Cao - Danny, you are an invited visiting artist of the International Research Center of Freie University, could you share your views of Berlin and experience of this cultural exchange activity?
Danny - In 2000, together with „Haus der Kultur der Welt”, I organized a 5-week cultural exchange festival between Europe and Asia. When I look back, it appeared no more than a large scale “event”, however, friends in Berlin do not agree as they gathered the festival cast a vivid impression in people’s mind. After all, the effort puts in cultural exchange is not like setting fireworks but incessant hard work. It was sixteen years ago, the agenda of the festival touched on world cultural issues was ahead of time and unprecedented; the wide range of areas covered arts and technology, creative industry, mechanism that fosters exchanges, talks, exhibitions, installation arts, conference and workshops. At the same time, the festival showed to the world that Hong Kong was capable and had the potential to lead the coordination of global cultural agendas. Sixteen years passed, not much development was found in the global cultural agenda or the position of Hong Kong in it. Again, being not agreeable, friend’s in Berlin consider steady and new development are found in Berlin. What about Hong Kong? Still awaiting new chapter to come?
I am interested in all kind of beginnings especially excited about those creative cultural organizations. The mission of Freie Universität’s Interweaving Performance Cultures Center is set on the synchronization and interaction between academic research and creative production which brings forth a platform for cross-cultural exchanges and researches. I find the center’s inception and existence invaluable and unprecedented. Supported by Germany Federal Education Ministry, the Center is operated under two six-year terms. Eight years passed, people who care about the development of performing arts treasure this plattform which fosters in-depth dialogues between performing arts creations and academic researches. In additions, the Center provides rooms for dialectic debates that generates new cultural vision and prepares for way-forward plan of actions.
During my stay in Berlin, I’ve given a talk to the director students of Ernst Busch performing arts university. I found the interaction part of the talk particular meaningful since we have touched on the motivations behind creations. According to my observation, the students are neither much informed of what is going on outside Europe nor Berlin’s cultural policy and ecology. Having said that, I found their attitude shows that they are less Europe-center than 16 years ago; that is the proof of evolution.
Cao - What theater performances you have watched during your stay? Any observations or impressions?
Danny -Far too less to come up with an impression, yet, I found the chance to get to know Berlin more in a relaxed way this time. I’d say, stages are everywhere outside of theaters, and exhibition places are everywhere outside of galleries in Berlin which is itself like a huge cultural center and museum. The visit to Ponderosa located in the north of Berlin impressed me. The huge vacated cement factory in that area provided me some creative thoughts. Speaking of which, it reminds me of the famed female impersonator in traditional Chinese theater (Chinese opera), Cheng Yanqiu, who spent a year in Berlin eight five years ago. That inspired my theater work, Tears of Barren Hill (2008), which was created out of Cheng’s cultural exchange experience in Berlin.
Creative talents are what that counts in Berlin’s arts and cultural scene. I am most happy and honored for meeting up with different artists and musicians that allowed various imaginative discussions on experimenting traditions. Not to mention the luck of running into the old buddy collaborators like HONG Sincha from Korea, Yoshiko Chuma from Japan/USA, Astad Deboo from India, Kuo Hengluen from Singapore, Mike van Graan from South Africa, et al. In Yoshiko Chuma’s workshop, I found the chance to meet some young emerging artists from Columbia, Syria, Spain, Italy, Israel; that is fun and that is Berlin!
Cao - In November this year, your theater work, Flee by Night, is invited by Akademie der Künste to be part of its big project Uncertain States; how do you see the relevance of this classic work of traditional Chinese Kunqu theater to German audience, and what kind of issues that you would like to address through this performance?
Danny -The classic play of Flee by Night depicts the story of a martial art training official, Lin Chong, in Song Dynasty. One night, he decided to leave the corrupted bureau pitching in the opposing gang. In short, he runs away from a system for another one, turning himself from a government official into a refugee. The stories about the way he left the bureau, the way he ran to the gang, the idea of being an escapist or someone who runs for one’s dream, are all relevant to our discussions about refugees today. We take Flee by Night as the departure point to observe the shift of one’s identity and its uncertain states. In such a process, we started to observe history and politics, and what goes beyond that, for instance, body language, spatial arrangement and forms of narration in the context of history and politics. At the same time, we discuss what is “observation”, and that is the reason I added the role of “Stagehand” who is the staff working at the side stages responsible for putting props on-and-off stage. Stagehand is also an audience member who watches the same production many times on the side. In Flee by Night, stagehand appears on stage as an observer, then turns into a performer followed by playing the role in the performance, finally resuming his role as a stagehand who observes.
