Variation Xanadu is the last exhibition in the Curators in MOCA, 2005 series recently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art and is curated by Jason Chia-chi Wang
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Wang recently curated the Taiwan Pavilion titled The Spectre of Freedom at this year's Venice Biennale. Wang who is more of a literary-based curator came up with the premise for Variation Xanadu based on the ideas put forth by Samuel Taylor Coleridge's opium-dreamt poem The Ballad of Kublai Khan which described the poetic space of this fictive place Xanadu. The theme of this unattainable, yet perfect space combined with the diverse artworks fit well together as there is an overall narcotic and hypnotic effect to what is on view.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF MOCA
One fascinatingly hypnotic work is Hiraki Sawa's video projections of airplanes flying through the domestic interiors of an apartment, with planes taking off from an unmade bed or landing on a kitchen table to create an effect that is quite dreamlike and erotic.
The films by artistic filmmakers Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba and Werner Herzog are a must-see. Nguyen-Hatsushiba's Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Toward the
Complex, for the Courageous, the Curious and the Cowards is a haunting monument. Filmed underwater, fishermen without any breathing apparatus push Vietnamese-style bicycle carts through the reefs and periodically come up for gasps of air, thus showing that the drive for survival such as breathing overrides the scripted acts of the performance.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF MOCA
Time is a big theme in many of the works on view, but often containing a sense of wistfulness. Herzog's Ten Thousand Years Older is a compelling short 10-minute film documenting the discovery of one of the Amazon's last unknown tribes, and moves ahead to 20 years later, ultimately showing that contact with modern life led to the tribe's demise.
Tse Su-mei, won a Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2003 for his video The Desert Sweepers among her other works for the Luxembourg Pavilion. In the video, street sweepers futilely continue to sweep the sand in the vast limitless desert with no end in sight.
China-based artist Wang Jianwei (
PHOTOS COURTESY OF MOCA
Some alumni from the Taipei Biennial 2002, in which Wang co-curated, includes Runa Islam from England. Her double screen projection with a jazzy soundtrack hints at narrative and solemnly ruminates about aging and city life. Chen Chieh-jen (
abandoned spaces.
Kao Chung-li's (高重黎) installation of noisily running 8mm projectors show his hand-drawn animations that combine personal mementoes with images of war and destruction. Hou Tsung-hui (侯聰慧) has an intimate photo installation of psychiatric patients at the infamous Lun Fatang Monastery.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF MOCA
And stay tuned because in October, MOCA will hold an international seminar entitled Exhibition Curating and City Marketing from Cultural Activities and world-renowned curators specializing in cross-culture studies or Asian cultural studies will participate.
March 24 to March 30 When Yang Bing-yi (楊秉彝) needed a name for his new cooking oil shop in 1958, he first thought of honoring his previous employer, Heng Tai Fung (恆泰豐). The owner, Wang Yi-fu (王伊夫), had taken care of him over the previous 10 years, shortly after the native of Shanxi Province arrived in Taiwan in 1948 as a penniless 21 year old. His oil supplier was called Din Mei (鼎美), so he simply combined the names. Over the next decade, Yang and his wife Lai Pen-mei (賴盆妹) built up a booming business delivering oil to shops and
Indigenous Truku doctor Yuci (Bokeh Kosang), who resents his father for forcing him to learn their traditional way of life, clashes head to head in this film with his younger brother Siring (Umin Boya), who just wants to live off the land like his ancestors did. Hunter Brothers (獵人兄弟) opens with Yuci as the man of the hour as the village celebrates him getting into medical school, but then his father (Nolay Piho) wakes the brothers up in the middle of the night to go hunting. Siring is eager, but Yuci isn’t. Their mother (Ibix Buyang) begs her husband to let
The Taipei Times last week reported that the Control Yuan said it had been “left with no choice” but to ask the Constitutional Court to rule on the constitutionality of the central government budget, which left it without a budget. Lost in the outrage over the cuts to defense and to the Constitutional Court were the cuts to the Control Yuan, whose operating budget was slashed by 96 percent. It is unable even to pay its utility bills, and in the press conference it convened on the issue, said that its department directors were paying out of pocket for gasoline
On March 13 President William Lai (賴清德) gave a national security speech noting the 20th year since the passing of China’s Anti-Secession Law (反分裂國家法) in March 2005 that laid the legal groundwork for an invasion of Taiwan. That law, and other subsequent ones, are merely political theater created by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to have something to point to so they can claim “we have to do it, it is the law.” The president’s speech was somber and said: “By its actions, China already satisfies the definition of a ‘foreign hostile force’ as provided in the Anti-Infiltration Act, which unlike
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