About Creation
Age of Audience: For all ages / Nudity
Number of Performers: 1 persons
Number of tour member: 4-5 persons
Stage Size: 6m (W) x 8m (D) x 3m (H)
Special Made for: This production is suited for either indoors or outdoors, ideally at an ambient temperature of 26 degrees Celsius. 110v power is required.
The start of an ongoing series entitled Su Pin-Wen’s Feminism, a Three-Year Project, “Girl’s Notes” is an adaptation of a book of the same title, first performed in 2018. Artist Su Pin-Wen offers a “book review” through body movement, recalling past personal experiences and commenting on the appearance of contemporary females. Throughout the entire performance Su balances balances a book on his head entitled “The History of Beauty.”
About
Su Pin-Wen describes himself as a “feminism artist, dancer(?), a person of free will, flexi-vegan, and skoliosexual, who is often mistaken as male by name.” Su sees dance as a conceptual art, and not merely about beauty and aesthetics. His recent work includes a series titled “Su Pin-Wen’s Feminism, a Three- Year Project,” which he performed at the Taipei Fringe Festival. About his work, he writes that “the audience just loves to see ‘her’ naked body. That’s all.”
In the context of contemporary Taiwan, how do you view the relationship between feminism and creating?
I use feminism to inspect the body politics shared between society and the individual for my work, and this includes studying Taiwan’s gender cultures and issues related to the body. The saying “the personal is political” applies well to me. Instead of catering to fixed ideas, I’m hoping to speak for people through art, and to allow for separate spaces for thought when it comes to body consciousness and feminism. I’ve always been curious about what it would be like if Taiwan had feminist performance arts, and I’ve always had kept this question in mind as I work..
Is it taking action in performing this piece of work?
Of course it is taking action. Strictly speaking, a feminist-based work is concrete action taken after considering feminism(s) ideas; in practice and performance, the body, on a spiritual level, should serve as the ultimate companion and supporter. But we also should consider that “Girl’s Notes” becomes meaningful once the audience’s consciousness is awakened. When people begin to ponder a work and take action on their own — action in any form — then the piece has done its job. This premise has also influenced the methods I employed in creating “Girl’s Notes”.
