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Prior to The First International Deleuze Studies in Asia Conference, there will be a five-day Deleuze Camp, running from May 25-29, 2013. The instructors listed below will offer seven seminars, each of which contain four sessions, three lasting for 80 minutes, and one, 60 minutes. This will be an intense and thought-provoking activity. As spaces are limited, registrations will be accepted on a first-come first-serve basis. Applications should include a short bio and a brief statement of one's research interests in Deleuze. The camp registration fee is NT$6752 (about US$225).
Instructors at the Deleuze Camp:
Jeffrey A. Bell (Southeastern Louisiana University, U.S.A.)
Ronald Bogue (University of Georgia, U.S.A.)
Ian Buchanan (University of Wollongong, Australia)
Gregg Lambert (Syracuse University, U.S.A.)
Patricia Pisters (University of Amsterdam, Holland)
Anne Sauvagnargues (Paris West University Nanterre, France)
Kailin Yang (Taipei National University of the Arts, Taiwan)
Camp Welcome Dinner:
The reception of the Deleuze Camp will be held at Badasan Aboriginal Restaurant (see Chinese webpage here) in the evening on May 25, the first day of the Camp. Combining driftwood, sculpture and art into its warm-colored décor, Badasan offers aboriginal cuisines rarely found in Taipei as well as vigorous live performances by local aboriginal singers. You will enjoy traditional dishes from Puyuma and Paiwan tribes as well as the chef’s “creative assemblages”—fusion dishes that reinterpret Taiwanese cuisine from a distinctive aboriginal perspective. You will taste the Badasan specialty, Roasted Chicken, as well as various dishes seasoned with mountain litsea (“ma-gao,” in Atayal language), a special spice used in aboriginal cuisines. Millet wine, central in aboriginal culture about hospitality and friendship, will also be served on each table as a welcome to all the participants to our Camp in Tamkang. A special vegetarian table will be available for the vegans. The reception will be free to every member of the camp.
Film Screenings
We picked two Taiwanese documentaries and one Taiwanese feature film that best embody the spirit of Creative Assemblages, theme of the Deleuze Studies in Asia conference this year. The documentaries and film will be presented in Mandarin with English subtitles.
Viva Tonal—The Dance Age (2003, 104 min.)
Directed by Chien Wei-ssu and Kuo Chen-ti
- Location: Chueh-sheng MemorialBuilding, 5th Floor, Room 501
- Time: May 26 (Sun.) 07:30~09:15 PM
“I’m a cultured woman, traveling about footloose and fancy-free.” So begins a lilting tune from Taiwan’s Dance Age of the 1920s and 1930s, a paradoxical time when the island’s occupation by Japan also brought about a youth culture and a measure of artistic freedom. Women smoked cigarettes, love scandals were rife, and risque Taiwanese pop was born. “Viva Tonal” explores this time through the conduit of Li Keun-cheng, a Taipei oldies deejay with an obsessive passion for ’30s music. Li takes the viewer on a voyage of discovery to meet surviving singers, composers, and record aficionados of the era. This lively historical documentary mixes engaging interviews with catchy songs, hauntingly deteriorated period footage, and reenactments of the great unrequited romance between the lovely chanteuse Sun Sun and her composer. Most poignant are moments when past and present intersect: elderly musicians revisiting the coffee shops of their youth and a techno deejay practicing ’30s dance moves following the choreography chart from a record cover.
Let the Wind Carry Me (2009, 88 min.)
Directed by Chiang Hsiu-chiung and Kwan Pun-leung
- Location: Chueh-sheng MemorialBuilding, 5th Floor, Room 501
- Time: May 27 (Mon.) 07:30~09:00 PM
What can be retained with photography? Where is the cinema leading us? Is there meaning to life after all? Mark Lee, Taiwan-born cinematographer and director of photography for Hou Hsiao-hsien, goes on the road and tries to answer these questions at a pace of 24 frames per second. The documentary follows his swinging footsteps over three years in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and Europe. Interviews with more than 20 associates and observers shed light on Lee''s work over 30 years to discover the passion he gave to Taiwanese cinema.
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2004, 83 min.)
Directed by Tsai Ming-Liang
- Location: Chueh-sheng MemorialBuilding, 5th Floor, Room 501
- Time: May 28 (Tue.) 07:30~08:55 PM
A Japanese tourist takes refuge inside a run-down movie theater and discovers that some of its patrons may actually be ghostly residents. The subject of cinema, of the mix of loneliness and connection that is part of being in a movie audience, is the concern of this sad, beautiful, minimalist composition by Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang. The action takes place inside a Taipei movie theater operated by a lonely clubfooted woman (Shiang-Chyi Chen) whose slow steps echo through the empty corridors and aisles, as if measuring out the feet of celluloid that make up the film itself. When a character actually speaks, the film is half over, and his exclamation that the theater is "haunted" echoes uneasily through the rest of the film, causing one to wonder just who is a ghost and who isn't. A lonely visitor to the theater (Kiyonobu Mitamura) acts pretty real. But then there are characters who seem to come out of nowhere to sit next to him and bother him with their loud eating. The film on the theater screen is the 1966 King Hu martial arts classic, Dragon Inn, and one of that film's original actors is even in the theater, with his grandson. While not a lot seems to happen, Tsai's film is never dull thanks to the playful sense of sound and stunning cinematography. In chronicling the impermanence of life, and of film itself, this film becomes post-modern as well as beautiful, and—rare for an art film of this sort—accessible and engaging even to the casual movie lover.
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