Taiwan's contributions to the Venice Biennale have gained recognition from the international art community, but this year four graduate students from Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA) have decided to turn things around with a fresh idea and US$20,000.
The students are members of the Hedao Group (
Hedao's projects are designed to create the maximum impact: Instead of manipulating physical objects to create art, they seeks to manipulate the institutions that evaluate art.
PHOTO: MEREDITH DODGE, TAIPEI TIMES
They do this by raising money for cash awards to be given at major art exhibitions. This year the "Taiwan Award" of US$20,000 will be handed over to the winner of their choice at the Venice Biennale on June 11.
The Hedao Group intends to subvert the process of cultural colonization and globalization by creating the award. It reasons that Taiwan is a small country that struggles to be recognized in the world of contemporary art, where discourse is dominated by a Western point of view.
What the Hedao Group intends to take to Venice is not a work of art to be judged, but rather a unique Taiwanese viewpoint with which to judge other works of art.
PHOTOS COUTESY OF TFAM
The Hedao Group flier states that "the Taiwan Award seeks to reverse the subject-object relationship, adopting the role of observer and a specifically Taiwanese viewpoint to assess the Venice Biennale."
The Hedao Group raised the cash for the Taiwan Award by going around the country
fundraising. Most of the donations were from individuals and non-profit organizations, rather than large corporations or public agencies.
"There were book clubs that donated, [even] housewives that found ways to save an extra NT$1,000 per month" said group member Lu Hao-yuan (
Besides monetary contributions, the Hedao Group has gained support of another kind. In order to ensure that the Taiwan Award accurately represents Taiwan's viewpoint, the group's members asked accomplished Taiwanese cultural figures from a variety of disciplines to serve as judges for the award.
The panel they assembled includes filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang (
The Hedao Group created a stir with their first "meta" art project, An Award for Taipei Biennale. It hopes to continue subverting the politics and structure of arts exhibitions and awards by taking the Taiwan Award to New York's Whitney Biennial and Germany's Kassel Documental X.
The group, plus the judges and accompanying art critics, will head for Venice this Saturday. Deliberations will begin next Thursday and the award will be presented at the Hotel Monaco and Grand Canal, on June 11.
The trophy for the award, designed by Zhuang Wu-nan (
This is the year that the demographic crisis will begin to impact people’s lives. This will create pressures on treatment and hiring of foreigners. Regardless of whatever technological breakthroughs happen, the real value will come from digesting and productively applying existing technologies in new and creative ways. INTRODUCING BASIC SERVICES BREAKDOWNS At some point soon, we will begin to witness a breakdown in basic services. Initially, it will be limited and sporadic, but the frequency and newsworthiness of the incidents will only continue to accelerate dramatically in the coming years. Here in central Taiwan, many basic services are severely understaffed, and
It is a soulful folk song, filled with feeling and history: A love-stricken young man tells God about his hopes and dreams of happiness. Generations of Uighurs, the Turkic ethnic minority in China’s Xinjiang region, have played it at parties and weddings. But today, if they download it, play it or share it online, they risk ending up in prison. Besh pede, a popular Uighur folk ballad, is among dozens of Uighur-language songs that have been deemed “problematic” by Xinjiang authorities, according to a recording of a meeting held by police and other local officials in the historic city of Kashgar in
The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) told legislators last week that because the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) are continuing to block next year’s budget from passing, the nation could lose 1.5 percent of its GDP growth next year. According to the DGBAS report, officials presented to the legislature, the 2026 budget proposal includes NT$299.2 billion in funding for new projects and funding increases for various government functions. This funding only becomes available when the legislature approves it. The DGBAS estimates that every NT$10 billion in government money not spent shaves 0.05 percent off
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) was out in force in the Taiwan Strait this week, threatening Taiwan with live-fire exercises, aircraft incursions and tedious claims to ownership. The reaction to the PRC’s blockade and decapitation strike exercises offer numerous lessons, if only we are willing to be taught. Reading the commentary on PRC behavior is like reading Bible interpretation across a range of Christian denominations: the text is recast to mean what the interpreter wants it to mean. Many PRC believers contended that the drills, obviously scheduled in advance, were aimed at the recent arms offer to Taiwan by the
RSS