Freda Fiala
Warmly welcome to my page. I am a cultural researcher exploring relations between Central Europe and East Asia. My work investigates cultural and museological infrastructures and how transmodern circuits influence the politics of identity, technology, and the environment.
With an academic background in Theatre and Performance Studies as well as Chinese Studies, I have spent several years living and studying in the region, including in Hong Kong and Taiwan. During this period, my interest has turned toward the ways cultural institutions and curatorial practices narrate histories, shape publics, and negotiate cultural politics.
I am currently a postdoctoral researcher, working as part of the interdisciplinary ERC project OLFAC (Olfactormativity: Exploring the Intervening Performativity of Smell), in Austria.
Current Research Project
In November 2024, I joined the EU-funded (ERC) research project OLFAC, an interdisciplinary venture dedicated to exploring the intervening performativity of smell at the intersection of arts and politics. Led by Prof. Silke Felber (PI), our team is based at the University of Arts Linz. More about the project can be found here.
Recently published
Curated Relations: East Asian Collaborative Models in Contemporary Performance
The Taipei Performing Arts Center and the Bauhaus – The Visceral Economy of “Avant-Garde”
Curatography. The Study of Curatorial Culture
ISSUE 13 (English/Chinese). Ed. by Lin Hongjohn.
Upcoming Book
My monograph, developed from my Ph.D. dissertation, is forthcoming with Brill in early 2026.
It explores infrastructures of the experimental within Taiwan’s newly built performing arts institutions, tracing how these spaces generate cultural circuits that extend across the Asia Pacific region and reach as far as Europe.
Edited Book
The Non-fungible Body?
Performance and Digitalisation
DISTANZ Verlag Berlin (2023).
Ed. by Freda Fiala, together with
Alfred Weidinger and River Lin.
EATS Award
Freda Fiala has received the 2025 Young Scholar Award of the European Association of Taiwan Studies (EATS).
The EATS Young Scholar Award recognises outstanding original research in Taiwan Studies, based on a single-authored paper that undergoes rigorous double-blind peer review. As a finalist, Freda was also invited to present her work at the EATS Annual Conference, hosted this year by Palacký University Olomouc, held from June 20–22.
Recent Activities
○ In spring 2025, my research has travelled to a series of conferences: I presented the paper The Sensing Fold: Artistic Research in Asia Pacific Performance Ecologies at the APARN Asia Pacific Artistic Research 2025 conference in Bangkok, and spoke on Sensing Empty Stages, Crowded Studios at the European Association for Taiwan Studies (EATS) Annual Conference in Olomouc, dedicated this year to “Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific”. At the IFTR International Federation for Theatre Research Conference in Cologne, I shared a paper entitled A Geosensoric Binge: Performing “Asia” as Olfactory Method. I also attended Asia Forum’s symposium De-Imperialising Histories and Blazing Forms at the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam.
○ In February and March 2025, my ongoing work with OLFAC has taken me back to Taipei, where I spent time conducting archival research into camphor’s colonial histories. During this period, I was invited to give guest lectures at the National Taipei University of Arts (NTUA), Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, and the University of Melbourne in Naarm/Melbourne.
While in Melbourne, I attended the triennial Asia TOPA festival, which became the subject of a review I contributed to ARTFORUM, reflecting on the festival’s shifting curatorial landscape and its negotiations of regional specificity. You can read my review here.
○ Last year, my participation in the writer’s residency of Kyoto Experiment was quite formative – an initiative organised by the Delegation of the European Union to Japan and operated by the Goethe-Institut Tokyo, with support from Kyoto Experiment and the Saison Foundation. The residency culminated in several outcomes:
– a reflective piece titled Kyoto Experiment 2024: Kansai’s “fringe institution” has turned 15
– a radio feature for Ö1 Kulturjournal aired on 24 October 2024
– and a review in German for Theater der Zeit, Eine Wette auf die Zukunft. Das Kyoto Experiment Festival – die wichtigste japanische Fringe-Institution (“A Bet on the Future. Kyoto Experiment Festival – the most relevant Japanese fringe institution”), published in the January 2025 issue.
Earlier Work
○ Artist residency programme
In 2023, I established between the Yingge Ceramics Museum (新北市立鶯歌陶瓷博物館) in New Taipei City and the Academy of Ceramics Gmunden at Gmundner Keramik Manufaktur in Austria – the first museum supported residency between Taiwan and Austria, forging new artistic exchanges. The residency runs through an Open Call issued by both museums once a year. Each year, this exchange program provides two artists working with ceramics with the opportunity to work in Gmunden and Yingge for a three-month residency, fostering cross-cultural dialogue. Learn more about the Yingge–Gmunden ceramics exchange here.
○ Public events
In December 2024, I co-curated, together with Frederike Sperling, the symposium Performance besides Itself. Infra- and Parastructures of a Contemporary Liveness at Kunstraum Niederoesterreich in Vienna. Among the guests we welcomed was Annie Jael Kwan, with whom I delved into her work as an independent curator and researcher based in London and working between the UK, Europe and Asia (pictured on the right).
Earlier in July 2024, I was part of organising Curatorial Tipping Points, a symposium hosted by the Austrian Association of Curators (AAC), in collaboration with Museum der Moderne Salzburg and Salzburger Kunstverein, exploring moments of rupture and recalibration in curatorial and museum practice.
Looking ahead, as I’m expanding my research further toward museum studies and cultural analysis. I’m interested in how exhibition practices, and cultural institutions shape collective memory and global cultural flows, particularly between East Asia and Central Europe. I hope to collaborate across disciplines, exploring new ways museums and cultural infrastructures can tell stories that matter today.
Feel free to get in touch if you’d like to connect, exchange ideas, or discuss potential collaborations.