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Gingering up for Christmas

By Ian Bartholomew
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, Dec 22, 2007, Page 16

PHOTO: COURTESY OF TAIPEI ARTISTS VILLAGE

Gingerbread nativity scenes are a staple of store windows come Christmas, but under the guiding hand of Post Theater, a multinational group of young artists who want to take theater, well, beyond theater, gingerbread has been transformed into the basis for a dialog about monumental structures and architectural symbols of identity. Of course, it also aims to provide some fun in the run-up to Christmas.

Monumental X'mas is the name of an event jointly organized by the German Cultural Center and the Taipei Artist Village (台北國際藝術村), who have invited the Berlin-based group Post Theater, made up of Max Schumacher and Hiroko Tanahashi, to lead a number of workshops to build Taiwanese and German monuments out of gingerbread. These have been built and put on display at the artist village through last week. The final display of the completed project, and its consumption, along with other Teutonic festive foods such as gluwine, will take place at the German Cultural Center tomorrow in a Christmas open house event that will also include a concert by the world music group NoMads and a concert of classical music by the Taipei Atmosphere Trio with soprano Lin Hsin-hsin (林欣欣) and pianist Su Kung-hsiu (蘇恭秀).

PHOTO: COURTESY OF TAIPEI ARTISTS VILLAGE

"We do see a lot of parallels in public monuments between Taipei and Berlin," Schumacher said in an interview Tuesday. "Both cities have experienced a history that is full of changes, of political regimes, of struggling for democracy, so we have found more parallels at hand that you might at first expect."

Open house notes What: German Culture Office Christmas Open House (Monumental X'mas) When: Today 2:30pm to 11pm; Post Theater Presentation 7:15pm to 8pm; Taipei Atmosphere Trio 8pm to 8:45pm; NoMads 9pm to 10:30pm Where: German Cultural Office (台北德國文化中心), at 11F and 12F, 20,Heping W Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市和平西路一段２０號１１、１２樓) On the Net: visit www.dk-taipei.org.tw

In addition to engaging in this dialog, the building of each monument will be recorded for editing into a stop-action animation also to be screened as part of tomorrow's event.

Schumacher said that Post Theater primarily focused on cutting edge multimedia performances and this was something of a holiday for them. "It (Monumental X'mas) is seasonal for one, it is Germanic, so relates to our headquarters in Berlin. My personal background culture as a German, but it is also very nice to reflect upon the edibility of non-edible things ... how you can eventually put something that is monumental into your own body."

The gingerbread is being provided by a local German bakery. On the first workshop last Monday comprising a group of design school students who were preparing to build a gingerbread version of Taipei 101, the huge slabs of spiced bread were being hurriedly blown dry prior to construction. Schumacher admitted that the load-bearing qualities of the bread had yet to be tested, but each of the buildings had been designed by architectural students who would preside over each construction project. The construction teams are drawn from members of the public, including students. The projects include the Berlin Television Tower, the Grand Hotel, the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall (台灣民主紀念館) formerly known as the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, Berlin's Brandenburg Gate and more.

While the main purpose of the project is to promote a dialog and also have a little fun, there is also a more serious cultural agenda: "In Taiwan, Germany is regarded as one of the 'Christmas countries,' so the German Cultural Institute is interested in undermining certain cliches, so, yes, there are gingerbread houses, which are yes, a German tradition, but at the same time, the way it is dealt with is more contemporary and more cosmopolitan."

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