The Cultural Division of Taipei Representative Office in Germany collaborated with Stadtwerkstatt (STWST), a cultural center in Linz, Austria, to launch the theater work "HAGAY DREAMING," a techno-fantasia guided theater of revival created by indigenous artist Dondon Hounwn and curator Cheang Shu-lea (鄭淑麗). The work was performed at the STWST 48x8, a 48-hour non-stop showcase extravaganza in association with the Ars Electronica Festival from Sept. 9 to 11.
Dondon Hounwn and Cheang presented their collaborative work "HAGAY DREAMING" in 2020, and together they re-envisioned genders, genres, and shared collective values in ensuring indigenous culture's survival. The theatrical production has just been staged at the Dowmung tribe in Hualien this June. The natural environment surrounded by mountains is a place where the Trukus perform their rituals and also the start of the fabricated legend of "HAGAY DREAMING." The audience could know more about what artists think of indigenous culture and how they interpret artistic ideas with technology through the show.
The special STWST48x8 edition of HAGAT DREAMING took a step forward and demonstrated a techno-theater with Taiwanese culture on the international stage. With the global trend of technoshamanism, the public was invited to join the tribal songs sing-along and try playing traditional indigenous music instruments to learn more about the culture of Taiwanese indigenous peoples at the event in Austria.
STWST 48x8 is an annual project of the Ars Electronica Festival since 2015. It has been holding large-scale exhibitions of new media art every September, attracting audiences from around the world to participate. As one of the most long-standing and largest digital art festivals in the world, the Ars Electronica Festival in Austria is an unmissable gathering for contemporary new media artists, curators, producers, art critics, and art aficionados.
According to its official website, "the Ars Electronica Festival premiered on September 18, 1979. This pilot project was designed to take the Digital Revolution's emergence as an occasion to scrutinize potential futures and to focus these inquiries on the nexus of art, technology and society."