The beautiful people used to go to parties hoping to be seen, but in our digital age they hope to be photographed as well, with the results splashed all over Facebook and Flickr.
The tag on many of those posts is that of photographer Steven Vigar, who seems to be snapping away at superhuman speeds at parties across the country. Yet the first event that he is organizing since moving from Tainan to Taipei is a camera-free one called No Photos!
“It’s as if a person can have zero human interaction with all the unbelievably cool things happening out there, but still get most of the whole experience digitally,” said Vigar, who studied photography at Canada’s Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. “It’s tragic.”
To spur partygoers into getting creative, cameras are banned. Instead, attendees are encouraged to pick up a sketch pad. The only photos will be the ones exhibited on the walls, along with other works of art.
Vigar is weary of Web sites on which users can see an event’s attendees, “who’s going, who’s not, what to expect ... and then afterwards see all the party photos
and comments,” he said. “Everything [is] wrapped up nicely in a little ... party package.”
Vigar and Gregory Russell formed production group Up Against the
Wall Muther Fucker a year ago to throw alternative art parties, events and exhibitions.
Their most successful venture to date was at Light Lounge in Taichung. At that party, called Get It, they gave partygoers markers and whiteboards on which to write comments and took photos of them holding the results.
Tomorrow’s party begins with melodic post-rock from university favorites Sorry Youth, followed by indie synth rock by The Looking Glass and punk from Divebomb, which is making the trip from Tainan for the show. My Skin Against Your Skin rounds out the live acts, with DJ Marcus Aurelius manning the decks for the rest of the night.
Featured artists include American surrealist painter Derek Murphy, documentary and lifestyle photographer Garret Clarke, writer and blogger Matt Gibson, graffiti artist Brendan Dempster and fashion designer Jenna Pearce of Rice Society.
“I have actually had a few people mention that they’d feel weird about not seeing any post-party photos,” said Vigar. “If a party takes place in a forest and there are no photographs to capture it, did it really happen?”
Earlier this month, a Hong Kong ship, Shunxin-39, was identified as the ship that had cut telecom cables on the seabed north of Keelung. The ship, owned out of Hong Kong and variously described as registered in Cameroon (as Shunxin-39) and Tanzania (as Xinshun-39), was originally People’s Republic of China (PRC)-flagged, but changed registries in 2024, according to Maritime Executive magazine. The Financial Times published tracking data for the ship showing it crossing a number of undersea cables off northern Taiwan over the course of several days. The intent was clear. Shunxin-39, which according to the Taiwan Coast Guard was crewed
China’s military launched a record number of warplane incursions around Taiwan last year as it builds its ability to launch full-scale invasion, something a former chief of Taiwan’s armed forces said Beijing could be capable of within a decade. Analysts said China’s relentless harassment had taken a toll on Taiwan’s resources, but had failed to convince them to capitulate, largely because the threat of invasion was still an empty one, for now. Xi Jinping’s (習近平) determination to annex Taiwan under what the president terms “reunification” is no secret. He has publicly and stridently promised to bring it under Communist party (CCP) control,
On Sept. 27 last year, three climate activists were arrested for throwing soup over Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh at London’s National Gallery. The Just Stop Oil protest landed on international front pages. But will the action help further the activists’ cause to end fossil fuels? Scientists are beginning to find answers to this question. The number of protests more than tripled between 2006 and 2020 and researchers are working out which tactics are most likely to change public opinion, influence voting behavior, change policy or even overthrow political regimes. “We are experiencing the largest wave of protests in documented history,” says
One way people in Taiwan can control how they are represented is through their choice of name. Culturally, it is not uncommon for people to choose their own names and change their identification cards and passports to reflect the change, though only recently was the right to use Indigenous names written using letters allowed. Reasons for changing a person’s name can vary widely, from wanting to sound more literary, to changing a poor choice made by their parents or, as 331 people did in March of 2021, to get free sushi by legally changing their name to include the two characters
RSS