Thanks to a Fulbright Research Scholarship we are currently living and working in Taiwan for 10 months, where we are continuing our research into the relationships between digital hand-held devices such as smart phones and their analog relatives: traditional hand-puppets. We are continuously updating our research on this blog, so please check back often.
How do we humans continue to invent and use technologies to expand the capabilities of our bodies? Is the operation of and the need for traditional analog performing tools, such as puppets, comparable with modern digital handheld devices, such as smart phones and consumer drones?
Traditional Chinese puppetry, which includes the use of string puppets, shadow puppets, rod puppets and hand puppets, is a deeply involved form of entertainment with religious and spiritual roots. Our fascination with it started in 2015 during a residency at TAV when we witnessed the fourth generation hand-puppet troupe I Wan Jan perform “Wu-Song Fights a Tiger” on a small portable stage, outdoors in downtown Taipei. We visited the troupe in Northern Taiwan and together improvised an experimental play.
In 2017/2018, through a grant from the Academy of Visual Arts at the Hong Kong Baptist University, we spent a year in Hong Kong and collaborated with puppet master Wong Fai and his troupe on the production and performance of a multimedia puppet opera “Zhong Kui and the Reform of Hell,” which we performed in several venues in Hong Kong.
Our collaboration with Wong Fai, one of the few remaining puppet masters in Hong Kong, who has been practicing and performing this craft since more than 50 years, was motivated by the potential symbiosis of analog and digital performing technologies, and our shared interest in expanding artistic disciplines, audiences, narratives and venues.
In 2020 we were granted a one year Fulbright Fellowship to return to Hong Kong to develop a new performance play with master Wong Fai, but before our departure, then president Donald Trump canceled all Fulbright exchanges with Hong Kong and mainland China as part of Executive Order 13936. Fortunately, despite severe travel restrictions caused by the global Corona Virus pandemic, we could re-route our hands on research with the Fulbright Foundation to Taiwan. Hosted by NTUA, we spent six months in Taiwan, four of them in lockdown due to the arrival of the Corona Virus Pandemic on the island.
In spring 2024 we received another scholarship to return to Taiwan to continue our research. We are here now, thankful to Fulbright Taiwan – Foundation for Scholarly Exchange and NTUA for hosting us again.
