Recrafting a Representation Machine

As I’m writing, Taiwan’s representatives are in last negotiations on tariffs with Trump’s government, just like many other countries in the world. Yet both the status and existence of this functional democratic state are constantly threatened by China, who claims the sovereign state of Taiwan to be part of its territory – a claim that has become ever more absolute and militant. 

The predicament of Taiwan is historical. It started with the Resolution 2758 of the United Nation General Assembly in 1971, which transferred China’s seat at the UN from the “representatives of Chiang Kai-shek” (Republic of China, ROC) to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Although the issue of Taiwan's sovereignty is not even mentioned in the Resolution, Beijing has used it as justification to preclude Taiwan’s international participation. As most countries cannot afford to break ties with China, an official embassy of the ROC (as Taiwan’s official title) is not possible in Europe (with the only exception in Vatican), despite Taiwan’s active exchange with Europe.

This is the reality against which Stefan Kaegi’s THIS IS NOT AN EMBASSY (MADE IN TAIWAN) operates. Three protagonists—a retired ambassador, a digital activist, and a musician who is also heiress of a bubble tea empire—tell about themselves and Taiwan. The stories, memories, histories and the connections between them. Together with the audience, they take up the task to open an embassy for Taiwan on stage. Meanwhile, this “impossible embassy” has had its fleeting existence in Germany, Switzerland, Spain, and South Korea, among others.

“What I always find interesting is to investigate the relations between the United Nations, between each country,” Stefan Kaegi told me in our conversation. Whereas the former East and West Germany manage to both stay in the UN, Taiwan didn’t; and Switzerland was not keen on joining until the 1990s, although it already served as a host state for the UN a lot earlier. 

It is not the first time he, or Rimini Protokoll has probed into these what he calls “spectacles of diplomacy”. The Munich Security Conference and the World Climate Change Conference were both turned into a theatre experience by them in 2009 and 2014, where the political backroom discussions, perspectives and strategies were simulated, played upon, felt and sometimes incarnated by the audience themselves. 

Currently, he is researching into the archives of international organisations in Geneva (the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross a.o.) with Caroline Barneaud and the PhD fellows at the Centre for Digital Humanities and Multilateralism from all around the world, enabling new insights on these archives from their countries’ perspectives.

“I think it is very interesting to look at countries’ representations, how they have to perform, because it is very theater related. The whole question of representation,“ Stefan added. “We are called Rimini Protokoll not only because a protocol is a transcription of something, but it is also the word for the position in charge of organizing the representation of powers when, for example, the G7 meet, how to best represent the political situation in terms of who sits where around the table at the dinner. To read these tokens of power, the signs they produce, I think it is very interesting and it can be helpful.”

The unusual name of the work was inspired by a forerunner artistic response to such national representations on an international platform, Stefan shared. The “Taiwan Pavilion” in the Venice Biennale in 2013 was titled THIS IS NOT A TAIWAN PAVILION, a critical reaction not only to Taiwan’s exclusion from the National Pavilions,[1] but also to the nationalist framework in the Biennale, as well as in the art community in Taiwan.

In many ways, THIS IS NOT AN EMBASSY (MADE IN TAIWAN) can be seen as recrafting the representation machines at work, with stories, signs and songs. The UN is such a machine, creating an illusion of the world, but so is any embassy. How do you represent on a diplomatic level the historical complexity or the divided social opinions of a country such as Taiwan? 

I also see a kind of “multilateralism” operating in the performance, with attention to what happens when different perspectives and memories meet. It shows how the absence of international recognition of a country affects the concrete lives of the protagonists on many fronts. Their very different, at times oppositional experiences and convictions refuse to be subsumed under one identity. These contesting voices are sometimes spelled out. Other times, they are expressed in music and pictures. A motley collage.

Since the creating of this piece in 2022/2023, various forms of infiltration and intimidation of Taiwan from China continue to intensify. While China’s omnipresent power in international organisations does not seem to dwindle, its interpretation of the Resolution 2758 has been challenged by more and more nations. Representation can change reality. It changed Taiwan’s status, and it is changing now. 

But the piece is not only about Taiwan. Everywhere it goes, it tunes in to the economic and political dynamic of the place in connection to the immense influence of China today. Specific business tycoons, politicians or other decisions-makers “appear” in the performance, creating new versions in every city. Like a seismograph, detecting also the tensions and tremors in each place. What will it look like in Munich? I look forward to it.

[1] The “Taiwan Pavilion” was part of the National Pavilions since 1995, but was forced to be removed under pressure from China in 2003. Since then, the Pavilion joins the Biennale in the category of “Collateral Events” and is no longer included in the official list of the National Pavilions.

Dramaturge and translator Betty Yi-Chun Chen studied English literature and theater studies in Taipei and Bochum. From 2012 to 2022, she worked extensively with the Taipei Arts Festival. As a freelance dramaturge, she has collaborated with artists and curators from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Germany. A constant focus of her work is the friction between individual and collective narratives. She writes about contemporary practices in political theater and has translated a dozen books and plays from German and English into Chinese. In 2023, Betty Yi-Chun Chen was co-curator of the program line WHEN MEMORIES MEET at the SPIELART Festival Munich.