Tsao Yan-hao (曹彥豪) and indie-electronica group KbN (凱比鳥) want to alleviate the stresses of everyday life.
Their artistic panacea is a collaborative exhibition that utilizes video projections of nightlife scenes from around the world.
“People go inside and listen to the music and dance on the dance floor,” Tsao said in a telephone interview.
The installation is one of roughly 20 on display as part of [Room19] Shake Your Mind!, a group exhibition at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (台北藝術大學關渡美術館).
The exhibit’s theme is a response to Doris Lessing’s short story To Room Nineteen, a work about a woman who embarks on a journey of self-discovery after learning that her husband is having an affair. But whereas the story reflects on the dreariness of life, the exhibition is a celebration.
In Lessing’s melancholic musings on love, the hotel room is a symbol of oppression, but in [Room19] the nightclub is a space of freedom and individuality where people can express themselves without reservation.
Curated by Wu Dar-kuen (吳達坤), the exhibition brings together some of Taiwan’s finest contemporary musicians and visual artists, including Akibo Lee (李明道), New York-based Taiwanese photographer Daniel Lee (李小鏡) and expressionist Lee Ming-chung (李民中), in collaborations that have produced a variety of light, sound and image installations (often a combination of all three) that are designed to lift visitors out of their daily blahs.
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