In the years before her internship in Europe, Yoyo KUNG had worked for 10 years in Taiwan. After graduating college, she taught at an elementary school for two years. Having studied art management in the Netherlands, most of Yoyo’s career involves project management in the field of performing arts. But her passion gradually wore away, and she was unsure of what to do next. Out of curiosity, she picked a topic that interested her, site-specific art, and applied for the first Art Manager Study Abroad Project at the National Culture and Arts Foundation. In the span of six months, she has traveled all over Europe to participate in local art festivals. For the project, she frequented renowned institutions of exhibition, spending the remainder of her travels traveling to any place that seemed interesting, in the spirit of her own “Wandering Project.”
“Those six months changed my life,” Yoyo smiles, referring to the time in 2009.
In a small town in Switzerland, Yoyo came across an opportunity outside the project, traveling to Vienna to see X Wohnungen ( the X Apartments project). Along with a friend, the pair took the subway to the immigrant sector where few tourists ventured. They checked in with the organizers, put on a bracelet, and anxiously followed the signs to enter one apartment after another with excitement, without knowing what they’ll find. Even the crowd gathered around a traffic accident made them wonder if it was all part of the performance.
In 2009, Yoyo KUNG participated in X Wohnungen, the X Apartments project, wearing bracelets and following the signs on the streets to each apartment where a performance was staged. Photo by Yoyo KUNG
Guided by the instructions in X Wohnungen, one seeks out one performance after another in different apartments, with no idea of what they will find. Photo by Yoyo KUNG
Ring the bell, walk upstairs, and enter. The staff asks to put on a pair of knee pads, and without warning, a young sister and her brother appear, asking them to kneel. Everything happens in a split second. Yoyo recalls how everything went black, and next she was on her knees being dragged along on all fours (only from the photos did she realize that a hood of an ox head and horse face had been pulled over her). When the lights came on again, she found herself in the living room, being asked by the brother-sister pair to throw the dice, which landed on “horror house.” It was a pitch-black bedroom that looks like a cave, draped in quilts from top to bottom. In the silence, a flashlight illuminates two ghastly faces that screamed out loud, whereupon Yoyo and her friend screamed back in kind, until someone suddenly lifted the quilts and announced the end of the performance.
“I felt quite lucky to have met children on my first stop, starting out from a place where I had cast aside my apprehension and sense of dignity…” Yoyo talked excitedly, her words overflowing with detailed depictions as if it was yesterday. After the visit to the first apartment, before she could process it all, she says that “a switch had been flipped” which prompted her to see six more performances that evening. Listening to interview tapes about religions, attending a “secret service” of intimate chats with artists, and being in a room where footsteps keep coming from upstairs…. These are completely alien environments in which everyday life becomes outright shocking phenomena, with perplexing performances which became more intriguing as you try to take it in. “I was thinking, what was it exactly? It was different from any theater I knew or had participated in, yet more interesting.”
This trip had become a turning point for Yoyo’s next adventure. After returning to Taiwan, Prototype Paradise was established. Although it’s set up as a contemporary performing arts group, in fact it introduces and plans all kinds of new performance projects where both artists and non-artists can come together and collaborate. It’s like an extension of the profound experiences from that night in Europe. Over the years, through many attempts to explore social frameworks through a range of artistic action, what hasn’t changed is her curiosity towards people and the world, always holding on to the excitement of the moment.
“Since I had not experienced anything like it in Taiwan, I would create it myself.” Following the conversation with her friend Juan CHIN, Prototype Paradise was conceptualized, and the title registered on a whim. Yoyo KUNG remembers KU Hsin-Yi as the friend who chose the name, which embodies the concept of creating an art project that “interacts with reality” in a way that had never been attempted before. Taking theater as an example, one does not write a script behind closed doors, but rather allows it to develop organically in the streets. Everything can be an undefined “prototype”. The “paradise” part is about maintaining a sense of happiness and playfulness.
