Lecture Performances
Lecture performances may be inherently ephemeral, yet through continual retelling and reinterpretation, stories endure. People become vessels through which experiences transform into records. Taking the act of documentation and the concept of the archive as points of departure, four groups of artists explore the multiple possibilities of memory and narration. Between speaking and listening, the stories of this world gradually take shape in our minds, developing into new experiences and narratives of our own.
Unreliable i
FREE ENTRY
Time｜05.02 SAT 13:30 ★
Venue｜C-LAB Art Space｜Gray Box
Performers｜Joanne DENG, i
Visual Design and Execution｜HSIAO Ho-hsuan
This is an exploration of memory, emotion and identity. In this interactive lecture performance, I wish to pose a series of questions: When we express emotions, are we revealing our authentic selves or merely simulating the emotions society expects of us? How trustworthy are our memories and visual perceptions? When we look back at the past, are the emotions that once seemed real merely meanings and shapes imposed by our ‘later selves’? Are the unspoken emotions perhaps truer than those we openly display? Through storytelling, memory is reconstructed and emotions drift along a spectrum. Are the boundaries between the virtual and the real disappearing? Will blurred information ultimately become our shared reality?
．Duration: approx. 50 minutes without intermission
．Performed in Mandarin without English subtitles
．Post-show talk after the performance
※ Co-presented with 
Joanne DENG
As an actor, writer and theatre director, Joanne Deng works across theatre and screen, with performances and projects spanning Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. She has published several collections of short stories and essays. Her debut novel Second Woman received the Grand Prize of the Taipei Literature Award Writing Grant and was shortlisted for the Taiwan Literature Golden Awards, among other major literary honours. Since 2015, she has developed the ‘Fiction Theatre’ series, an interdisciplinary project that integrates literature, theatre and contemporary art performance, exploring the internal orchestration and transformation of language, emotion and narrative across different contexts.
Beyond the Cold Sea, Every Cloud a Silver Lining
FREE ENTRY
Time｜05.02 SAT 16:50 ★
Venue｜C-LAB Art Space｜Gray Box
Performers｜AU Sow Yee × CHEN Yow-ruu (Her Lab Space)
Starting from the ‘heroes’ of two 1960s Taiwanese-language Cold War films, Female Agent No. 7 and Tarzan and the Treasure, Beyond the Cold Sea, Every Cloud a Silver Lining explores history, temporal construction and their perceptual imaginaries through the ‘empty shots’ within the heroes’ trajectories. It unfolds as a heroic journey in which characters recede and landscapes take voice — a speculative play of absences between north and south.
*In the title, ‘Cold Sea’ merges the imaginaries of the Cold War and Southeast Asia, while ‘Silver’ alludes to the silver screen — cinema itself.
．Duration: approx. 40 minutes without intermission
．Performed in Mandarin with English translation handouts available on site
．Post-show talk after the performance
▋ The extended work will be presented from FRI 8 May to SUN 12 July at C-LAB’s annual exhibition, WE Are Becoming. Please visit the C-LAB official website for updates.
※ Co-presented with
Photo Credit: LEE Hsin-che
Her Lab Space
Her Lab Space was founded in Kaohsiung in 2016 by theatre director and artist Chen Yow-ruu. Since 2017, she has collaborated frequently with Malaysia-born, Taipei-based artist Au Sow Yee, presenting works in hybrid and indeterminate forms, spanning performative video installations, theatre and live performance.
Mountains of Time: A Collection of 1930s 16mm Reversal Film
FREE ENTRY
Time｜05.03 SUN 11:30
Venue｜TFAI Cinema A
Artists｜HUANG Pang-chuan, Chunni LIN, Yannick DAUBY, WU Ming-yi
This lecture performance brings together moving-image works by filmmakers Chunni Lin and Huang Pang-chuan, the newly commissioned short story Mountains by writer Wu Ming-yi, and a live performance by sound artist Yannick Dauby. Blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction through image, literature and music, the performance leads audiences across the mountains of time, returning to a collection of 16mm film reels shot in the 1930s by Chijiiwa Suketaro.
．Duration: approx. 80 minutes without intermission
．Performed in Mandarin without English subtitles
HUANG Pang-chuan, Chunni LIN, Yannick DAUBY, WU Ming-yi
This project brings together four artists: filmmakers Huang Pang-chuan and Chunni Lin, sound artist Yannick Dauby and writer Wu Ming-yi. The collaboration grew from a shared fascination with old objects and a longing for landscapes of the past.
Recent works by Huang Pang-chuan and Chunni Lin include This Is Not a Film by Deng Nan-guang and Daughter of Nectar. Yannick Dauby has recently completed a new moving-image work, Bone Always Outlasts Feather, while Wu Ming-yi has published his first illustrated book, The Three-Legged Crab-Eating Mongoose and the Giant.
Death Is Certain but Not Final vol. IV
FREE ENTRY
Time｜05.03 SUN 14:00 ★
Venue｜TFAI Cinema A
Performer｜Saeed Taji FAROUKY
Death Is Certain but Not Final vol. IV is a non-academic, irreverent lecture performance that considers ‘absence’ as a vital creative and political component of radical and experimental moving-image practice. Moving between music, literature, dance, film, and architecture, Saeed examines how the notions of certainty and presence — central to capitalist and industrial modes of filmmaking — are wholly inadequate to represent Palestine, and how Palestinian creators, confronting the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, challenge these assumptions to devise new forms of storytelling and construct their own narratives.
．Duration: approx. 60 minutes without intermission
．Performed in English with Chinese subtitles
．Post-show talk after the performance
Saeed Taji FAROUKY
Saeed Taji Farouky is a Palestinian-Egyptian filmmaker, activist and radical educator. He is the founder of the Radical Film School, which provides free film education for creators from politically marginalised backgrounds. His work focuses on human rights and colonial histories and has screened at major international festivals. His latest feature documentary A Thousand Fires received the Marco Zucchi Award at the Critics’ Week of the 2021 Locarno Film Festival and was selected for the Asian Vision Competition at TIDF 2022. His earlier documentary Tell Spring Not to Come This Year premiered at the Berlinale in 2015, where it won the Panorama Audience Award, the Amnesty Human Rights Award and was acquired by Netflix.