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Short abstract:

Taiwan STS Association teamed with the Taipei Fine Art Museum for 5 Negotiation Theaters of social-technoscience cases in the 2020 Taipei Biennial. A documentary and a book are now available. The work has inspired similar productions in middle school classrooms to college and civil groups.

Long abstract:

The 2020 Taipei Biennial themed "You and I Don't Live on the Same Planet" set up "New Diplomatic Encounters" public workshops, curated by Eva Lin with Bruno Latour and Martin Guinard. Taiwan STS Association teamed up and provided five Negotiation Theater programs for technoscience-laden cases. STS scholars derived from their research, teaching experience, and public services to implement programs about offshore wind power, climate footprint, reproduction, plasticizer scandal, and nuclear waste. The preparation and final "performance" were carefully integrated with related courses from 5 universities for the Fall term of 2020, and more than 120 students were human and non-human "actors" and "negotiators." More than 700 exhibition visitors and real-life roles mingled with the "actors," where they spoke up their opinions, raised questions, and voted to steer the direction of the theaters. The Negotiation Theater originated as "A political, diplomatic, scientific, pedagogical and artistic experiment" at Nanterre-Amandiers in May 2015, before COP21 in Paris. Bruno Latour initiated the event, and Philippe Quesne implemented it with SPEAP. The Taiwan version involved students from a broader range of disciplines and incorporated longer preparation processes, shorter performances, diverse simulated "events," and more format of audience involvement. A documentary (on YouTube subtitled in English) and a book (in Mandarin) are available detailing the process of the initialization and agenda setting of the projects, preparation of coursework, challenges, and shortcomings of the curation. The work has inspired similar productions in middle school classrooms to college and civil groups.