At the time, performance art in Taiwan was centered around the spatial element, inspired by geographical or physical properties as the dancer’s body moves in response to the landscape. The creator responds to the environmental context through visual media, unlike what Yoyo saw in Vienna. Each performance in X Wohnungen was the result of co-creation between the artist and the apartment owner, who get together to understand, consider, and carry out the creative process and present a cross section of the place. Though curator Matthias LILIENTHAL comes from theater, most of the performances in X Wohnungen are hard to define. The performances are interconnected with everyday life and reality itself is the exhibit, the anthropomorphic performers.
The ”site” in “site-specific” is what intrigues Yoyo, representing the physical “place”: what Prototype Paradise wants is to discover why such a “site” exists.
In 2012, Prototype Paradise was formed. Each year, Yoyo seeks out suitable partners to work with. The first event, “Home Visits by Scooters” is an internal trial by the team (the website still labels the project as “beta”). As the name suggests, the performance included shuttling audiences between the three places in the district of Xindian on scooters.
Back then, Yoyo chose one of her friend’s homes as the performance site and listened to her friend’s father retelling the stories of his youth. A few years later, her friend told her that his father had been diagnosed with dementia, but the memory of the visit by a group of young participants kept his father in a good mood for a long time. “On the one hand, we seem to have intervened in reality, on the other hand, we let reality intervene in us. The audience and the scene of participation cross into each other.” Looking back years later, she admits she better understands the true meaning of “interacting with reality”: if we consider the father and son as performers, then our participation and interaction as audiences also affect their real lives.
Prototype Paradise’s performance of 2012 “Home Visits by Scooters” took place at AN Yuan-Liang’s house, in which he and his father participated. Photo by FU Yu-Hui
Also in 2012, the public event series, Workshops & Demo Performances, also came to define Prototype Paradise’s development. The workshop invited artists including Gustavo CIRÍACO of Brazil, whom Yoyo met in Europe, and his partner, Austrian dance artist Andrea SONNBERGER. Over a dozen participants walked on the streets, bound by an oversized elastic band. There were no rules or techniques, only a request to not talk or take pictures.
“Participants who came to see the performance were instead tied together with an elastic band, looked upon curiously by people on the streets. They fully realize that they have become the subject of the gaze.” Moving around near the MRT Zhishan Station of Taipei, crossing streets and slipping into narrow alleyways like a giant amoeba, they look towards the Guandu Plain and filthy gutters. The two artists within the group act in perfect synchronicity, sometimes turning around, gesturing, or standing on a street corner to direct others’ gaze. Yoyo describes the duo as “anthropologist-archeologists who lead participants on a survey of the city using their bodies.” The entire experience is determined by the participants, their active or passive actions within the elastic band, as well as the kinds of people they meet on the streets. One time they met a curious head of an urban village who kept asking questions without getting a reply (since no one in the group is allowed to speak), until he finally called the cops, in a precious moment that no money can buy. The project is called “Here Whilst We Walk.” In Yoyo’s eyes, it’s the quintessential participatory performance and the result of experience gleaned from numerous art residencies. It adopts a format that appears simplistic but is calculated and effective.
Indeed, a question that keeps getting asked, as in the experience in Vienna and throughout Prototype Paradise’s existence, is what kind of performance this is, and how it can be categorized? It’s not dance or theater, but summed up as “performances.” Or perhaps, it’s a framework of “performance in everyday life” in which people interact and participate with others in physical space. “Participation” and “physical space” have since become the two basic elements of Prototype Paradise.
Prototype Paradise connects people and environments across physical contexts through “performances” in the broader sense of the word, and interesting events ensue. But why choose performance as the medium? “People are familiar with theater, where professional actors enact fictional scenes. Here it’s not about the performer, but what occurs in a situation.” Yoyo explains, “I don’t use the term “immersive,” since what we respond to or perform only happens in a particular place and nowhere elsewhere.”
The goal is to cross into the everyday and enter real life. Rather than “taking samples,” what Prototype Paradise does is more like “creating disturbances.”
In 2015’s “Traveling Around Taipei with Garbage Trucks,” Prototype Paradise works alongside trash collection crew on their daily run, traveling the same routes and conducting various performances and interactions in the streets. The performance was planned in detail, since what happens in real-life scenarios must account for random and unexpected occurrences and incorporate it into the work. The most challenging was the ethical aspects: as the creative party, they must ensure they do not interfere with the trash collection work, which may incur complaints. Therefore, the team must increase their communication effort and institute measures so that everything happens with mutual understanding.
