Minuit, French for midnight, is the title of Taipei-based French journalist Hubert Kilian’s (余白) exhibition on what his neighborhood looks like at dusk. Starting in 2010, Kilian took long walks every week on the streets of Taipei and New Taipei City, photographing employees on overtime and other citizens of a sometimes thrilling, sometimes melancholy nocturnal world.
■ Floor 8 — Contemporary Art Space (八樓當代藝術空間), 8F, 21, Ln 19, Shuangcheng St, Taipei City (台北市雙城街19巷21號8樓), tel: (02) 2597-5919, open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm, closed on Mondays
■ Until Dec. 25
Photo Courtesy of TKG+ Projects
Humanism is a philosophy that calls man rational and unified. Post-humanism declares man the opposite: irrational and capable of forging self-identity out of conflicting realities. In Post-humanist Desire (後人類慾望), 25 artists including Victoria Vesna, Patricia Piccinini and Icelandic singer-songwriter Bjork interpret what people would want out of life in the post-human era and what next-generation gender identities might be. Curated by Ming Turner, the exhibition features sculptures, prints, wire art and other media, as well as DIY workshops and symposiums tomorrow and Sunday. To register, visit www.mocataipei.org.tw.
■ MOCA Studio, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei), 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號), tel: (02) 2552-3720. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Admission: NT$50
■ Opens Saturday. Until Jan. 12
Photo Courtesy of MOCA, Taipei
2013 Taiwan Photo (台灣攝影藝術博覽) is a large-scale show of photo-based artwork, as well as museum-quality contemporary, modern and 19th-century original prints. On show are 60 artists such as Jock Sturges and Hirokawa Taishi, brought together by the 1839 Contemporary Gallery.
■ Culture Hall (文化會館) at 6F of Shinkong Mitsukoshi (新光三越), 11 Songshou Rd, Taipei City ( 台北市松壽路11號), tel: (02) 2778-8458, today to Sunday from 11am to 9pm, Monday from 11am to 6pm, regular admission: NT$180
■ Opens today. Until Monday
(flare-s) is Chen Ching-yuan’s (陳敬元) solo exhibition about Taiwan’s politics and self-identity. In one of Chen’s elaborate animations, tiny people wave flickering emergency lights from boats that bob on a dark sea, in what is both “a celebration as well as a rescue call for help,” according to the gallery notes. Chen also brings a new series of oil paintings titled Flare, which infuses gloomy subjects — like a waiter bussing soiled dishes, or a leashed golden bull — with a pale and treacly light.
■ TKG+ Projects, 4F, 15, Ln 548, Ruiguang Road, Taipei City (台北市瑞光路548巷15號4樓), tel: (02) 2659-0798, open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm, closed on Mondays
■ Until Dec. 29
Suspending on the Surface of Speed (懸置在速度的表面) is a solo exhibition based on characters from the 75-year-old British children’s comic, Beano. Completed by Agi Chen (陳怡潔) during her artist-in-residency in the UK, the solo show has as its centerpiece a set of painted discs, creating on a spinning board, that track the evolution of the comic ‘s color palette over the years.
■ IT Park Gallery (伊通公園), 2F-3F, 41 Yitong St, Taipei City (台北市伊通街41號2-3樓). Open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1pm to 10pm. Tel: (02) 2507-7243
■ Until Dec. 14
The year was 1991. A Toyota Land Cruiser set out on a 67km journey up the Junda Forest Road (郡大林道) toward an old loggers’ camp, at which point the hikers inside would get out and begin their ascent of Jade Mountain (玉山). Little did they know, they would be the last group of hikers to ever enjoy this shortcut into the mountains. An approaching typhoon soon wiped out the road behind them, trapping the vehicle on the mountain and forever changing the approach to Jade Mountain. THE CONTEMPORARY ROUTE Nowadays, the approach to Jade Mountain from the north side takes an
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