Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Comments on the Finalists

This production is not propelled by storyline and narrative. Instead, its creator blurs the boundary between performance and site-specific installation exhibition by overlapping the real and the virtual as well as jumping between different space-time to constantly re-adjust the viewing positions of the audience, smoothly playing with stage mechanisms and converting the theatrical space into an eye-catching component itself. The empty scenes with performers and the video images that escape reality highlight CHOU Man-Nung’s cold, detached aesthetics. The small sculptures that resemble taxidermy specimens and the decontextualized sound fragments are scattered over the stage. A lot of unspecified details fleet momentarily, and the design that denies a comprehensive viewing makes the audience more curious, creating many interpretable possibilities. (Commentator / CHEN Yi-Chen)

Artwork Introduction 

Detective Deduction is an immersive performance that amalgamates theatre and exhibition concepts. Launched in 2015, it is an ongoing project that has gone through various forms of development, publication, and phasal presentation, which is always oriented towards “creating a space that immerses the audience in sensory perception and thinking” as well as “expanding intermedia and interdisciplinary forms.” It utilizes the entire National Taichung Theater’s Grand Theater area to construct multiple rooms/spaces of a fictional detective and other related characters, in which audiences can wander and explore. Through the mise en scene of various elements and corresponding media, forms and textures, the work unveils the feeling of continuously folding time and space as well as implicit narratives and relations. The audiences are therefore turned into detectives of their selves, and dive into dream- and subconscious-evoking scenes to engage in respective experiences, interpretations and self-narratives.

About the Artist 

CHOU Man-Nung holds a BA in history from National Taiwan University, an MA from the Graduate Institutes of Theatre Arts and Playwriting, Taipei National University of the Arts, where she is now a PhD candidate at the Department of Theatre Arts. Her research and theme of interest lies in interdisciplinary technology performance. Chou is the artistic director of Baroque Robotics Studio. Her theatre career has begun with acting, and has undergone various fields, including playwright and directing, even extending to the fields of visual and new media arts. Chou is currently a theatre and interdisciplinary artist.

Production Team

Concept, playwright & Director╱CHOU Man-Nung

Space, mechanism design and overall planning of new media technology / CHANG Huei-Ming

Composer/ LIU Wei-Chih

Music Design/ LIU Wen-Chi

Lighting Design/ WU Hsia-ning

Director Assistant/ WU Zi-jing

Graphic Design/ YANG Shi-Ching

Costume Design/ LIN Hsin

Overall planning of Space Furnishings & Model Making/ TSAI Chuan-ren

Performer/YANG Qi-yin, Fly WU

Photographer and Cinematographer/ TANG Chien-Che