I am always wary of people trying to make overlarge statements, and this is what Malaysian-Chinese artist H.H. Lim
One of the first warning signs that Lim's trying to say too much comes in an essay that explains the installation for those who don't "get it," which I'd assume is just about everybody. It says that through this show, Lim intends to "present his views on the world change for the latest year," which included a number of "drastic events, such as New York's 911 tragedy, [the] Israeli war, [the] EU's impact on economics, and natural disasters brought by global climate changes."
A couple of logical nonsequiturs follow, like that since these are problems that "we can only `see' but cannot `speak,'" sign language will be used to specially "interpret" these events (this is a fallacy because sign language expresses thoughts just as any other language does).
To make a quick note of what Lim has done for the exhibition: he has painted the gallery's walls burgundy and on top of that ground has traced textbook style illustrations of generic figures performing sign language in thin, white outlines. There are also several plaques, some picture-sized and hanging on the wall and two two-meters tall and leaning against it. The plaques are embossed with words -- some English and some Italian -- that are printed in reverse so that they could be viewed properly with a mirror.
In all of this language play, Lim seems to be batting at concepts -- much like a blindfolded person bats at a pinata -- from that tirelessly trendy body of thought, post-structural French literary criticism. Specifically, he's bobbling with a paradox of language that goes: the ultimate goal of language is to communicate, but unfortunately, language is an ultimately imperfect tool for communication. So -- and this is what I think he's trying to say -- we have seen a year of extraordinary and calamitous change, but the events themselves were ineffable, and no language we have can adequately express what it means to have seen or experienced them.
But to express that, what he does is put a line drawing of a tank on a wall to represent all the tragedy in all of last year's wars. It is nothing less than incredibly and grossly inadequate. So is juxtaposing against the tank a plaque bearing the word "vedere" (Italian for "to see") and a diagram of how to make the equivalent sign in sign language, all of which is supposed to tell you that seeing these events is the only way of truly understanding them. Basically, it looks like Lim has some big ideas, but he doesn't know how to get them across. So in the end Speechless doesn't say much.
IT Park is located at 2F, 41 Yitung St., Taipei. The exhibit runs through Sept. 28.
From the last quarter of 2001, research shows that real housing prices nearly tripled (before a 2012 law to enforce housing price registration, researchers tracked a few large real estate firms to estimate housing price behavior). Incomes have not kept pace, though this has not yet led to defaults. Instead, an increasing chunk of household income goes to mortgage payments. This suggests that even if incomes grow, the mortgage squeeze will still make voters feel like their paychecks won’t stretch to cover expenses. The housing price rises in the last two decades are now driving higher rents. The rental market
July 21 to July 27 If the “Taiwan Independence Association” (TIA) incident had happened four years earlier, it probably wouldn’t have caused much of an uproar. But the arrest of four young suspected independence activists in the early hours of May 9, 1991, sparked outrage, with many denouncing it as a return to the White Terror — a time when anyone could be detained for suspected seditious activity. Not only had martial law been lifted in 1987, just days earlier on May 1, the government had abolished the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of National Mobilization for Suppression of the Communist
When life gives you trees, make paper. That was one of the first thoughts to cross my mind as I explored what’s now called Chung Hsing Cultural and Creative Park (中興文化創意園區, CHCCP) in Yilan County’s Wujie Township (五結). Northeast Taiwan boasts an abundance of forest resources. Yilan County is home to both Taipingshan National Forest Recreation Area (太平山國家森林遊樂區) — by far the largest reserve of its kind in the country — and Makauy Ecological Park (馬告生態園區, see “Towering trees and a tranquil lake” in the May 13, 2022 edition of this newspaper). So it was inevitable that industrial-scale paper making would
Hualien lawmaker Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) is the prime target of the recall campaigns. They want to bring him and everything he represents crashing down. This is an existential test for Fu and a critical symbolic test for the campaigners. It is also a crucial test for both the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a personal one for party Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫). Why is Fu such a lightning rod? LOCAL LORD At the dawn of the 2020s, Fu, running as an independent candidate, beat incumbent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and a KMT candidate to return to the legislature representing
RSS