At Vertigo: Chaos and Dislocation in Contemporary Australian Art (迷魂場域), 10 Australian artists bring works about the stranger conditions of contemporary life. Using motion sensors, Kristin McIver builds an installation that greets passersby with urgent demands to “share” and “engage” online — a parody that attracts notice to a routine event. Cate Consandine’s Lash is a video without a narrative about the fetish of cosmetics and masks, featuring a man with feathers attached to his face. Curated by Claire Anna Watson, Vertigo is a touring exhibition organized by Asialink Arts in Australia. It is named after the Hitchcock film Vertigo, notable for using the in-camera dolly zoom effect to convey the protagonist’s fear of heights.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei), 39 Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號), tel: (02) 2552-3720. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Admission: Free
■ Opens tomorrow. Until June 8
Photo Courtesy of MOCA
Chen Shun-chu (陳順築) presents his memoirs in two ways at solo exhibition One Piece Room. Born in 1963 in Penghu County, Chen left as a teen to live in Taipei and pursued what became a successful career as a fine art photographer. Fengkuei Chair (風櫃椅), a two-part installation, is his careful configuration of a wooden cabinet, a rotating ceiling fan, a chair, a glass of water and other household items. Each is a symbol — the cabinet is home, the chair is himself and the objects are memories — and their arrangement depicts an inner emotional tension that comes with a nomadic career. At the exhibition Chen is also showing On the Road (迢迢路), 11 black-and-white images that prominently feature puddles on the road and desolate, unpeopled street scenes in Penghu, Taiwan and a handful of foreign countries. These road landscapes are left unprocessed and uncut, so that they are an unedited scrapbook of time spent between destinations.
■ Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (關渡美術館), 1 Xueyuan Rd, Taipei City (台北市學園路1號), tel: (02) 2896-1000 ext 2432. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 5pm
■ Opens today. Until July 6
Photo Courtesy of TFAM
The Youth Innovative Design Festival (青春設計節) at the Pier-2 Art Center in Greater Kaohsiung is an annual stage for Taiwanese students of audiovisual media, digital technology, visual design, games and installation art. This year, the program includes a film festival and forums by design professors and working designers. For more information, visit www.ydf.org.tw
■ Pier-2 Art Center (駁二藝術特區), 1 Dayong Rd, Greater Kaohsiung (高雄市大勇路1號), tel: (07) 228-8936. Open Tuesday to Sundays from 10am to 8pm, admission: NT$99
■ Until Sunday
Pioneer of Taiwan Ceramics (臺灣窯業達人) features Lin Ken-Cheng (林根成) — “Teacher Ah-cheng” (阿成師) — an octogenarian who was the face of Taiwanese ceramics at the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle. His solo exhibition is a roundup of iconic works including his sophisticated statues of Buddha and other gods, which were exported to about 40 countries throughout his career. Born in Tonghsiao (通霄), Miaoli in 1932, Lin is founder of Yingge’s Chuohong Studio (佐弘工藝社工作室) and the Taiwan Folk Art Ceramics Company.
■ Yingge Ceramics Museum (鶯歌陶瓷博物館), 200 Wenhua Rd, New Taipei City (新北市文化路200號), tel: (02) 8677-2727. Open Mondays to Fridays from 9:30am to 5pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 9:30am to 6pm, closed first Monday of the month. Admission: Free
■ Until June 8
Playground for Kids: Indigenous Contemporary Art of Taiwan (童年遊戲場: 臺灣原住民當代藝術展) is an interactive art show for children at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (高雄市立美術館). Eight artists from six Aboriginal tribes were invited to create pieces that teach children the Austronesian games and customs of their own childhoods. There’s a theater that screens animated films, as well as interactive pieces such as a kid-friendly loom for Atayal weaving and a “forest” populated with animal sculptures, where children can learn creative uses for the leaf of a pandanus tree.
■ Children’s Museum of Art Gallery at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, 80 Meishuguan Rd, Greater Kaohsiung (高雄市美術館路80號), tel: (07) 555-0331. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm. Admission: Free
■ Until May 25
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had
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