"Cloning Taiwan" (
To visualize the scenario, Chen filled the floor of the studio with water and scattered a dozen satellite photos of Taiwan, illuminated by florescent lights, at the bottom of this imaginary sea, Chen's ideal place to clone Taiwan.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
Like a freshwater fishery, these small Taiwans lie motionless, as if incubating. In the background, viewers hear the buzzing of modem noise being played again and again. It seems that these clones are repeatedly trying to link up with the rest of the world.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
At the same time, a TV placed in mid-air shows the images shot from a fast-moving motorcycle and from a ship, dispersed with scenes of several people having a big meal on a makeshift table by the roadside. The same image is projected onto the water surface.
A recurring theme in the film is that of moving on, or fleeing, which seems to be the fastest and most direct way to solve the unpleasantness that many Taiwanese feel about living on their island.
"We can make many clones of Taiwan and let people immigrate there and build up new societies," Chen said in an interview.
For him, the Dec. 1 election took the unpleasantness to an unbearable level. "Every time I turned on the TV, there were campaign commercials and endless tirades from candidates. It was inescapable," he said.
He also found that the divided ideologies of the candidates, each of whom claimed to represent mainstream public opinion, made it even more urgent to clone the nation, so that each political party can have a Taiwan for itself.
The film also contains a section of animation showing many oversized Taiwans sprouting up on the world map, some connecting the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean, some reaching into the sea from the tip of Spain, and some overlapping Taiwan to enlarge it.
The ghostly appearance of enlarged Taiwans prompts viewers to reflect on what life in Taiwan would be were the island located in a different continent or were a continent unto itself.
The question as to whether nations besides Gambia, Nicaragua and other impoverished diplomatic allies would be happy with a Taiwan-shaped appendix is conveniently ignored.
"If there's to be any connection between art and society, artists have to play an active part in suggesting solutions to social problems," Chen said.
That's why he plans to soon set up a "Cloning Taiwan" Web site, where everyone will be welcome to share their ideas on how to clone the country.
The work's seemingly unrealistic and sometimes irrelevant stand on Taiwan's future can be quite ironic, unless you share Chen's great confidence in cloning technology.
Whether one believes in his seemingly far-fetched fantasy or not, it's a work worth not just seeing, but feeling as well.
The sensation one feels standing in the pitch-dark studio lit only by pictures of Taiwan clones can almost make one believe that there will be many more Taiwans to come and each will be a brave new world.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located