The international exhibition of the Taipei Biennial: Great Theatre of the World is currently on view at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum until March 2, 2003. Using the theme of the world as a theatre allows for some reflections for the audience on how we are all actors in this game of life.
One dynamic work that stands out from the rest is the film Lingchi -- Echoes of a Historical Photograph by Taiwanese artist Chen Chieh-jen (陳界仁) who combines a fictive imagining of a real historical event with the current tragedy of local Taiwanese laborers.
Shot using 16mm film and transferred to DVD, the silent black and white movie (approximately 20 minutes long) is beamed onto large screens with three projectors, thus creating an effect that is powerful, mystical, majestic and monumental. At times all three projections are in sync, and at other times the screens show three different images.
COURTESY OF CHEN CHEH-JEH
The film is based on the famous 1905 photograph of a man being punished the Manchu way, by being cut into pieces for the crime of murder. His ecstatic expression is attributed to opium, which was administered to prolong the torture. Philosopher Georges Bataille discussed this photo extensively in his book The Tears of Eros and noted the correlations between the beauty of religious eroticism, divine ecstasy and the shocking horror of cruel torture.
Chen's cinematic close-ups of the victim's face bring to mind images of blissful euphoria, homoeroticism, and religious crucifixion. Slow motion close-ups of a hand holding a knife, the grim expressions of the crowd of ponytailed bystanders, blood dripping down the crowd's legs and flowing into the ground are eerie, but surprisingly not as violent as what one might expect considering Chen's topic. The film is oddly un-sadistic, even though the content is of death by dismemberment.
Interspliced with the staged reenactment of the torture scene are scenes where the camera slowly pans above a crowd of silent women. These women are factory workers in Taoyuan, and due to various tragic events such as occupational hazards or unemployment, they no longer are able to work. Chen links these contemporary women to the 1905 victim. Due to the women's circumstances, which are often beyond their control, they are also suffering a long torture, but without any bliss.
Chen came to international prominence with his large computer images of similar torture scenes. However, this film is a departure from those past works. By linking the historical with the contemporary social and economic situation in Taiwan, Chen has created an extremely powerful work that links the past with the present, the fictive with the documentary. He is also specific to the local situation, while remaining universal.
One irritating drawback to viewing Lingchi is the encroaching cacophony of sounds from other artists' installations, which dramatically shatters the silence of this overwhelmingly poetic work. However, this is not a reason to avoid seeing the work. It's a cinematic experience worth remembering.
In the mainstream view, the Philippines should be worried that a conflict over Taiwan between the superpowers will drag in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr observed in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last year, “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.” Such sentiments are widespread. Few seem to have imagined the opposite: that a gray zone incursion of People’s Republic of China (PRC) ships into the Philippines’ waters could trigger a conflict that drags in Taiwan. Fewer
March 18 to March 24 Yasushi Noro knew that it was not the right time to scale Hehuan Mountain (合歡). It was March 1913 and the weather was still bitingly cold at high altitudes. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait, either. Launched in 1910, the Japanese colonial government’s “five year plan to govern the savages” was going well. After numerous bloody battles, they had subdued almost all of the indigenous peoples in northeastern Taiwan, save for the Truku who held strong to their territory around the Liwu River (立霧溪) and Mugua River (木瓜溪) basins in today’s Hualien County (花蓮). The Japanese
Pei-Ru Ko (柯沛如) says her Taipei upbringing was a little different from her peers. “We lived near the National Palace Museum [north of Taipei] and our neighbors had rice paddies. They were growing food right next to us. There was a mountain and a river so people would say, ‘you live in the mountains,’ and my friends wouldn’t want to come and visit.” While her school friends remained a bus ride away, Ko’s semi-rural upbringing schooled her in other things, including where food comes from. “Most people living in Taipei wouldn’t have a neighbor that was growing food,” she says. “So
Whether you’re interested in the history of ceramics, the production process itself, creating your own pottery, shopping for ceramic vessels, or simply admiring beautiful handmade items, the Zhunan Snake Kiln (竹南蛇窯) in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, is definitely worth a visit. For centuries, kiln products were an integral part of daily life in Taiwan: bricks for walls, tiles for roofs, pottery for the kitchen, jugs for fermenting alcoholic drinks, as well as decorative elements on temples, all came from kilns, and Miaoli was a major hub for the production of these items. The Zhunan Snake Kiln has a large area dedicated