Cao - I find your Flee by Night is a rather abstract presentation, how does it relate to incidents in the Chinese history?
Danny - The construct of Chinese characters is ideogram; each character is a pictograph and a symbol, a line of these characters conjured up to the idea of montage. What is presented on stage is all about combinations and variations of pictographs and symbols that provide audience room for imagination. For those who are familiar with contemporary Chinese history might fall into the pigeonholes to relate what’s in the play as Chairman Mao or Chiang Kai-shek, the Revolutionary or the authority, pre-XXX generation or post-XXX generation, performer or observer, and performance or non-performance. I’ve adapted the symbolic set-up of one table and two chairs regularly used in traditional Chinese theaters to test the confine of imagination. That is, some people would read into the set-up of one table and two chairs as distribution of authorities, some read like interaction on a fair ground, while some read political struggles or transition of our times. The two lead performers are of master and disciple relationship in reality, the construct between real-life stories and historical events between the two performers, and the system of passing on this dying art between the master and disciple provided an entry point to the play Flee by Night. My attempt is to make use of this classical kunqu work to create an experimental platform carrying multiple-layer narrative structure with montage style.
Cao - Let say German theater adopts the confrontational approach, would your work be considered as tacit?
Danny - I once had written an article on the way Germany reflected on the WWII experience that brought forth the later well-supported cultural policy, hence, nowadays a public sphere which allows dialectic debates among cultural, political and academic sectors is founded. A public sphere as such could not be found in China. After 1949, there were tons of problem in China. Cultural Ministry was bombarded by the pressing institutional reform that provided no room for reviewing culture from a broader perspective, and refrained from acknowledging the importance of culture over politics. In 1957, Cultural Ministry dared not speak up when those outspoken cultural practitioners were silenced; later on, even keeping the ideas in one’s mind might cause problem during Cultural Revolution. Would our history be re-written if the Cultural Minister was strong and tactic enough to open up such dialogue with Chairman Mao? Political movements in contemporary China were all related to cultural issues, yet, that pushed cultural practitioners to a ground of no confidence and righteousness. Looking at the history, Germany has made a clean move in openly reflecting on one’s deeds; it didn’t generally happen in China where theater is a tiny niche which casts no influence on China’s overall development, while Hong Kong carries least baggage in this case.
Any particular reasons for your preference in re-constructing the Chinese literatures or classical text, such as Book of Ghosts (1996, 2009), Outcast General (2005), Tears of Barren Hill (2008) and so on?
Classical scripts are a kind of alternative history, since it is alternative that made us more aware of looking at what are we reading. Some artists from mainland China once told me the reason for their preference of classical plays like Shakespeare’s over original plays is due to censorship reason. Yet, we have different opinions towards the authority of classical works. Besides the awareness mentioned above when reading classical scripts, we are also reviewing the politics of reading, history and memory. Tears of Barren Hill was written in Republic of China period (1912-1949), while Outcast General and Flee by Night in Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), and Book of Ghosts in Yuan Dynasty (1279 – 1368) which was the first book documented musicians and artists of the time. Book of Ghosts inspired my theater work of the same title by its metaphors of artists as ghosts. Besides devoting my theater piece to documenting the artists of our time, the idea of critiquing on the concept of “documentation” was well in place too. Throughout the years, I have created different editions of Book of Ghosts, four traditional/contemporary performing artists from Beijing, Taipei, Jakarta and Bangkok were invited to take part in the latest production in 2009. In this edition, issues about artists’ identities and their positioning in the present society were explored, that was a contemporary Asian Book of Ghosts.
Outcast General depicts the famed general in Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) as a cunning master instead who manipulated those young warriors under him, that corresponded to the earlier mentioned notion “reading history alternatively from traditional scripts” inspired my work of the same title. In Outcast General, I have tried to explore the concepts that constitutes the differences between documentation and reading the documentation, and between history and memory through the experimentation of synchronized interactions between the performers and its own projected digit images; an attempt to adopt the new technology in stage works by then.
