Asian Reflection: Globalization and the Configuration of Aesthetic Mobilities, 1970s~(3/3)

This three-year project proposes to examine, from the perspective of cultural globalization, the rising concept of ‘international arts festivals in Asia” since the 1970s until today. Applying the methods of documents investigation, field research and big data mining, I will analyze how the newly emerged modern Asian arts festivals had imagined and reflected upon the idea of “world theatre” in the last four decades? Had their reflection configured an Asian version of modern theatre aesthetic plate? How had this aesthetic plate shifted and/or been re-configured?The project will be divided into three parts. The first part charts the path of the first Asian modern arts festivals investigating the compositions of then the three art pillars in Asia, i.e., Hong Kong Arts Festival (1973~), Singapore Arts Festival (1977~2012) and New Aspect Arts Festival (1980~2008, Taiwan). I will then examine the two decades of the post cold-war era, exploring the newly rise little theatre movement in the pan-Asian ring, and their imagination of the “world avant-garde”. Lastly, the digital era beginning in 2000 until today seems to indicate an even faster transmission of theatre aesthetics across the world, but it also witnesses how the 2008 global economic crisis transforms Asia into the core market of world theatre overnight, re-configuring Asian’s reflections upon world theatre. The ultimate objectives of the project is to reconsider the strategy of theatre historiography and to reexamine how the modern concept of arts festival had staged the transmission of aesthetic ideas across the world, and reflections upon one’s identity in the seemingly monolithic global cultural imaginations.