Sentimental Journey ——2019 Tainan Arts Festival

Against Again Troupe

 

Date:
2019.10.23
Venue:
The Palace Tainan
唐健哲 攝影

Sentimental Journey ——2019 Tainan Arts Festival

Against Again Troupe

 

Date:
2019.10.23
Venue:
The Palace Tainan
唐健哲 攝影

Sentimental Journey ——2019 Tainan Arts Festival

Against Again Troupe

 

Date:
2019.10.23
Venue:
The Palace Tainan
唐健哲 攝影

Sentimental Journey ——2019 Tainan Arts Festival

Against Again Troupe

 

Date:
2019.10.23
Venue:
The Palace Tainan
唐健哲 攝影

Comments on the Finalist

With three identical hotel rooms that form a loop of cause-and-effect, the work implies the power relation between a star photographer and his models, portraying the disregard of body and dignity as well as a sexual assault. In addition to echoing the #MeToo movement in recent years, the design of the plots also leads the audience to observe the formation of “co-conspiring power relations.” With a bedside table seat, an usher and the transferring of cellphones, the audience can trace the event in reverse from after the incident to the moment of the incident, and eventually becomes its witness when the victim in the story finally poses the direct question, “Are you still here?” Using minimum material, the work narrates an asymmetrical structure of power and sexual relation while inducing the understanding of bystanders. (Commentator: WU Chieh-Hsiang)

Artwork Introduction

The title of the work comes from Japanese photographer Araki Nobuyoshi’s photobook, and draws inspiration from a #metoo incident involving the photographer in 2018—Araki’s model, Kaori, stated in her social media posts about the unequal power relations between the photographer and those he photographed as well as the long-term exploitation of her labor and harassment from fans that she has endured. The performance uses the experience of the photographed/traumatized survivor and poses questions about ethical issues in the process of artistic creation. The performance takes place in three individual hotel rooms in The Place Tainan to offer three separate perspectives to read the incident. Overlapping narrative strategies of “repetition” and “replacement of symbols,” elements that people experience in dreams, with the survivor’s experience, the work becomes a continuous revisit of the scene of the crime in real life as well as in a dream, piecing together the fragments of memory. The performance receives only one audience for an individual experience at a time, and utilizes a performance contract, cell phone conversations and the mutual “gaze” between the performer and the audience to facilitate thinking about the process of artistic production, ethics in art, class and gender oppression caused by systems and “mediatization” of traumatic experience.

About the Artist

Against Again Troupe Founded in 2002 by artists born after the 80s and specializing in different fields, the name of the theater troupe originates from stories about the child-god, Nezha, in Asian mythologies that adopt the ideas of “death and rebirth” and “the concept of transformation” to depict his journey from birth, life challenges and returning to divinity. The name of the theatre troupe therefore indicates that theatrical endeavors should aim for shattering old practices to break new grounds while bringing together sensory perceptions enabled by different media to create fresh aesthetic experiences. The troupe has steadfastly realized “sound theater” and interdisciplinary work foregrounding non-standard theatrical space in hope of fostering more experimental theatrical imagination for contemporary theater arts. Their works include Against Again Apartment Showcase, All That's Left to Happen Is Some Deaths (My Own Included), Götterdämmerung, Dictionary of Chaos: Addendum and more.

Production Team

    Script Concept: Snow Huang, Joyce Ho
    Director, Sound Design: Snow Huang
    Dramaturgy, Translator: Betty Chen
    Producer: Yinru Lo
    Performer: Jen Jen, KANG, Chang Ning
    Art and Costume Design: Val Chen
    Stage Manager, Light Design: Yi-Chin CHANG
    Videographer: Chien-Che Tang 
    Performer (Video), Japanese translator: Dai Kai Cheng
    Audio Assistance: v
    Voice Performer: Rosaline Lu
    Special Thanks: The Palace Tainan
    Commisioned by Tainan Arts Festival 2019 

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