HOME AWAY FROM HOME – MUNICH

The installation tells the stories of four migrants of Vietnamese origin, two of them are living in Germany and two in Taiwan. Selected elements of the stage setting of the piece give an impression of the Taiwanese workers housing that Bùi Văn Quý tells his story in, a school table shows a part of the learning environment that Võ Thuý created in her language school in Essen. A restaurant table invites us to listen to Phan Mỹ Nương's recollections of her marriage arrangement to Taiwan and Phạm Minh Đức Pham Minh Duc takes us back to his childhood in the East German province.

Taiwan is among the main destinations of Vietnamese labour migrants. 185,000 people with Vietnamese origins are currently living in Germany, too. In collaboration with her Vietnamese colleague Thanh Phuong Ngo and stage designer Cheng Ting Chen, Taiwan-born choreographer Fang Yun Lo retraced the dimensions of global labour migration as well as the intercultural realities of Vietnamese labour migrants. During their two-year research, they have been conducting more than 100 interviews with people of Vietnamese descent, at their workplaces, in shops, in takeaways or stores, in Taiwan and Germany, starting in 2019. The result is a touching, polyphonic voyage through the frequently invisible diasporic communities. They raise questions of home, identity, and happiness, but also of strife and structural violence.