Li Shang-Chiao, a graduate student of TNUA's International Master of the Arts Program in Cultural and Creative Industries (IMCCI), spent 14 weeks at "New Graduate-Level Educational Format in the Arts based in Hong Kong: Transcultural Collaboration," an international exchange program arranged by the Zurich University of the Arts last summer.

Li recounted how she traveled to the first stop of the program – the Zurich University of the Arts – to meet her fellow participants, and how it was a great challenge for the organizer to manage a program whose participants came from such diverse cultural and academic backgrounds.

Li was among 23 participants from Japan, Germany, Romania, Austria, Switzerland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China in the program. There were students of music, new media, theatre arts, dance, fine arts, art management, education and psychology.

Li said her first "cultural shock" came during a session where all students were asked to introduce themselves to one another.  While the students from Asia prepared Powerpoint introductions, their European classmates were arranged performances or interactive activities for the occasion.  

For example, an action art student asked the classmates and professors to pose as figures in Da Vinci's "The Last Supper." Another student staged an improvised performance mixing lines from "Macbeth" with DJ sound effects.

Li said it really attested to the difference of education in the East and West.

After spending two weeks in Zurich, they went on to Hong Kong for the rest of the program.

The program concluded with works presented by the students. Li and some of her classmates jointly presented a 20-minute interactive play, "The Net(t)."