Togetherness on the streets of old Taipei

Taipei City Government's "2nd Taipei Public Art Festival" has hit the streets and will conclude May 9. PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES

Eesidents Taipei looking for an abstract and different view of the city are in for a treat over the coming month, as the opening of the 2nd Taipei Public Art Festival (台北公共藝術節) has transformed the city's historic Datung District into an interesting, contrasting and sometimes puzzling wonderland of installation art.

Organized the Taipei City Government and with backing of several of Taipei's most prominent art groups and institutions including the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (台北市立美術館), the month-long public art exhibition, which comes to a close on May 9, features a myriad of works created by both local and overseas artists.

Entitled of Togetherness, the contemporary yet momentary facelift has, unlike too many of Taipei's seemingly never-ending flow of phony festivals, been well thought out and planned. Some of the works are so good in fact that it will be a shame when they are removed in a month's time, as they add flair to the run-down and often forgotten part of Taipei.

Instead erecting dozens of installations at one single venue or scattering them randomly throughout the district, organizers have laid the works out in premeditated manner that allows visitors to take in both the artworks themselves as well as some of the district's historical sites.

In order to see the works visitors can follow the special "art route." Beginning at the Yuanshan MRT station and finishing at the Dansui River, the route passes through the district's major thoroughfares and ambles through many of the area's lesser streets and lanes.

Although many of the works are worthy of contemplative thought, the exhibition's most arresting piece is that entitled Reborn Terrain. Designed by Lin Lung-ju (林龍如) and Hsiung Yi-yi (熊宜一), the work was made by transforming a standard steel-and-concrete elevated pedestrian overpass into a wood-paneled Noah's Ark-like structure. Here visitors can either choose to take the view or continue to the riverbank, which, hidden by the huge concrete floodwall, offers a peaceful contrast to the roar of the traffic.

The "art route" terminates at the Dihua Sewage Treatment Plant, which, while not sounding like a particularly inviting destination, has been transformed into a mini-art park of its own, where half a dozen of the festival's more innovative works are on display.

As well as getting to take in a range of street-side artworks, visitors can also wander the once-busy detention cells and interrogation rooms of one of Taipei's most notorious police stations. During the years of Japanese occupation the Lanzhou police station was used a surveillance center, where law-enforcement officials would monitor the neighborhood for anti-Japanese activities.

Recently and transformed into what has been dubbed the "Utopian Police Station," the structure has been altered by artist Chiang Yang-huei (江洋輝) to represent an imitation embassy of an imaginary country called "Togetherness" for the duration of the festival.

For an in-depth Chinese language look at the works featured in the 2nd Taipei Public Art Festival and a map pinpointing the locations of each work, log on to the official Web site at www.taipeiart.com.

Event information:
What: The 2nd Taipei Public Art Festival (台北公共藝術節)
Where: Datung District, from Yuanshan MRT to Dihua Street Sewage Plant.
When: Now through May 9