The impending departure of resident artists at Taipei Artist Village has brought a flurry of performances and short exhibitions over the past week of projects that the residents worked on during their two-month stints in the city.
Two of the works will be on show until Nov 23.
PHOTO: MAX WOODWORTH, TAIPEI TIMES
Juliane Stiegele of Germany has taken the itinerant nature of her stay in Taipei as the thematic focus of her installation Stopover which is currently on view at the village.
PHOTO: MAX WOODWORTH, TAIPEI TIMES
Comprising about 80 identical model tents suspended at equal height off the floor and scattered at random throughout the exhibition space, the piece is a visually arresting comment on the notions of community, rootedness and the mobility of modern societies.
The transience implied by the tents are made all the more stark by their suspension off the floor, while their emptiness highlights the lack of community or human presence.
The entire piece actually includes three elements. The first is the assembly of suspended tents. The second was a 12-hour sleepover on Friday in the courtyard of the village, which in Stiegele's words was "just to see what type of community we can create in that spot for one night." The third part of the project was conceptualized as an action in which Stiegele planned to lie inside a larger version of her model tents and be lifted by helicopter about 2m off the ground and moved a short distance and then placed back on the ground. But Stiegele learned, to her dismay, that regular citizens can't simply rent a helicopter for these purposes in Taiwan.
"It seems they're very nervous about these things here. Maybe it's because of China," she said, laughing. In Taipei, this part of Stopover has been replaced by a sketch on the wall of the exhibition space depicting the helicopter lift.
Despite the missing element of the project, Stopover is a wonderfully executed expression of the disorientation and insecurity of the short-term visitor in a new place, which was essentially Stiegele's experience as a first-time visitor to Taiwan.
The second exhibition currently on show is by the Australian new media collective known as pvi.
The two members of pvi built a cocoon-like ball using umbrellas which people could wear over their heads. But pvi didn't wear it themselves. Instead they asked random strangers at MRT stops to wear the umbrella structure all the way to their destination.
They found five takers, three of whom made it to their destination, while two were forced to remove the umbrella cocoon by confused MRT personnel. Each transit was recorded on video and the films of these awkward trips can be seen projected onto the umbrella structure which hangs in an exhibition room at the village.
The inside of the umbrellas provides a completely insulated space that is a way of reclaiming privacy in public spaces.
In some recorded segments, umbrellas are held in front of security cameras in an explicit blocking out of an uninvited viewer and a forceful assertion of the privacy that is violated through the installation of security cameras in public areas.
By making subjects out of crowds and unwitting strangers, the project, titled Panopticon, is, perhaps unintentionally, reminiscent of skits on the show Jackass or Candid Camera in which the reactions of the crowds and of the participants provide as strong a comment on the societies being filmed as you're ever likely to witness.
With this in mind, it's especially interesting to see what transpires during this guerilla art event in Taipei's MRT.
Both exhibitions are on view until Nov. 25. The Taipei Artist Village is located at 9 Beiping E Rd, Taipei (
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
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
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