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.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless