New arts award aimed at the young

According to Taishin Bank Foundation's Shih, the cash award is just part of a much larger package that includes coverage in the Chinese-language media, making the artist a topic of discussion among the public. This will help "make art part of everyone's daily life," Shih said.

The winner in the performance category was U-Theater (優劇場) for its Meeting with Vajrasatta (金剛心) at the National Theater Taipei. The group intends to spend this "timely rain" on reconstruction of their mountain studio, which has been damaged by flooding and termites. It has been awaiting renovation for the last two years.

"We think of the prize as a kind of subsidy we didn't have to apply for. It was given to us for our effort instead of our connections or management dexterity," said Liu Chin-min (劉靜敏), artistic director of the group.

Selecting one winner from the many entries, which included opera, puppet theater and many other performance mediums, was no easy task, according to Fan Man-nong (樊曼儂), artistic director of the International New Aspect Cultural and Educational Foundation, who was a member of the jury.

"Having to announce only one winner hurt me emotionally, especially when I liked all the different art forms equally and have seen these groups grow up over the years," Fan said.

That the 28-year-old Cloud Gate Dance Theater (雲門舞集) didn't get the award reflected the award's specific focus.

"You have to consider that Cloud Gate's performance last year is the accumulated work of many years. It's a great show partly because of their solid foundation. The jury's priority, however, was to find a performance in the last year that touched us or shook us up ... Meeting with Vajrasatta was such a show," Fan said.

In the visual arts category, the choice of winner was also indicative of the jury's criteria.

The winner, Avant-garde Liberation: The Huang Ming-chuan Image Collection of the 1990s (解放前衛－黃明川九○年代的影像收藏), is a documentary series in 14 episodes about artists which screened at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and on the TV channel PTS from March to June 2002.

Generally considered contemporary art pioneers a decade ago, the artists covered by this documentary continue to be creatively active. Two of them, Wang Wen-chi (王文志) and Shy Gong (施工忠昊), were also nominated in their own right.

"When presented with such a diversity of entrants, we have to take into account the impact of the work on the whole art environment in this country. It's probably easier to give Huang the award because by working in documentary films he's obviously reaching a larger audience -- even non-exhibition goers," said Huang Hai-ming (黃海鳴), instructor at the Taipei National University of the Arts and one of the five jurors.

As if to compensate for awarding the prize to a film documentary series instead of a "real" visual arts exhibitions, the jury awarded a Special Jury Prize, worth NT$200,000 to The Shortcut of Systematic Life ? Superficial Circumstances (系統生活捷徑 -- 表皮生活圈), a video installation by Tsei Guang-yu (崔廣宇), which was shown at IT Park.

The Special Jury Prize is open to both performance and visual art categories.