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 (
May 11 to May 17 Traversing the southern slopes of the Yushan Range in 1931, Japanese naturalist Tadao Kano knew he was approaching the last swath of Taiwan still beyond colonial control. The “vast, unknown territory,” protected by the “fierce” Bunun headman Dahu Ali, was “filled with an utterly endless jungle that choked the mountains and valleys,” Kano wrote. He noted how the group had “refused to submit to the measures of our authorities and entrenched themselves deep in these mountains … living a free existence spent chasing deer in the morning and seeking serow in the evening,” even describing them as
As a different column was being written, the big news dropped that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) announced that negotiations within his caucus, with legislative speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT, party Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chair Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) had produced a compromise special military budget proposal. On Thursday morning, prior to meeting with Cheng over a lunch of beef noodles, Lu reiterated her support for a budget of NT$800 or NT$900 billion — but refused to comment after the meeting. Right after Fu’s
Yesterday, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) nominated legislator Puma Shen (沈伯洋) as their Taipei mayoral candidate, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) put their stamp of approval on Wei Ping-cheng (魏平政) as their candidate for Changhua County commissioner and former legislator Tsai Pi-ru (蔡壁如) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) has begun the process to also run in Changhua, though she has not yet been formally nominated. All three news items are bizarre. The DPP has struggled with settling on a Taipei nominee. The only candidate who declared interest was Enoch Wu (吳怡農), but the party seemed determined to nominate anyone
What government project has expropriated the most land in Taiwan? According to local media reports, it is the Taoyuan Aerotropolis, eating 2,500 hectares of land in its first phase, with more to come. Forty thousand people are expected to be displaced by the project. Naturally that enormous land grab is generating powerful pushback. Last week Chen Chien-ho (陳健和), a local resident of Jhuwei Borough (竹圍) in Taoyuan City’s Dayuan District (大園) filed a petition for constitutional review of the project after losing his case at the Taipei Administrative Court. The Administrative Court found in favor of nine other local landowners, but
RSS