Ceramic artist Tseng Tai-yang (曾泰洋) creates earthy pieces of pottery for his latest exhibition, Journey to the Stars (星際遨遊), at New Taipei City’s Yingge Ceramics Museum. The ceramics on display represent the five elements in Chinese philosophy — earth, fire, water, wood and metal — and each piece emanates a calm and meditative feel. The purpose, according to the museum, is to show the endless possibilities of ceramics, notably its aesthetic and even spiritual value. The exhibition’s name and description might be a bit of a stretch — “a song of the trials of earth” — but Tseng’s ceramics really are pretty, especially the tiny ones that look like potted plants.
■ 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
■ Until Dec. 20
Video artist Hsiao Mei-ling (蕭美玲), who lived and studied in France, has a new exhibition opening at Taipei’s Digital Art Center tomorrow. Entitled Souvenirs Revenants (彼方 / 視逝), it consists of a series of video installations in which Hsiao projects MRI scans of her brain alongside video footage of her personal life, as well as streets and airports around France and Taiwan. Throughout the screening, memories blur and time frames overlap, the result of which makes the viewer feel like he or she is standing in multiple places at the same time. It’s obvious that Hsiao misses France, and the artwork is, in part, an attempt to reconcile both parts of her identity.
■ Digital Art Center (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
■ Opens tomorrow. Until Dec. 27
Photo courtesy of Digital Art Center
Short-term Memory (暫存記憶) is a joint exhibition at Taipei Artist Village by various artists from around the world, including Julien Coignet, Humberto Duque and Kaensan Rattanasomerk, working in a variety of mediums, from painting to sculptural installation. As you may have guessed, it centers on short-term memory, especially its inaccuracies and biases. We tend to categorize things in order of importance, and often times the details and “facts” we deem as unimportant are filtered into our short-term memories. In other words, short term memory is similar to photography in the sense that it captures snippets of reality or elements of truth. The exhibition, which is at once both scientific and artistic, does a fine job at obfuscating truth and revealing what we choose to forget.
■ Barry Room, Taipei Artist Village (台北國際藝術村百里廳), 7 Beiping E Rd, Taipei City (台北市北平東路7號), tel: (02) 3393-7377. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 9pm
■ Until Jan. 3
Photo courtesy of Project Fulfill Art Space
Hong Kong artist Lee Kit’s (李傑) homely style of depicting working-class domestic simplicity — worn-out bedsheets and table cloths are a fixture in his installations — and Lai Chih-sheng’s (賴志盛) obsession with dismantling old structures and piecing them back together in new ways, form the perfect symbiosis in their joint exhibition, At (就在), at Project Fulfill Art Space. Like most of the gallery’s shows, it is minimalistic and conceptual — as in you sometimes think that you’re looking at a blank wall, when it is, indeed, a piece of art. The title alludes to the gallery’s Chinese name, which connotes a sense of being present in the moment. The message is as simple as that: enjoy the moment, regardless of how modest it is.
■ Project Fulfill Art Space (就在藝術空間), 2, Alley 45, Ln 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷45弄2號), tel: (02) 2707-6942. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 6pm
■ Jan. 10
The prints of emerging artist Huang Chih-cheng (黃至正) evoke a sense of nostalgia for the age of exploration and discovery. Maps overlaid with ink blotches and scientific-looking diagrams of anything from insects to buildings conjure up the feeling of an intrepid traveler trying to make sense of the world. In fact, Huang’s intention is to capture the relationship between humans, animals and nature, thus the voyage motif can be seen as allegorical, as the real journey is one of self-discovery. Huang’s prints uphold the old adage that through the “other,” we can better understand ourselves. His artwork is currently on display at Taipei’s A Gallery, in an exhibition entitled Roaming the Shores (彼岸遊蕩).
■ A Gallery (當代一畫廊), 22, Alley 36, Lane 147, Xinyi Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市信義路三段147巷36弄22號), tel: (02) 2702-3327. Open Mondays to Saturdays from 10am to 6pm
■ Until Jan. 16
As mega K-pop group BTS returns to the stage after a hiatus of more than three years, one major market is conspicuously missing from its 12-month world tour: China. The omission of one of the group’s biggest fan bases comes as no surprise. In fact, just the opposite would have been huge news. China has blocked most South Korean entertainment since 2016 under an unofficial ban that also restricts movies and the country’s popular TV dramas. For some Chinese, that means flying to Seoul to see their favorite groups perform — as many were expected to do for three shows opening
A recent report from the Environmental Management Administration of the Ministry of Environment highlights a perennial problem: illegal dumping of construction waste. In Taoyuan’s Yangmei District (楊梅) and Hsinchu’s Longtan District (龍潭) criminals leased 10,000 square meters of farmland, saying they were going to engage in horticulture. They then accepted between 40,000 and 50,000 cubic meters of construction waste from sites in northern Taiwan, charging less than the going rate for disposal, and dumped the waste concrete, tile, metal and glass onto the leased land. Taoyuan District prosecutors charged 33 individuals from seven companies with numerous violations of the law. This
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry consumes electricity at rates that would strain most national grids. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) alone accounted for more than 9 percent, or 2,590 megawatts (MW), of the nation’s power demand last year. The factories that produce chips for the world’s phones and servers run around the clock. They cannot tolerate blackouts. Yet Taiwan imports 97 percent of its energy, with liquefied natural gas reserves measured in days. Underground, Taiwan has options. Studies from National Taiwan University estimate recoverable geothermal resources at more than 33,000 MW. Current installed capacity stands below 10 MW. OBSTACLES Despite Taiwan’s significant geothermal potential, the
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) returned from her trip to meet People’s Republic of China (PRC) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) bearing “a gift” for the people of Taiwan: 10 measures the PRC proposed to “facilitate the peaceful development of cross-strait relations.” “China on Sunday unveiled 10 new incentive measures for Taiwan,” wrote Reuters, wrongly. The PRC’s longstanding habit with Taiwan relations is to repackage already extant or once-existing policies and declare that they are “new.” The list forwarded by Cheng reflects that practice. NEW MEASURES? Note the first item: establishing regular communication mechanisms between the Chinese Communist Party
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