Pablo Calderon Salazar was given only two weeks to implement his urban renewal project, but time wasn’t a problem.
The Brussels-based Colombian, who is currently in Taiwan as a designer with the Taipei World Design Capital 2016 program, says the short duration of his stay doesn’t affect his project because of the nature of his work, which involves collaborating with local partners and creating a prototype of something that could be used by these partners and others in the future.
He says his main goal is interpreting the interests of the various constituents of the site he’s involved, in using dialogue as a main tool.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei times
“I don’t have any idea of ownership as long as someone can find it valuable, even if they use it in a completely different way than I had intended,” Calderon says.
Calderon is part of a series of designer residencies and exchanges sponsored by Taipei’s Department of Cultural Affairs after the city was designated World Design Capital. He is the third designer to come to Taipei to host a public event and lecture this year.
He chose urban regeneration as his project and is testing his research in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), the city’s oldest neighborhood, with a walking tour tomorrow followed by a talk explaining his ideas. Attendees will meet at Bopiliao Old Street (剝皮寮歷史街區) at 2pm.
After visiting neighborhood sites, people and organizations, Calderon noted a common theme of walking tours in Wanhua. The district’s urban decay and seedy reputation has sparked many restoration and social projects, such as the homeless-led Hidden Taiwan tours and the Urbanist Collaborative’s (都市里人) historical and cultural tours.
“They’re doing the same activity, although with different goals,” Calderon says. For example, the Hidden Taipei tours are aimed at reintegrating the homeless into society, while others may focus on art and design, history or culture.
“But they were somehow disconnected,” he adds. “My idea was to find a way to connect them in the same practices they already do. I don’t propose something absolutely new — I don’t believe in novelty. I try to play on what’s already there and find the connections that are already there.”
Calderon says that a tour is an ephemeral experience, and participants don’t leave with a physical souvenir. Hidden Taipei hands out a map with a photo of the tour guide, but Calderon wanted something more personal using elements that are common in Taiwanese culture.
His product is a passport-size journal which participants can have stamped at different locations throughout the tour — a feature available in many Taiwan tourist destinations. Under the stamp is a space where people can jot down notes or draw pictures. Stamps may take the form of a place name, drawing, signature and even a phrase or complete sentence telling part of the site’s story.
On the back of the passport is something that Calderon calls a psycho-geographical map of the tour, which is used to depict one’s personal memories and experiences in the area represented through drawings and writings.
Calderon says even though the passport will still be used for different aims depending on the organization, it connects the two through a common tool that serves to reinforce one’s memory and the historical value of the place.
“I like to say the organizations will be ‘together apart.’ It doesn’t mean they have to work together but they find togetherness in a common practice. That simple understanding is already important for the sense of community.”
Calderon says the critical mass of the tour members could even become a performance, and could be exaggerated with the members waving flags and the guide speaking into a megaphone.
“It creates curiosity,” he says. “There’s a performance aspect not only for the people participating. [It] also has a different level of impact for locals. I want to try out an idea of a procession, a pilgrimage.”
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
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would