travels actively and takes part in community movements. He was invited to speak at TEDxTaipei in 2012. He was ranked as one of the most influential people in 2013 by Shopping Design, lauded as “embodying a new species of travel designer in Taiwan.”
He is currently shaping his role as a professional cross-discipline communicator, in hopes of making complicated things friendly and fun with an enlarged access to their depths. He coaches people from sectors including business, charity, education, and government with a tightly structured development program. The program cultivates competencies in storytelling, question formulation, writing, project management, communication, and creative innovation.
He is author of several books dedicated to terroir-oriented lifestyle, travel, food, and personal development. His publications entered notable recommendation lists such as that of the Golden Tripod Awards, Taipei International Book Exhibition, Ministry of Economic Affairs, and Elite Bookstore.

LIN I-Chin | Artistic Director of Bare Feet Dance Theater, Taiwan

Born in Yunlin County in 1983, Lin cultivated his vision of choreography through long-term field studies of the local culture. With the intention to construct a unique style and method by using the physical body, Lin turned to theater as a medium to transform and re-create contemporary art.

LIN has observed the nature of body movements through local culture, language, diet, environment, social history and other backgrounds. Having collaborated with the same group of professional and amateur dancers for many years, they work to find ways to exercise the body for the soul. Together, they dance and create, continuing a research and dialogue made to last.
Recent activities includes: presenting An Eternity before and After premiere in National Experimental Theater; presenting Khing in TPAM Fringe Taiwan Program (2019); presenting The End of the Rainbow in Taiwan Dance Platform, National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, Weiwuying (2018); artist of Taipei Performing Arts Center “ADAM - Asia Discovers Asia Meeting for Contemporary Performance" (2017 & 2018); artist-in-residence of Critical Path, Sydney (2017).

Roberto CASAROTTO | Director of Dance Projects, Opera Estate Festival and Centro per la Scena Contemporanea - Bassano del Grappa, Italy

Since 2006, Roberto has been responsible for the dance projects and programmes for the Centro per la Scena Contemporanea di Bassano del Grappa (CSC) and Opera Estate Festival Veneto. Associate director of Aerowaves, he is a member of the board of European Dancehouse Network (EDN).
Currently involved in several international projects supported by the EU Creative Europe and Erasmus + Programmes, he develops initiatives aimed at supporting artistic research, mobility and artistic development in the field of dance, the engagement of communities and participation of citizens in cultural activities. He is the initiator of Dance Well – Movement research for Parkinson. Prior to working for dance organisations, Roberto was a professional contemporary dancer. He is the author of the book Nigel Charnock published in 2009 by L’Epos. In 2015-17 he has been Artistic Director of Balletto di Roma.

NAKAMURA Kurumi | Dance Well Project Teacher, Japan

Born in Kanazawa, Japan, NAKAMURA Kurumi is a dance coach of Dance Well and the delegate of Ishikawa Prefecture for the committee of Dance Well. In 2007, NAKAMURA went to the UK as member of a cohort of young artists financed by the Agency of Cultural Affairs of the Japanese government for overseas studies. She obtained a degree at Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance. She gives dance lessons in several welfare establishments for the physically challenged in Ishikawa Prefecture. Named “Dance Studio,” her classes underscore feeling, breathing, mind, and the body with a particular attention to the moment shared by people from all walks of life. In August 2018 she completed the training program for coaches at Dance Well and founded an executive committee of Dance Well in Ishikawa in the following December. This organization is the first Dance Well branch in Japan and is currently operating as a multipurpose art space. Besides, she has formed a dance group called ORA．ORUZU together with mentally and physically challenged partners. The group has been active since 2019 and aims to create a space for free body expression.

Kent SU | Coordinator of Learning and Participation, National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying), Taiwan

Kent SU obtained his degree from the Department of Medicinal and Applied Chemistry from Kaohsiung Medical University.
After graduation he worked as a facilities provider at Tainan Technology Industrial Park. The job situated him in a world surrounded by computers and machinery, which he found displeasing. By a stroke of luck he was introduced to work in an advertising company in Taipei, and the track led him to the marketing department at Weiwuying.
He has been asked why he is so concerned with issues of equality. His answer for this has to do with the courses about gender he took as an undergraduate, as well as previous experiences as a volunteer in emergency room and care center for elders, not to mention other involvement in helping with his family and doing business in countries across South East Asia. Facing a problem with such multiple dimensions, he finds himself in line with a phrase whose source he cannot quite pinpoint: “blessed children are to give out more.” Having internalized this commitment, he keeps up the work at Weiwuying to make the place “an arts center for everyone.”

HUNG Wen-Kuang | Certified Deaf Interpreter of Taiwanese Association of Sign Language Interpreters, Taiwan

Born with hearing loss, HUNG Wen-Kuang comes from Penghu, Taiwan. As the mute person in the family, he became acutely aware of this condition at an early age, wondering what his siblings were talking about with their parents. He used self-styled body language to give shape to his thoughts and feelings, and he realized that the inability to speak had to do with the hearing loss.

His childhood glided by silently, surrounded by sea and briny winds.

Since the age of seven HUNG began studying at a school for the hearing impaired. He met, lived and learned with people of his kind. With sign language at hand to make the world relatable, he developed self-identity and confidence. He calls himself deaf, fearless of what others would think of him. He is bold in expressing himself through sign language, in the belief that it suffices to have someone who eventually understands him.

He is currently teaching sign language and working as a guide for the Exploring the Venue through Ears at Weiwuying. He is grateful for the co-project held by Weiwuying and Taiwanese Association of Sign Language Interpreters. It enables him to advocate the culture of sign language and the hearing impaired community, in order to make this society with which the hearing impaired can identify and feel included as part of the diverse environment that embraces difference.

WU Ting-Kuan | Project Coordinator of Brilliant Time Bookstore, Taiwan

WU Ting-Kuan holds a degree in Advertising from National Chengchi University.

He is member of the tenth cohort of Cloudgate’s Wanderer Project. Since 2015 he started working at Brilliant Time Bookstore, a locale that features books about and from South East Asia, and for Taiwan Literature Award for Migrants. He is also the founder of walking libraries at the main stations of Taipei and Kaohsiung. In 2016 he was admitted to the second Hakka Projects, responsible for the publication of the collected short stories by Sunlie Thomas, an Indonesian writer. In 2017 WU headed the organization of a concert dedicated to Taiwanese songs and south east Asia held by National Museum of Taiwan Literature, and he served as a consultant for the Indonesian tour of “Fertility, Blessings and Protection: Cultures of Baby Carriers,” an exhibit held by National Museum of Prehistory. From 2016 to 2019 he was involved in the making of Festival Seni-Budaya organized by National Taiwan Museum. In 2019 he directs “Trans/Voice Project: Indonesia-Taiwan.” He writes regularly for a column on Opinion＠CommonWealth digital magazine; other of his articles appear in online media such as Giloo, Gushi, Nomansland, Global News for New Immigrants, The News Lens, Newsletter of the National Museum of Taiwan Literature, Openbook, the literary section of China Times, Mata Taiwan, and Aboriginal Education World.