The late Chen Tian-yang (陳天陽, 1940-2011) was a master Shaolin swordsman, but is best-known as a trailblazing sword maker. Forty of Chen’s creations are on display at A Memorial Exhibition of Chen Tian-Yang’s Creation of Swords and Knives (誰與爭鋒—陳天陽刀劍創作紀念展), alongside the historical literature that inspired them. Chen had patterned many of his works on legendary ancient swords, such as Zhuge Liang’s (諸葛亮) Demon-destroying Seven-star Sword (伏魔七星劍).
■ National Museum of History (國立歷史博物館), 49 Nanhai Rd, Taipei City (台北市南海路49號), tel: (02) 2361-0270. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. General admission: NT$30
■ Until Nov. 17
Photo courtesy of National Museum of History
Imminent Sounds: Falls and Crossings (迫聲音—音像裝置展) presents 17 video compositions of sound and image. Unlike traditional cinema, in which music is usually secondary to image, the pieces here use arts like dance, music and theater as equal partners that engage the others in a dialogue. Artists commissioned for the show include video pioneer Bill Viola, music video master Thierry de Mey and Pierre Alain Jaffrennou, founder of the France’s Grame National Center of Musical Creation, which coordinated this exhibition with the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM, 台北市立美術館). On Sunday, the museum opens its 2013 lecture series with a talk by Juan Gaitan, curator of the 8th Berlin Biennale. Speaking from his extensive experience in the art world, Gaitan will share his approach to curating exhibitions — a departure from the traditional thematic format. The talk will be in English with interpretation in Mandarin. For complete details, visit the TFAM Web site at www.tfam.museum.
■ TFAM, 181, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市中山北路三段181號), tel: (02) 2595-7656. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm and until 8:30pm on Saturdays. Admission: NT$30
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Jan. 5
Photo courtesy of Chien Chung Lin
After Baltimore is painter Chien Chung Lin’s (林建忠) memoir of his young adult years in Maryland’s largest city. As a twenty-something, Lin left Taiwan in pursuit of a Master of Fine Arts. He ended up in Baltimore, a city that was foreign and trying, and where he ultimately came of age as an artist. His solo show features 30 mixed-media pieces depicting physical terrain blurred and contorted by his experiences and memories of the space.
■ Floor 8 — Contemporary Art Space (八樓當代藝術空間), 8F, 21, Ln 19, Shuangcheng St, Taipei City (台北市中山區雙城街19巷21號8樓), tel: (02) 2597-5919, open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm, closed on Mondays
■ Until Oct. 6
Disappearance of Subject (消失的主體) is an ambitious solo exhibition by new media artist Tao Ya-lun (陶亞倫). With ingredients like lights, fire and lenses, Tao builds three immersion experiences and two art installations to get audiences to think off the beaten path. In the titular work, the audience’s image is projected onto a wall in surprising, even traitorous ways, so that viewers lose the sense that they inhabit their own bodies — and can begin to analyze themselves objectively.
■ VT Artsalon (非常廟藝文空間), B1, 17, Ln 56, Xinsheng N Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市新生北路三段56巷17號B1), tel: (02) 2597-2525. Open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 1:30pm to 9pm
■ Until Oct. 5
Butterflies, Violins, Glass & Vision (蝶,琴,琉,意) is a grab bag of an exhibition, featuring Taiwan’s largest playable cello, colored paper cutouts and delicate glassware by dozens of Hsinchu-based artists. The collection, on display in Greater Taichung until Sunday, is coordinated by Hsinchu’s Art Site of Railway Warehouse (新竹市鐵道藝術村), which has converted disused railway warehouses into an art village.
■ Taichung Creative and Cultural Park (台中創意文化園區), 362, Fuxing Rd Sec 3, Greater Taichung (台中市南區復興路三段362號), tel: (04) 2229-3079, open daily from 10am to 6pm
■ Ends Sunday.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby