Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Comments on the Finalist

Starting from a brief encounter between several travelling strangers on an airplane, the actors (CHANG Yao-Jen, CHENG Li-Ying, LEE Tzu-Yang, YU Pei-Jen and FAN Yi) begin to naturally switch between different characters. The playwright, FENG Chi-Chun, is able to extend the simple storyline and creates a flowing theatrical narrative. The production design by CHENG Hsuan-Hsan offers an imaginative space with a simple set, objects, and changing perspectives. The director, HUNG Chien-Han, buries sadness in humor and lightheartedness, creating interconnected stories by masterfully employing theatrical methods and proving herself to be a rising director of the young generation. The great mutual understanding and collaboration between the playwright, director, actors and the crew allow them to create an excellent performance enriched with imagination in a limited space and with only a number of people and objects. (Commentator: CHEN Hui-Mei)

Artwork Introduction

This work was originally a thirty-minute work for the Young Theatre Artist's Competition of Wu Zhen Theatre Festival in 2015. In 2016, the director, HUNG Chien-Han, and the playwright, FENG Chi-Chun, revised the work for an invitational performance at Kuandu Arts Festival, expanding the thirty-minute duet into a seventy-minute version. Employing "airplane" as a physical carrier that moves through different time zones, the work triggers and connects the memory of the neighboring passengers on board. Through various combination of interpersonal relations, the works explores the different aspects of memory, from that of the family, to friendship, to strangers, redefining what it means to "lose." When all the memory of what has ever happened means "loss," the present that makes you think about "losing" will guide you to experience the future that is yet to come.

About the Artist

Co-coism

Founded in early 2016, the core members of Co-coism include HUNG Chien-Han, CHANG Kang-Hua, and HUANG Din-Yun, who have respectively emerged as uprising directors and playwrights in the field of performing arts in recent years. Therefore, they decided to seek more creative possibilities as a group. Differing from most groups that divide the works according to specialties, techniques, and functions, the three members of Co-coism are all "authors" and conduct artistic creation together. At present, they uphold the following concept to develop their works: "live exhibition," "responding creation," and "immersive project." They do not limit themselves to specific material and media, but rather emphasize on communication and negotiation between the production process and society, environment, technology and history.

FENG Chi-Chun

FENG Chi-Chun majored in playwriting and graduated from the Department of Theatre, Taipei National University of the Arts, and is now a playwright at Playwriting Studio. FENG has written many scripts, including Still Air performed at the 2016 Taipei Fringe Festival, Ever Never, which won the First Prize in the Young Theatre Artist's Competition of Wu Zhen Theatre Festival in 2015, Live of Love performed at the 2013 Taipei Fringe Festival (script-writing assistance), Drill, which was her graduation production in 2010, and Non-Death that won the Second Place of Kuandu Literature Award in 2009.

HUNG Chien-Han

HUNG Chien-Han is a theatre director, performer, and the director of Co-coism. She majored in directing and graduated from the Department of Theatre, Taipei National University of the Arts in 2010. In 2014, she graduated from the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, London, and received an MA Advanced Theatre Practice. She founded Canteen 50A Lab with other theatre practitioners in London in 2015 and was invited to perform Caressed at the Prague Quadrennial. In 2014, HUNG was invited to participate in the collaborative work, Tick Tock, performed at Merge Festival hosted by Tate Modern, and also participated in her graduation and curatorial production, Milk Float, at Unresolved Festival in London.

Recently, HUNG has been engaged in contemporary performances. She participated in Walletjes, a work performed at the 2015 Free Art Fair and received tremendous accolades. In early 2016, she was invited to perform at The New Generation Art at New Taipei Gallery at the 16th Macau City Fringe Festival in 2017. In early 2016, HUNG co-founded Co-coism with HUANG Din-Yun and CHANG Kang-Hua, and published the group's debut work Tomorrow Inn in June. In October, they were invited to create You Can Sleep Here by MOCA Taipei and Between Meals by Treasure Hill Artist Village. Her other directorial works include Concrete Jungle, which won the Best Director at the 2nd Kanagawa Kamome Short Play Festival in 2017, and Still Air, which was performed and nominated for Best Theatre Performance at the 2016 Taipei Fringe Festival and was one of the third-season nominees for Taishin Arts Award.