Living in a foreign country often helps a young artist realize his or her creative potential to a greater extent than would otherwise have been possible. So it comes as now surprise that more and more young Taiwanese artists are seizing the opportunity (presented by the increasing number of exchange programs available to them) to spend several months away from an environment that sometimes seems too provincial for their active minds.
In the case of Wu Dar-kuen (
Streamer is a subtle reflection on the interplay between space and time. Beautiful and without irony, the installations are a marked departure from his previous vivacious works fantasizing about the technological future of the human race.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
"The movement of a ray of light shooting across the sky from one place to another, which is what `streamer' means, is what I'm trying to show here," said Wu, relating the works to his journey to the far side of the earth and back.
Inside the pitch-dark gallery, three round screens, placed at ground level, show monochrome DVD projections of a flowing snowflake-dotted stretch of water. While two of them are played at normal speed, the third is always set at fast-forward. As if standing next to these nearly frozen rivers on screens in the dark is not haunting enough, three speakers that beam digitally distorted sounds of a boat navigating the water into viewers' ears to add to the bleak mood of the installation. Even inside the gallery, the soundtrack, with its eerie beeps and pings, creates an ambience that might induce agoraphobia. The video was shot from a boat en route to Helsinki. As shown here, the passage seems an experience as beautiful as it is cold and desolate.
Away from Taipei's lively social circle and bustling night life, Wu spent early winter last year on an islet off Helsinki, where he often went for days on end without speaking to a single person. The most readily available diversion, Wu said, was talking to himself.
Another DVD installation shows images of snow falling on the ground, on a house, on a tree and so on, played in reverse. Like the one shot from a boat, these are bleak but beautiful.
Constructing an atmospheric evocation of the Arctic winter almost obscures Wu's real intention -- musing on the workings of space and time. Intended as imageries of introspection, these DVD installations at times resemble travelogues, of which there are more than enough in Taiwan.
Streamer - A Solo Exhibition by Wu Dar-kuen runs through March 8 at Bamboo Curtain Studio, located at 39, Lane 88 Chungcheng E. Rd., Sec. 2, Tamshui, Taipei County (
The Nuremberg trials have inspired filmmakers before, from Stanley Kramer’s 1961 drama to the 2000 television miniseries with Alec Baldwin and Brian Cox. But for the latest take, Nuremberg, writer-director James Vanderbilt focuses on a lesser-known figure: The US Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, who after the war was assigned to supervise and evaluate captured Nazi leaders to ensure they were fit for trial (and also keep them alive). But his is a name that had been largely forgotten: He wasn’t even a character in the miniseries. Kelley, portrayed in the film by Rami Malek, was an ambitious sort who saw in
It’s always a pleasure to see something one has long advocated slowly become reality. The late August visit of a delegation to the Philippines led by Deputy Minister of Agriculture Huang Chao-ching (黃昭欽), Chair of Chinese International Economic Cooperation Association Joseph Lyu (呂桔誠) and US-Taiwan Business Council vice president, Lotta Danielsson, was yet another example of how the two nations are drawing closer together. The security threat from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), along with their complementary economies, is finally fostering growth in ties. Interestingly, officials from both sides often refer to a shared Austronesian heritage when arguing for
Among the Nazis who were prosecuted during the Nuremberg trials in 1945 and 1946 was Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Goring. Less widely known, though, is the involvement of the US psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, who spent more than 80 hours interviewing and assessing Goring and 21 other Nazi officials prior to the trials. As described in Jack El-Hai’s 2013 book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, Kelley was charmed by Goring but also haunted by his own conclusion that the Nazis’ atrocities were not specific to that time and place or to those people: they could in fact happen anywhere. He was ultimately
Last week gave us the droll little comedy of People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) consul general in Osaka posting a threat on X in response to Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi saying to the Diet that a Chinese attack on Taiwan may be an “existential threat” to Japan. That would allow Japanese Self Defence Forces to respond militarily. The PRC representative then said that if a “filthy neck sticks itself in uninvited, we will cut it off without a moment’s hesitation. Are you prepared for that?” This was widely, and probably deliberately, construed as a threat to behead Takaichi, though it
RSS