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