Programme:
14:00 – 14:15 | Welcome and introduction
Corrado Neri, Director, CEFC Taipei
14:15 – 15:15 | Featured talk · Chen Qiufan
How Can We Reimagine the Future?
Science fiction writer
15:15 – 16:00 | Lee Mei-chun
Living at the Cyborg Frontline: Drones, Cables, and Everyday Futures
16:00 – 16:15 | Coffee break
16:15 – 17:00 | Featured talk · Yi Kuo and Poshan Wu
Ignorance Online — Future Ritual work-in-progress presentation
Yi Kuo, director and writer; Poshan Wu, producer
17:00 – 17:45 | Gwennaël Gaffric
What Becomes of Yesterday’s Futures?
Theme Parks and the Afterlives of Progress in Chinese and Taiwanese Fiction
About the artists and project:
Chen Qiufan — Chen Qiufan (Stanley Chan) is a science fiction writer, translator, scholar, curator and futurist. His novel Waste Tide won France’s Prix Imaginales and has been translated into more than twenty languages. AI 2041, co-authored with Kai-Fu Lee, was named a Handelsblatt Best Business Book, and his latest novel Ocean Break (2025) was shortlisted for China Good Books. His honours include the Mao Dun Literature Award for New Writers, the Chinese Nebula Award and the Galaxy Award. He is Assistant Professor at the School of Arts and Social Sciences, Hong Kong Metropolitan University, and has been a Visiting Scholar at Yale University and a Berggruen Fellow at Peking University. He serves as President of the World Chinese Science Fiction Association. His cross-disciplinary practice includes research on generative AI in creative writing education, along with creative work across film, animation, VR and immersive theatre.
Yi Kuo — the artist behind NONTECH, works across XR theatre and audiovisual performance. With producer Poshan Wu, he will present the current stage of Ignorance Online, a series of live cinema and VR works created with AI and game engines that imagines possible futures through the lens of Data-Animism.
Poshan Wu — Poshan Wu is an interdisciplinary producer whose focus sits at the intersection of extended reality (XR/VR), digital media art, and contemporary performance. The works he produces usually investigate virtual embodiment and the rearticulation of theatrical boundaries through technologically mediated perception.
Gwennaël Gaffric — Gwennaël Gaffric is Professor of Chinese Studies at Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University and a scholar and literary translator specializing in modern and contemporary Sinophone literature. His research focuses on Chinese and Taiwanese science fiction, ecocriticism, translation and transnational cultural circulation. He has published articles and books on Liu Cixin, Wu Ming-yi, Taiwanese literature, and Sinofuturism. As a translator, he has introduced numerous Chinese and Taiwanese writers to French readers in France, including Liu Cixin, Chen Qiufan, Wu Ming-yi, Chi Ta-wei or Xia Jia. He is also the directof of the Taiwan Fiction series at L’Asiathèque.
Lee Mei-chun — Meichun Lee is a digital anthropologist whose work explores the intersections of technology and politics, including civic tech, hacker culture, data politics, disinformation, and posthuman warfare. She has been a long-term participant and researcher of g0v, Taiwan’s civic tech community, and is the author of The NOBODY Movement. Her recent research extends to artificial intelligence, technology governance, and geopolitics. She also founded the Cyborg Resilience Co-lab (CRC), which brings together research, technical experimentation, and artistic practice to explore the intersections of technology, warfare, and civil society. She is currently Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, and Vice President of the Research Institute for Democracy, Society, and Emerging Technology (DSET).