FATHER’S VIDEOTAPES

European Premiere

FATHER’S VIDEOTAPES is the result of a more than decades-long exploration undertaken by Yang Teng-Chi aka Manbo Key, centred on sexuality, queerness, and the relationship with his own father. He discovered selfie videos documenting the sex life and voyages of his father in the 1990s. At this point in time, Manbo Key learned of his father’s sexual orientation, which led to a new understanding of the ‘father’ role.

In 2019, Manbo Key conceived a multimedia exhibition consisting of photographs, videos, and objects for the first time, occupying himself with these new findings and their influence on the family relations. He complemented them with Taipei queer underground scene perspectives in 2021 before, in 2022, changing the viewpoint by looking for ways in which his family would be able to identify and connect with him as a queer person.

During the SPIELART Theatre Festival, there will be an exhibition that correlates aspects of those three previous projects: Through the arrangement of objects from different time periods, an intergenerational dialogue ensues. Manbo Key enters into an intimate conversation with his father while simultaneously opening the discourse to the observers and the public. A dialogue in the tension between family and sexuality, about freedom, about the search for and the creation of identities.