There are obvious difficulties in writing about cultural events that haven't yet occurred. This is especially true of performance art pieces like Human Zoo (人類動物園), scheduled to be staged tonight and tomorrow at the Taipei Artists Village. More often than not, the artists doing the performing prefer to parse their words in philosophical terms rather than risk sounding absurd.
However, when an event is sponsored by the Taipei City Culture Bureau and paid for with taxpayers' dollars, the artists involved must take pains to present their work in a coherent written form.
Such is the case with Human Zoo which, we learn, will mix painting, electronic music, installation art and "action performance."
There will be a "semitransparent cuboid installation" around which the performance will take place. "It is like a luminescent square [which] drifts in the dark. ... it sometimes reveals transparency and sometimes shows shadow image[s].
"The audience all sit around experiencing the confined soul of [the] human animal. The souls demonstrate the limitless desire fight (sic)."
The souls demonstrating their desire are Singapore's Zai Kuning and Taiwan's own Chen Jun-ming (陳俊明) Jian Ya-ling (簡雅玲), Cai Hong-yi (蔡宏毅) and Zhan Yan-feng (詹炎峰).
If sitting around experiencing confined souls sounds like culture, tickets to the performance cost NT$300 and are available at the door. Human Zoo is tonight at 7:30 and tomorrow at 3:30PM and again at 7:30PM. The Taipei Artists' Village is located at 7 Beiping Road (台北市北平東路7號).
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