Taipei Cultural Center in New York

Performa presents ENCORE, an in-depth full-length documentation of the Performa 19 Biennial on its Radical Broadcast. The series showcases ten Performa Commissions online, featuring Taiwanese artist Su Hui-Yu (蘇匯宇) among other international artists, including Korakrit Arunanondchai, boychild, and Alex Gvojic, Nairy Baghramian and Maria Hassabi, Cecilia Bengolea and Michèle Lamy, Tarik Kiswanson, Kia LaBeija, Éva Mag, Paul Pfeiffer, Yvonne Rainer with Emily Coates, and Samson Young.

These unique performances were captured on video by Performa’s team of cinematographers at sites across New York City including Harlem Parish, Castle Williams on Governor’s Island, the German Academy’s 1014 space on Fifth Avenue, the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, The Apollo Theater, The Judson Gym, Abrons Arts Center, Deitch Projects, Performance Space New York, and Gelsey Kirkland Arts during Performa 19 Biennial.

Su Hui-Yu’s《The White Waters》(2019) is a Performa Commission for Performa 19, co-commissioned with Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-Lab), part of the Taiwan Pavilion Without Walls, supported by Taipei Cultural Center in New York. Using large digital projections installed on a theater stage, Su’s dreamlike performance featured New York-based dance Liu- I-Ling moving between screens and interpreting the projected transgressive imagery that harkens back to both The Legend of the White Snake and Tian Qiyuan’s White Water (1993). One of the four classic Chinese folk tales written in the Ming Dynasty, The Legend of the White Snake is the story of a powerful snake demon who transforms into a beautiful woman so as to experience love, set on the idyllic lakes of Hangzhou, capital of the Southern Song Dynasty. White Water (1993), the work of Tian Qiyuan, Taiwan’s first openly gay and HIV-positive student, and co-founder of the experimental theater group Critical Point Theatre Phenomenon in the 1980s, reinterprets this folklore, drawing parallels to the suppression of queer communities in Taiwan. In Su’s re-imagining, queer histories are explored as the performer doubled and animated the sequences through both pre-recorded sequences and live video streaming. While invoking a sense of drowning and flooding, the performance imagined, out of violence, the birth of a future, and inclusive collective identity. *https://performa-arts.org/news/encore-performa-19-on-film

ENCORE | program runs on a 24/7 loop

Streaming on www.performa-arts.org until May 31, 2021
7AM/7PM EDT | The White Waters (2019) | Su Hui-Yu

The Taiwanese-Franco-British co-production “Missing Pictures Episode 2: Tsai Ming-liang (大師狂想曲：蔡明亮)” will have its world premiere at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival and compete for two additional awards this season – Best Immersive Narrative and Best Creative Nonfiction Experience. This also marks the fourth consecutive year that a Taiwanese VR film has been selected for the Tribeca Film Festival.

"Missing Pictures Episode 2: Tsai Ming-liang" is the second installment in a series of documentary shorts. Directed by French director Clément Deneux and emerging Taiwanese director Kuan-Yuan Lai (賴冠源), this VR documentary comes courtesy of Taiwanese production company Serendipity Films (綺影映畫) and French studio Atlas V, and includes Arte, BBC, Luxembourg’s Fang Films and Taiwan’s PTS (台灣公共電視) as producers. This episode, which follows a previous documentary short on American filmmaker Abel Ferrara, gives internationally-acclaimed filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang the opportunity to narrate an untold story from his childhood.

Tsai was pleased by the episode’s selection and recently delved into more detail on the process behind its production, stating that “The biggest difference between this project and my other VR production, ‘The Deserted (家在蘭若寺),’ is that I am now in front of the camera instead of being behind it. I shared my story and my body as assets for the story. Through the delicate production and visual technology, I am still a little nervous about the final look but hope it turns out to be the great project I think it can be.”

“Missing Pictures Episode 2: Tsai Ming-liang” is also supported by Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA, 台灣文化內容策進院)’s Immersive Content Grant for International Co-funding or Co-Productions. Moreover, TAICCA provided its IP Lab’s 4DViews volumetric video capturing studio to the production team to capture Tsai’s facial expressions and gestures during the interview. All of the images, as well as the narrative, were recreated in animation and then placed in the scene.

In response to the film’s success, TAICCA Chairperson Ting Hsiao-Ching (丁曉菁) noted that “It is wonderful to see Immersive Content Grant recipients enter competitions and deliver outstanding performances on the global stage. We hope this opportunity will encourage more international co-production and co-funding projects for more amazing Taiwanese content to be seen worldwide.”

The film, alongside other 10 works, will be presented for the Tribeca Immersive: Virtual Arcade program. According to Tribeca’s official website, the program is viewable “through the Museum of Other Realities to those who have an Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Valve Index and Windows Mixed Reality users.” The 2021 Tribeca Film Festival will run from June 9 to June 20 in a hybrid format.

For more information, please visit the following website: https://tribecafilm.com/.

Photos courtesy of Serendipity Films