Asian avant-garde?
The problems with the festival's direction were often closely tied to changes in the city government. Every time a new staff took over, work had to start afresh, so that no clear style could emerge.
Huang notes that the Taipei Arts Festival was born in 1998, during Luo Wenjia's tenure as head of the Taipei City Department of Information. Luo's aim was to integrate the extant theater, music, and traditional-arts festivals into a larger arts festival with a distinctively Taipei flavor. The government then commissioned private organizations to organize the festival. Under the direction of Serina Chen, head of Taipei Arts International Association, the early festivals focused on the arts, performances, and parent-child education.
In 2000, during Lung Ying-tai's tenure as the first head of the Taipei City Department of Cultural Affairs (then known as the Cultural Affairs Bureau), the city government began using competitive tenders to select the festival's organizer. During this period, the festival emphasized community participation and local color. Utilizing themes that included "100 Years of Taiwanese Ballads," "Rediscovering Old Places," "The Arts, Temple Fairs, the Contemporary," the festival incorporated large free outdoor events and performances by local troupes.
Following poet Liao Hsien-hao's appointment to head the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA), the festival in 2005 switched its orientation to Asia's avant-garde. It used new ideas to bring new life to tradition and extended invitations to greater numbers of professional performance troupes, both local and international. With Li Li-heng, who has deep roots in the theater, overseeing three consecutive festivals, it began to establish the relationship to the Asian avant-garde for which most people now know it.
To simplify the bidding process, the organizers combined content and marketing into a single bid, which gave media conglomerates an edge over professional arts management companies. The conglomerates' broadcast and print resources put them in a position to publicize the festival themselves, which the evaluation committees viewed as a positive. As a result, Era Communications, TTV, China Times, and Eastern Television all took a turn managing the event.
The festival's sponsorship model underwent a key change when Lee Yong-ping took over as head of the DCA in 2007. Borrowing from successful overseas festivals, Lee decided that beginning in 2008, the festival would be sponsored and supported by the DCA and managed by the Taipei Culture Foundation. This change finally enabled the festival to establish a long-term management team and engage in long-term planning.
(photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang)