Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (台北當代藝術館, MOCA, Taipei), Street Fun, Fun Street (街大歡囍) is an annual exhibition that presents art outside of the museum walls. “Breathing” is this year’s theme, which is meant to describe the general stagnancy artists and curators currently feel. It is getting harder to breathe fresh air, write guest curators Liu Hsing-yu (劉星佑) and Hsu Yi-Hsiang (許翼翔), a metaphor for the sense of helplessness felt by many in the arts community. The show includes nine local artists who respond to such predicaments through installation, interactive works and performances. On Sunday afternoon, Ho An-yun (何安妘) and Wanpinini’s (頑皮妮妮) performance, Sale Talk (販賣對話), will take place at the Taipei Zhongshan Market (中山市場). For more details, visit: www.mocataipei.org.tw
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (台北當代藝術館, MOCA, Taipei), 39, Changan W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號), tel: (02) 2559-6615. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm
■ Starts tomorrow; until Nov. 3
Photo Courtesy of National Palace Museum
Since 2011, the National Palace Museum has been creating high-resolution animations of selected paintings from the museum collection. The animations faithfully depict the original works while highlighting the cinematic quality that scroll paintings inherently possess. Activities of the Twelve Lunar Months is the museum’s latest digital production created according to a set of twelve anonymous paintings from the Qing Dynasty. Once hung in the Qianlong Emporer’s palace, the pictures showcase seasonal changes and folk customs throughout the year. Although the author is unknown, it is speculated that several court painters contributed to their completion. Western influences are apparent, giving the rendition of space and people a more lifelike quality.
■ National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院), 221 Zhishan Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市至善路二段221), tel: (02) 2881-2021. Open daily from 8:30am to 6:30pm; closes at 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays
■ Until Dec. 26
Photo Courtesy of the artist
Independent online magazine New Bloom (破土) presents Puann-Phinn (搬片), a series of events that explores the power of projection. As part of the program, the film Boundaries (南北 邊境) by Hong Kong artist Lee Chun-feng (李俊峰) will be screened on Sunday at the coffee shop lechat (路上撿到一隻貓). Lee works in a variety of media — video, photography, writing, direct action and installation — to probe the intersections between community and history. He is also co-founder of the former community space Woofer Ten (活化廳) from 2013 to 2015. Boundaries is a speculative narrative based on a proposal made by the British government to build a Hong Kong Wall between the New Territories and Kowloon.
■ lechat (路上撿到一隻貓), 2, Lane 49, Wenchou St, Taipei City (台北市溫州街49巷2號), tel: (02) 2364-2263.
■ Sunday from 7pm to 10pm
Photo Courtesy of MOCA, Taipei
Dan Ji (淡季) is the first edition of the Gou Zai Wei Street Art Festival (溝仔尾街區藝術季), a month of experimental art exhibitions and short-term art residencies that take place in a historical street of Hualian City (花蓮市). Every year, Hualien as a tourist destination experiences high and low seasons of visitor influx, and these patterns greatly affect the rhythm of daily life for local residents and businesses. While many businesses close shop when tourism is low, the festival seeks to redirect the energy of the community towards artistic creation when business is less busy. This year the program includes art performances, music, poetry, installation, tattoo and perfume creations. The festival seeks to integrate creative energies into the local community.
■ Gou Zai Wei St, Hualien City (花蓮市溝仔尾街) tel: (09) 3265-5384. For opening hours please contact organizers.
■ Begins tomorrow; until Oct. 26
Photo Courtesy of Earthing Way
Taipei based art and design groups The Earthing Way (地衣荒物) and Zone Sound Creative (融聲創意) team up to present an interactive exhibition about sensory experiences, memories and auditory events. The two teams share an interest in cross-disciplinary practices and an adaptation of technologies to the creative process. The Earthing Way takes as its starting point the idea of “old is new” in the context of Taiwanese culture. Initial Resonance ARAMONO Interactive Sound Exhibition 2.0 (同根聲—荒物聲響裝置展2) features an installation of wares familiar to Taiwanese households that are hooked up to a sound system. Visitors navigate the sound system using an Web page to create audible feedback or movement of objects within the space.
■ Songshan Cultural and Creative Park (松山文創園區) 133, Guangfu South Rd, Taipei City (台北市光復南路 122號), tel: (02) 2765-1388. Open daily from 9am to 6pm
■ Until Oct. 20
Taiwan’s English education system is being pulled apart by three opposing forces. Bilingual Nation 2030 pulls students toward English and global communication. Artificial Intelligence (AI) readiness pulls them toward digital judgment, verification and AI-mediated work. But Taiwan’s old exam culture pulls them back toward memorization, grammar drills, timed reading and correct answers. If the education system keeps using old exams to define success, it risks producing graduates who are neither genuinely bilingual nor genuinely AI-ready, but trained for tasks machines can already perform. The first force is Bilingual Nation 2030. Launched in 2018, the policy aimed to “help Taiwan’s workforce connect
It seems every few days one bumps into one of those “real man” comments in which Taiwan is urged to “face reality” or similar, and “make a deal,” with the speaker implying that soon it will be too late. “Deal” advocates always present themselves as having a superior grip on reality, and the manly ability to make the “hard choice.” Their testosterone-laden language often echoes that of Taiwan sellout advocates. Note that such commentary always specifies a process (“make a deal, work with, make progress”), never the end state of what occupation by a violent authoritarian colonialist state will entail. In
“Taiwan’s Opposition Leader Comes to US With a Message Straight Out of Beijing” read a May 31 headline in the Wall Street Journal. Top US administration officials and members of Congress almost certainly read the WSJ, and if there was a bullet point takeaway that people in Washington should absorb ahead of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) arrival in DC on June 9, that headline is it. The last few columns have discussed this very topic, and the timing is not coincidental. While those top officials likely do not read the Taipei Times, judging by the number
As someone who normally steers clear of books with “transcendence” or “metaphysics” in their subtitles, this reviewer — a casual observer of local belief systems since the 1990s — found Fabian Graham’s Money God Temples in Taiwan a challenging read. Those who’ve only dipped their toes into temple culture will likely need to parse several sections with special care if they’re to keep up with the author, a British ethnographic researcher whose previous books have investigated religious practices among ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia. This scholarly volume examines a facet of Taiwan’s religious landscape that didn’t exist a century ago, and