Yoyo says one question that always gets asked in community engagement is its ability to change the status quo. Indeed, it’s hard for art projects to create immediate and recognizable change, but their processes are filled with small happenings which indicates “things may be changing.” For example, one of the project units was called the “Story Bus,” a special exhibition tour by senior trash collection workers who share their unique experiences on the job. In the beginning, the senior worker thought no one was interested in his stories and was apprehensive about sharing the story. But working closely with the sanitation workers in this unit, artist Corinne HSIAO found that the second and third performances became much more organized, giving a sense of a considered response. “Small changes happen in the process, but at least he’s willing to spend the time to organize and share his work, which they hadn’t thought to do before. She says that “this alone makes the process meaningful.”
For Prototype Paradise, besides project partners, the trash collection crew are also co-creators. Passers-by and people taking out the trash become the third parties. Yoyo describes these “non-professionals” as “experts of everyday life”, using the term created by the German theater collective Rimini Protokoll, that is, people who don’t practice or specialize in artistic creation and performance, but are only brought on as part of the project theme. Prototype Paradise’s aim is not to alter their lives, but rather to “provide an opportunity to try new things and see familiar objects in a new light.”
“I quite often say to the creators and non-professionals we invite to ‘try something that’s never done before’.” That makes them wonder why they want to do it, how is it meaningful, or if it’s worth the effort. I’ll tell them ‘what we shall do’ will be determined through group discussions.” She says with a laugh that this makes everyone feel quite uneasy, but usually they’re willing to try. “I think that most non-professionals have a ‘playful side’ to them, and though we have different goals, our work is to bring out the adventurous side in them.
In the first 10 years of Prototype Paradise, some of their annual projects are commissioned works with a fixed budget, while others seek funding through Yoyo’s proposals and begin with no clear amount. As a creator and the manager, what drives her internally to push forward?
“It seems to require an intense interest in others and the world,” Yoyo says. She also wonders how far this can take her, but it indeed has brought a lot of fun. Art projects became her excuse for extensive inquiry, taking her to new places, people, and lifestyles. As for the real-life challenges in daily operations, it usually involves staying within the budget, operating as the money allows. Since the performances do not take in ticket sales, promotion becomes part of the content, changing with the way people receive information, and is liberated from the pressures of the box office.
In 2021, Prototype Paradise held Your Future Now at Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-LAB). Yoyo adopts British artist Joshua SOFAER’s original concept to collectively conceive the public participatory performance. The project invites professionals from non-artist backgrounds to act as “life prognosticators,” offering one-on-one consultations with the audience. The performance space becomes an intimate place that also allows others to watch from a distance.
Of the many prognosticators, an elderly human resources and career planning consultant was able to talk to an entirely different clientele, exposing him to a kind of culture shock, since many attendees were of the arts and culture backgrounds. “He believed that one should be ambitious in life, and works steadily to realize it,” Yoyo analyzes the analysis. “We hear many people saying they’re dissatisfied with their work, but don’t know what to do about it. Those who actually go through with changing jobs are few, and that prognosticator suddenly learnt that other ways of life are possible.”
Perhaps this analysis indirectly reveals a fundamental predicament of arts and culture professionals. Her smile punctuates the interview, as if in footnote of her many years of traveling in a paradisical playground. “That’s why I say, many interesting things occur in the process.”
Scene of Prototype Paradise’s performance Your Future Now.Photo by LIN Yu-Chuan © C-LAB
As we ended our interview at C-LAB and walked towards the exit, strange reverberations can be heard from an art installation from afar, filling the large space where Your Future Now had taken place over a year ago. Out of curiosity, I asked Yoyo to go back further in the past, prognosticating an alternate future of herself. “What would you be doing if you hadn’t gone to that exhibition of 2009 in Vienna?”
“Perhaps I would be some kind of art manager working at an institution, doing art administration work.” Her reply was quick, pausing to speak in a serious tone, “Then I would be very well paid. But not as happy as I am now.”
