Hungry? You might not be after you witness seafood coming back to life at Taipei’s Digital Art Center, a gallery that specializes in new media art. Aushin Chang (張顥馨) and Wang Ding-yeh (王鼎曄) use electrical currents to make dead fish “dance” to popular KTV numbers in the Live Live Seafood (生猛海產店). Complementing the “live” works are static displays, including shears, fillet knives, fish cutting tables, as well as diagrams that try to parse the difference between life and lifelike electrical activity. Also opening tomorrow is Loh Li-Chen’s (駱麗真) Ubiquitous (幸無在中央), a digital installation about what makes people happy. Spoiler alert: There are no right answers. Using lighting, images, sound and video, Loh wants to start a conversation about what’s gained and what’s lost when values start becoming centralized.
■ Digital Art Center (台北數位藝術中心), 180 Fuhua Rd, Taipei City (台北市福華路180號), tel: (02) 7736-0708. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm
■ Opening reception tomorrow at 3pm. Until June 16
Photo courtesy of Digital Art Center
Kalos Gallery’s (真善美畫廊) Dunhua location is showing Memory Garden (記憶花園), a themed exhibition of paintings and sculptures by two artists. The works are inspired by natural materials — Yu Wen-fu (游文富) draws on the feather while Chu Fang-yi (朱芳毅) uses mud — to create works that feel like polar opposites, respectively light and heavy.
■ Kalos Gallery (真善美畫廊), 269, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段269號), tel: (02) 2706-9610. Open Mondays to Saturdays 10am to 6:30pm
■ Opening reception tomorrow at 3pm. Until June 8
Photo courtesy of TIVAC
Home (家), by photographer Wang Wen-yi (王文毅), opens tomorrow at the Taiwan International Visual Arts Center (TIVAC, 台灣國際視覺藝術中心). Taken at an orphanage in Siem Reap, Cambodia, Home tries not to be just portraits of children, but also of the different relationships they have formed in the only home that they know. Perhaps inadvertently, the photos also show the psychological and material distance between the photographer and his subjects. “With these shots, it wasn’t only about getting the best composition. It was also about working out camera positions that were mutually comfortable,” Wang writes in his gallery notes.
■ Taiwan International Visual Arts Center (TIVAC, 台灣國際視覺藝術中心), 16, Alley 52, Ln 12, 16 Bade Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市松山區八德路三段12巷52弄16號), tel: (02) 2577-1781. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11:30am to 7pm
■ Opens tomorrow. Until May 26
Photo courtesy of Aki Gallery
After a two-year hiatus, painter Fan Yang-tsung (范揚宗) is back at the Aki Gallery (也趣藝廊) with Under 38°C (38度西下的微熱肌膚), his take on the modern-day pool party. Fan presents the pool party as an exciting bundle of impulses that are public and private, forceful and genial, voyeuristic and exhibitionist. He also shows all the minutiae — the tan lines, the bubbles, the water flow where swimmers are cutting through — using his signature clown-bold colors.
■ Aki Gallery (也趣藝廊), 141 Minzu W Rd, Taipei City (台北市民族西路141號), tel: (02) 2599-1171. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 6:30pm
■ Until May 26
Tomorrow Jason Chi (紀嘉華) debuts Rhythm of Light (光的節奏), a solo exhibition of oil paintings that render emotions in measured geometric shapes and recurring colors, particularly canary yellow.
■ Ever Harvest Art Gallery (日升月鴻畫廊), 2F, 107, Renai Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市仁愛路四段107號2樓), tel: (02) 2752-2353. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 6:30pm
■ Opening reception tomorrow at 3pm. Until June 16
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built