Very Fun Park (粉樂町) is a summer-long group exhibition of art pieces in cafes, nail salons and other everyday places in Taipei’s East District. UK Street artist Filthy Luker dresses up a building as a giant octopus that waves at passersby. South Korea’s Dong-shik Roe fills the lobby of the Taipei New Horizon (臺北文創大樓) with Air Show, a dreamlike scene of cardboard planes and spiraling cotton clouds. Now in its eighth year, the 2013 “museum without walls” features sculptures, installations, paintings, tech art and live shows. English-language tours are available.
■ Songshan Cultural and Creative Park and 30 venues in Taipei’s East District, tel: (02) 2754-6655, for more information visit www.fubonart.org.tw/veryfunpark2013
■ Until Sept. 29
Photo Courtesy of DAC
Scholars began to pay attention to Taiwan literature only recently — the first academic department of Taiwanese literature was established in 1997. The Special Exhibition on the Academic Institutes of Taiwanese Literature (台灣文學系所特展) surveys 17 universities that currently offer formal programs in the field. The exhibition has photographs, publications and other academic work from these universities, providing an overview of national literature studies and education from 1997 to the present.
■ National Museum of Taiwan Literature (國立台灣文學館), 1 Zhongzheng Rd, Tainan City (台南市中西區中正路1號), tel: (06) 221-7201, open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 9pm
■ Until Oct. 6
Photo Courtesy of Fubon Art
Gambia: The Beginning of Animation Art (甘比亞動畫藝術首部曲) features five Gambian artists studying at the Taipei National University of the Arts as part of a diplomatic exchange. Abdoulie Minteh, Mamat Sallah, George Sambou, Ebrima Sambou and Malang Jarju present animation micro-films that were completed in Taiwan, and that draw on visual themes and stories based on African life and culture.
■ Digital Art Center, Taipei (DAC, 台北數位藝術中心), 180 Fuhua Rd, Taipei City (台北市福華路180號), tel: (02) 7736-0708. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm
■ Until Sept. 2
Photo Courtesy of Tittot Glass Art Museum
The Tittot Glass Art Museum (琉園水晶博物館) offers DIY art workshops, a demonstration studio and a museum of antique Qing Dynasty glass sculptures and classic international works. This season’s special exhibition is Scene of Japan (日本之景) by acclaimed glass artist Hiroshi Yamano. The set is mostly nature scenes: miniature Zen gardens with a delicate bird, sometimes with a fish in pond water that seems to condense under the gaze.
■ Tittot Glass Art Museum, 16, Ln 515, Zhongyang N Rd Sec 4 (台北市北投區中央北路4段515巷16號), tel: (02) 7730-4300, open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm
■ Until Dec. 8
Living As Form — The Local Version is Taiwan’s edition of Living As Form, Nato Thompson’s international collection of 100 socially-minded art projects. The local version presents two works. Seventeen Years of Cultural Intervention (文化干政十七年) is an audiovisual survey of the Black Hand Nakasi Workers’ Band’s social activism since 1996. Will the Vole and the Egret Speak? (田鼠和白鷺鷥會說話嗎?) — by Wang Hong-kai (王虹凱) and Yunlin County’s Natural Life Studio (自然生活工坊) — is an oral history archive about Taiwan’s sugarcane farmers.
■ The Cube Project Space (立方計畫空間), 2F, 13, Alley 1, Ln 136, Roosevelt Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路四段136巷1弄13號2樓), tel: (02) 2368-9418. Open Wednesday to Sunday from 2pm to 8pm
■ Until Sept. 27
It is barely 10am and the queue outside Onigiri Bongo already stretches around the block. Some of the 30 or so early-bird diners sit on stools, sipping green tea and poring over laminated menus. Further back it is standing-room only. “It’s always like this,” says Yumiko Ukon, who has run this modest rice ball shop and restaurant in the Otsuka neighbourhood of Tokyo for almost half a century. “But we never run out of rice,” she adds, seated in her office near a wall clock in the shape of a rice ball with a bite taken out. Bongo, opened in 1960 by
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