In-Between, A Jiaocha Experience (間—交叉體驗) is sure to raise more questions than it answers.
The non-verbal performance — which runs this weekend at Taipei’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA, Taipei) — combines aspects of a theater production with those of a museum exhibit, and encourages members of the audience to interact with the actors and play with the objects on display.
“We’ve created an unusual space that will take people out of their element,” said Huang Pei-shan (黃�?, one of the show’s co-creators.
Huang, who works in theater and film, conceived of the 30-minute performance and exhibition with BlueScreen, the pseudonym of a conceptual artist from France, in collaboration with The Puppet and Its Double Theater (無獨有偶工作室劇團).
Huang said they worked on the project for a year, which included designing and building the props and set.
“It’s not like in theater where one person does set [design] and one person does the lighting. We did everything together,” BlueScreen said.
Everything, perhaps, except the acting. That role goes to The Puppet and Its Double Theater, whose puppeteers will manipulate the many puppets placed throughout the exhibition space.
The space, which could be said to resemble the inside of an artist’s home, contains eight rooms, each with its own function. One serves as a bedroom while another is a workshop. Audience members choose to interact with the actors, play with the puppets or other objects on display or simply wander through the exhibition space.
“It all depends on the viewer,” Huang said.
Allowing the audience complete freedom to choose the plot and narrative of the work might be perplexing for those who demand a more coherent structure to performance art. But for Huang and BlueScreen, it is a formula that offers a different interpretation on how to use venues — whether a museum or theater — for artistic representation.
“The idea is to make a space and then to leave it open,” BlueScreen said.
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