{"id":484,"date":"2014-10-14T12:28:06","date_gmt":"2014-10-14T04:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/closetoyoufestival.com\/history\/?p=484"},"modified":"2023-10-31T18:52:09","modified_gmt":"2023-10-31T10:52:09","slug":"2014-close-to-you-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/closetoyoufestival.com\/history\/en\/2014-close-to-you-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"2014 \u201cClose to You\u201d Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Since 2010, a special \u201csmall tour group\u201d has appeared in Taipei every October. The tourists are guided by a person in orange T-shirt, who would lead the group and visit the ordinary everyday spaces, and step into a house on the corner casually for a twenty-minute surprise. And that is the \u201cClose to YOU International Puppet Festival,\u201d which is known as \u201cClose to YOU Festival.\u201d<\/p>

The \u201cClose to YOU Festival\u201d is one of the few festivals in Taiwan that has a distinctive character. It focuses on puppetry, emphasizing the conversation between daily life and performing arts. It insists on the way it should be watched, which is like a secret society, and magnifies the idea of \u201cIntimacy,\u201d the intimacy with the people, the objects, the city, the space, the artists and the works\u2026.And the\u201cSpace\u201d is a medium for\u201cIntimacy.\u201d The audience therefore gets closer to the works of art and the latter gets closer to our lives, and vise versa. The\u201cClose to YOU Festival\u201dinvites works both from home and abroad that are based on \u201cobject\/puppet.\u201d Meanwhile, it is also a conceptual art festival that provokes dialogues among artists from worldwide that cross the artistic boundaries, and talk about topics like: What is \u201cpuppetry\u201d or\u201cmodern puppetry\u201d? How do we perceive? Where is the world? Where are we and where shall we go...? All in all, the definition is still obscure and everything keeps developing in an\u201corganic\u201dway. <\/p>

For the first time, our festival this year will hold a theme forum and also the premier of documentary film \u201cNear At Hand\u201d (2012, directed by WU Xuan-xuan). At the same time, there will be a series of shows called \u201cAlso for Children\u201d as well. In addition, we\u2019ve invited not only artists from the Netherlands, but also teams from Asian countries such as Hong Kong and Malaysia in order to establish a cross-country collaboration in the future. Of particular note, we will have a master workshop held by Damiet van Dalsum, a well-known puppeteer and also the director of the Internationaal Poppentheater Festival Dordrecht, the Netherlands.<\/p>

Since 2010, the festival has witnessed the conflict between the residents and local business in Shi-Da Night Market and the great boom of Yong-Kang District as well. Besides, we have collaborated with twenty-four Taiwanese artists from various fields for nearly thirty new works. Moreover, we have shared the idea of \u201cClose to YOU Festival\u201d to many festivals abroad including Macau, Korea, Israel, Denmark and Germany.<\/p>

As the fifth edition of the festival, it gives us a great opportunity to comb through ideas and re-examine our aspiration for holding the festival. It was initiated from a simple idea to\u201ctoy with puppetry,\u201d and evolved into a festival that has presented a modern concept of puppetry. As you can see in the key visual created by illustrator Inca Pan, there is such a unique group of people who perform on the stage with their individual heads. We hope that in the future, the festival would become a platform for modern puppetry in Asia and provoke more possibilities.<\/p>

Finally, I would like to give special thanks to Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture, who has been supporting the festival with such a good care and helping it to grow strong.
SHIH Pei-yu
Festival Director
October, 2014<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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