Taiwan NOW, a cultural exchange event jointly created by more than 20 groups of multinational teams in cooperation with Taiwan and Japanese artists, will debut in Oct. 2 in Tokyo, offering a series of physical and virtual events in the two countries and on cloud conferences until the end of this year.
This unprecedented transnational cultural event curated and carried out by the chairperson of the National Culture and Arts Foundation Lin Mun-Lee (林曼麗) and The Cultural Taiwan Foundation (財團法人文化臺灣基金會) is aimed to foster closer exchanges between Taiwan and Japan.
After more than two years of planning, the event will take place in three venues in Tokyo, National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (衛武營) and on a virtual space.
The first "Fictional Garden: TAIWAN HOUSE" exhibition, curated and executed by Taiwan Design Research Institute, will be officially unveiled at Tokyo GOOD DESIGN Marunouchi on Oct. 2. An art installation jointly created by Michael Lin (林明弘) and Japanese architecture team Atelier Bow-Wow will also be exhibited at KITTE Marunouchi in Tokyo from Oct. 30.
Visual artist Lee Ming-wei's (李明维) highly acclaimed performance “Our Labyrinth (如實曲徑) will also be made public for the first time in Japan. Tsai Po-cheng's (蔡博成) award-winning work "Floating Flower (浮花)" at MASDANZA Spanish International Contemporary Dance Festival of the Canary Islands will also be performed for the first time through collaboration with Japanese dancers.
As for the cloud conference, the virtual-physical performance will feature the work of JL DESIGN Johnason Lo (羅申駿), Wu Chung-lun (吳仲倫) and Wang Hsi-wen (王希文); "Concert Hall" will feature a concert co-produced by CinCin Lee (李欣芸), MoonShine Animation (dream animation), and Dolce Wang (王舒音); "Drama Hall" will feature an experimental video by Alex Zhang Hungtai (張洪泰) and Tseng Kuo-Hung (曾國宏); "Screening Hall" will showcase the vitality of young creators through a selection of videos, animations and short films by Taiwanese artists.
The finale in the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts will kick off with a circus performance by Yang Shih-hao (楊世豪), followed by a new Taiwanese opera "Aphrodite (阿婆蘭 Aphrodite)" choreographed by well-known Japanese artist Miwa Yanagi, in addition to performances by Shiu-Kim Taiwanese Opera Troupe (秀琴歌劇團), Chun-Mei Taiwanese Opera Troupe (春美歌劇團), and Ming Hua Yuan Tian Taiwanese Opera (明華園天字戲劇團).