Inspired by the same title Peking opera of the 30s, signature piece of the famous female impersonator CHENG Yanqiu, my Tears of Barren Hill attempted to draw attention on the importance of cross-cultural exchanges by making a case study out of Cheng’s study trip in Berlin in 1932-1933. Equally well-known and successful as his peer MEI Lanfang, CHENG made this Europe study trip purely out of his own interest that included personal visits to different theaters, hospitals, city halls, schools, churches, and so on. CHENG once made an impromptu singing an excerpt of Tears of Barren Hill in a church after attending a mass. Much inspired, CHENG prepared the 19 chapters of reports with extensive proposals on cultural development in China upon his returning home. I found this historical story much more meaningful than the original story of the classic Tears of Barren Hill. I have expanded CHENG’s singing part for discussing the contrast in culture between East and West, Germany and Europe; at the same time, making creative dialogues and exploration on the cultural side of Berlin and its ecology. Eighty-five years passed, I still find this issue is very much relevant and worth further explored.
Cao - Since spoken theater in China came from the West, in your opinion, what kind of possibilities that the aesthetics of Chinese theater could bring to the West?
Danny – In the past decade, I have been advocating the concept of “Experimenting Traditions”. By inviting classical/traditional performing artists from different countries of Asia to carry out various kind of exchanges in order to look for possible collaborations and development between the traditional and the contemporary, and looking into the aesthetics through cross-cultural comparative experiments among the wide spanned Asian cultures. To me, more importantly, it is to raise our awareness in what’s on- and off-stage; care for critiques and transgressions in the process of creation and experimentation; in additions, placing equal emphasis on comparing the operational mode as well as cultural policy. Sincerely hope that we could compare notes with the peer practitioners in Germany.
Cao – Your theater pieces are not constructed in the usual way of narration, they are mostly reconstructed through different theatrical means out of the deconstructed narrative structures. Would you share here the way you structure a theater work?
Danny – From telegram to telephone, then email and mobile phone, the ever-progressing technology plays a crucial role in re-shaping our language and behavior, as well as the structure of our communications and narrations. To me, every single body movement, a line of lyrics, a posture and a fragment of storyline in the traditional theater where “alternative history” is kept, are all possible entry points for exploring the in-depth structural development of our language and communications in the context of hi-speed changing tempo. When we go deep into de-constructing every single detail of different elements in traditional theaters, our concerns and challenges such as how technology plays a role in art will be brought into the picture. I am not particularly interested in traditional stories since they appear overly inflated in the present political situation, and morally loaded.
Cao – What exactly your proposed concepts of “Experimenting Traditions” and “Experimenting Theater” mean?
Danny – To me, “theater” and “tradition” no longer function properly as public sphere when they are regulated. No matter it is “Experimenting Tradition” or “Experimenting Theater”, what I have been trying to do is to re-visit their origins and definitions, and to analyze their framework and the value behind. I gathered, when theater serves well as a public sphere, the process of de-constructing the existing theaters as well as public sphere will be supported continuously. The search of existing framework in the public sphere and theater is similar to the searches in our social, cultural and language systems. De-constructing framework shall come after comprehension, while comprehension comes after reading, and reading comes after critiquing. Bearing the spirit of experimentation in the process of comprehension, reading and critiquing is vital, yet, it is a very difficult task in the situation where politics and economy taking the lead.
Cao – Would it be fair to say that this experimentation spirit in theater is extended to the social and nation level?
Danny – When we explore the concept of “performing arts”, we are actually discussing what is not “performing arts”, and the external phenomena such as its social environment and structure. The same applies to studying the concept of “theater”, it touches on what’s “non-theater”, its context such as national policy that governs all operations. When the discussion comes to “society” and “country”, we read into its historical framework and the design of the frameworks.
Cao - In the present turbulent world, clashes of values are everywhere. German-speaking theater takes up the confrontational approach to intervene politics and economical orders; in additions, creating “experimental platforms” that allow alternative voices to be heard. What perspectives and values would you think the Chinese culture provides?
Danny - The interesting thing in Asia is that one’s identity can be shifted easily, for instance, a director can be a producer tomorrow; an artistic director can be a cultural minister tomorrow and then returned to be an artist later. It happened in Taiwan and Czech, yet, it seems not so common in Germany. In theater, role change is a common and crucial practice; changes bring broader visions and invite critiques further.
When I curated One Table Two Chairs project in Haus der Kulturen der Welt, I have encountered some conflicts with the German team. One Table Two Chairsis a framework which could be content itself. My idea was to invite artists from different cultural backgrounds to create a 20-min works in respond to this commonly used Chinese theater aesthetics, One table and two chairs on stage, in the hope of inspiring cross-cultural dialogues among the participating artists. The artistic coordinator of the German team believed that no frame should be given to artistic creations which is considered infringing artistic freedom. In fact, providing some frameworks or conditions to artists might be more inspiring than restricting, that brings forth more interactions. Speaking of the concept of democracy, festivals here running under the practice of curatorship or artistic-directorship would not be democratic per se. This practice of providing framework to artistic creations tells the cultural differences between the East and the West.
