Join us at White Bay Power Station for a new performance created with the women artists at Iloilo City District Jail Female Dormitory in Iloilo City (IDJFD), the Phillippines. This work, made through the groundbreaking Super Inday Art; an arts-based psychosocial support dedicated to working with Persons Deprived of Liberty (PDL), and produced and co-created with Rosa Zerrudo will combine verbatim theatre, video work, and live streaming technology to allow the women of Iloilo City District Jail to tell their own stories.
The work exists as part of exhibiting artist Chen Chieh-jen’s Shared Stage Project.
This project, continuing Chieh-jen’s long tradition of working with non-professional performers, from unemployed and underemployed people, gig economy workers, factory workers and unhoused people, is inspired by the traditional Taiwanese workers theatre known as a “”Lo-deh sao””. In the off-seasons of agricultural-era Fujian, Minnan and Taiwan, farmers would clear a small area of ground in the village, or beneath a tree, to perform for their fellow townspeople.
As part of this project, three distinct performance collectives, each with a focus on socially engaged and community practice, will activate the installation at various times throughout the Biennale. And at the root of the work is the enduring urgency of self-determined storytelling, and creating space for traditionally disenfranchised people to make their voice heard.
