The proliferation of performance from conventions of the theatre across to multiple platforms such as museums, galleries, site-specific and public spaces and art fairs－especially in the last decade, prompting thus the phenomenon of the “performance turn” in the visual field－have prompted new considerations of what curating and producing means in relation to the economies of time-place-action, spectatorship, market and politics. In this workshop, we will attend to the expanded forms of performance, and read the challenges and implications of what “the stage” means today.
TANG Fu-Kuen is the current curator of Taipei Arts Festival under Taipei Performing Arts Center. He has been an independent dramaturg, curator and producer active in contemporary performance and visual fields in Europe and Asia. He was sole curator of the Singapore Pavilion in 53rd Venice Biennale for which artist Ming Wong was awarded Special Jury Mention. The platforms he has worked for include: Singapore Arts Festival, Indonesian Dance Festival, In-Transit Festival (Berlin), Exodos Festival (Ljubljana), December Dance (Brugge), Colombo Dance Platform (Sri Lanka), and Bangkok Fringe Festival. He also worked in immaterial conservation in UNESCO in Paris and SEAMEO-SPAFA in Bangkok.
YUEN Chee-Wai is a musician, artist, designer based in Singapore. Born in 1975. Often inspired by ideas drawn from philosophical and literary texts, and perspectives glimpsed through the filmic eye and photographic lens, Yuen’s stylistic oeuvre in improvised music is marked by internalized reflections on memory and loss, invisibility and indeterminacy.
In 2008, he teamed with Otomo Yoshihide (Japan), Ryu Hankil (South Korea), and Yan Jun (China) to form the improvised music quartet, FEN (Far East Network). FEN focuses on the continuing multifaceted networks and collaborations between Asian countries. Since its inception in 2014, Yuen is part of Ensembles Asia as Project Director for Asian Music Network, to which he co-curates the annual Asian Meeting Festival (AMF) with dj sniff in Japan.
He is also a member of the avant-rock band The Observatory (Singapore), with whom he plays guitar, synth and electronics. With twelve albums to date, with the most recent being a split with Japanese psych rockers Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O., called Trails to the Cosmic Vibrations (2018), The Observatory has also conceived a vanguard of initiatives such as the annual festival Playfreely, which gives artists new creative avenues for performing and working together.
He continues to tour extensively with FEN and The Observatory, performing in Europe, America and Asia regularly, and has presented in MIMI Festival, Lausanne Underground Music and Film Festival, All Ears Festival, Ftarri Festival, Gwangju Biennale and CTM Festival.
