Tsao Yan-hao (曹彥豪) and indie-electronica group KbN (凱比鳥) want to alleviate the stresses of everyday life.
Their artistic panacea is a collaborative exhibition that utilizes video projections of nightlife scenes from around the world.
“People go inside and listen to the music and dance on the dance floor,” Tsao said in a telephone interview.
The installation is one of roughly 20 on display as part of [Room19] Shake Your Mind!, a group exhibition at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (台北藝術大學關渡美術館).
The exhibit’s theme is a response to Doris Lessing’s short story To Room Nineteen, a work about a woman who embarks on a journey of self-discovery after learning that her husband is having an affair. But whereas the story reflects on the dreariness of life, the exhibition is a celebration.
In Lessing’s melancholic musings on love, the hotel room is a symbol of oppression, but in [Room19] the nightclub is a space of freedom and individuality where people can express themselves without reservation.
Curated by Wu Dar-kuen (吳達坤), the exhibition brings together some of Taiwan’s finest contemporary musicians and visual artists, including Akibo Lee (李明道), New York-based Taiwanese photographer Daniel Lee (李小鏡) and expressionist Lee Ming-chung (李民中), in collaborations that have produced a variety of light, sound and image installations (often a combination of all three) that are designed to lift visitors out of their daily blahs.
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With one week left until election day, the drama is high in the race for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chair. The race is still potentially wide open between the three frontrunners. The most accurate poll is done by Apollo Survey & Research Co (艾普羅民調公司), which was conducted a week and a half ago with two-thirds of the respondents party members, who are the only ones eligible to vote. For details on the candidates, check the Oct. 4 edition of this column, “A look at the KMT chair candidates” on page 12. The popular frontrunner was 56-year-old Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文)
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