The Tainan Street Arts Festival opens today with an interactive installation by French artist Olivier Grossetete that allows people to participate in the assembly of a cardboard structure inspired by buildings that have been torn down in the city.
First hosted in 2015 as the Tainan Street Art Competival, the event this year is a three-day festival with more than 100 performances by nearly 40 Taiwanese and foreign groups.
Since Sunday, Grossetete has hosted workshops at the Tainan Art Museum’s Building 2, where he and local residents have begun creating parts to build a design he made using blueprints of buildings such as a Japanese colonial-era post office.
Grossetete is to begin constructing the cardboard installation, called Zeelandia (全民烏托邦), at 10am today with members of the public.
At 6pm on Sunday, they are to tear down the installation to “symbolize an overturning of public space and the launch of a new urban imagination.”
The theme of this year’s festival, which is to take place along Haian Road, is sakariba, which means “a bustling place” in Japanese.
Performances include French street theater company Cie Ekart’s Les Dodos, New Zealand artist Fraser Hooper’s Boxing, Amsterdam-based street theater company Teatro Pavana’s Nellie the Hippo, South Korean theater company Theater Momggol’s Impulse and French jugglers’ collective Collectif Protocole’s One Shot.
The festival also includes a market with stalls featuring pottery, woodwork and traditional crafts, among others.
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