Cao – Would it be the issue you brought up related to the highly-praised idea of “Individualism” in the western culture?
Danny – Seemingly the situation has been changed comparing to 16 years ago. At that time, quite a number of invited artists here were rather individualistic and absorbed into one’s own world without any room left for dialogues and interactions with others. If this was the idea of freedom, then it was a conditional one since it was granted by the curator. Freedom or democracy in that sense might be a pseudo-concept.
Cao – What kind of experience and regrets that you have earned from curating and organizing such a large-scale Festival of Vision – Berlin/Hong Kong in 2000? Today, what’s your view on cross-cultural and cross-genre artistic exchanges, and any plans for future?
Danny – Looking back, I’d say there were too many programs and concepts but not enough follow-up and dialectic discussions that all of the created art pieces deserved. Lacking of in-depth discussions were due to the fact that both Hong Kong and German partners were too excited and exhausted in materializing this collaboration, like 90% of our time was spent in its execution. The festival was well-received, people were amazed, rave reviews in German and French were obtained, yet, regrettably, it stopped there.
During the festival, I kept asking Hans-Georg Knopp, the Secretary General of Haus der Kulturen der Welt, what differences we would experience after thisFestival of Vision – Berlin/Hong Kong? Would any changes be brought to the agenda of the two partner institutes (Hong Kong and Berlin) involved in organizing this Festival? Not long after the Festival, Hans-Georg took up the Secretary General of Goethe-Institut in Munich.
Cao – If you were invited again to curate the festival, what would you do with it?
Danny - Around 1997, before and after Hong Kong returning to China, we had lots of ideas about cultural development such as cross-genre art, cross-city, cross-culture. In 2000, we were very much concerned about the positioning of Hong Kong that we discussed about democracy, equality, interaction, creativity, cultural exchange and cultural industry; these were all related to culture, politics and economy, and are what we care about till today. In 2000, I had an expectation that art and cultural sector in Germany would continue with it. Look back, my expectation might not be most realistic. After 2000, all these issues and concerns had been included in the agenda of the World Cultural Forum I organized in Brazil. It is a long story though.
If I were invited again to curate, I would not include over a dozen programmes in 5 weeks. If resources are sufficient, I would take up a gradual accumulation approach. This approach is reflected in the creative process of my theater work Flee by Night, that is through a theater work to discuss various subject matters gradually instead of putting out a grand cultural agenda of a city in a rush. That’s also the process and connection in developing Flee by Night from the previous work Tears of Barren Hill.
This summer, I was invited by Freie Universität’s Interweaving Performance Cultures Center, my time was spent on reflection and pondering over the issue of cultural exchange model between Germany and China, Berlin and Hong Kong, or Beijing and Shanghai. Cultural exchange is not about large-scale events but gradual accumulation through time.
Cao – In the present globalized world, ruling under One Country Two Systems, what advantages Hong Kong possesses in the area of cultural exchanges?
Yung - After Hong Kong returned to China and ruled under One Country Two Systems, I think, it is an important opportunity for cultural diversity development and to develop Hong Kong into a global cultural laboratory. This laboratory is not restricted regionally but a global one that provides unprecedented space and opportunities for cultural dialectics. “One Country Two Systems” is an experiment, in my opinion, that provides opportunities for discussion and challenges on the cultural concept of what a “Nation” is. When the leaders of these two systems are visionary and with determination, this “One Country Two Systems” experiment might be able to re-position “Nation” in the cultural context and opening up a whole new world. At the same time, it might relax the border issues among different countries, and loosen up tension and opposing forces in cultural differences issues.
Cao - One last question, what do you expect from the local audience for your Flee by Night to be presented in Akademie der Künste, Berlin in November.
Danny – Before 1989, we didn’t do any curtain call for Zuni’s performances, performers went straight to the audience for exchange and discussion. Our concept was that performances actually begin before its beginning, stopped but not finished. The on-stage and off-stage exchanges are always the contents of our performances. In 1989, when we performed in New York City, local organizer convinced us to do curtain call in order to avoid being considered arrogant.
In November, I hope the audience attend Flee by Night would like to stay behind to discuss with us or left us messages telling how they think about the performance. If a platform could be built through this performance to explore the above-mentioned issues related to art, system and policy, and to make the exchange continues, that is my expectation. Speaking of which, I hope for the same for this interview, continuous dialogues are always what I care most.
Sept 2016, Berlin
Translation from Chinese into English by Yuewai