The Digital Art Festival Taipei returns to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA, Taipei) for its 14th edition. RTS: ReTranSens (再轉存), curated by Loh Li-chen (駱麗真) and Chen Hsiang-wen (陳湘汶), seeks to explore how technology is transforming human perception, and how art, in turn, represents those changes. Fifteen artists and groups are participating, including the London and New York-based experimental architecture and design practice Minimaforms, German video artist Clemens von Wedemeyer and Taiwanese sound artist Olifa Hsieh (謝?瑩). Interdisciplinary art collective Whyixd (何理) and indie band DSPS will be kicking off the opening ceremony tonight at 7pm with The Tunnel of Subconscious (潛意識的通道), a collaborative performance that organizers say will send the audience into a hypnotic dream-state. The museum will be hosting talks with artists, guided tours, performances and workshops throughout the festival. For more information, visit: www.mocataipei.org.tw.
■ Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (台北當代藝術館), 39 Chang-an W Rd, Taipei City (台北市長安西路39號), tel: (02) 2552-3721. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm
■ Until Nov. 10
Photo courtesy of Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts
The Michael Ku Gallery is presenting a solo exhibition of two interconnected video installations by Taipei-based artist Wang Shao-Gang (汪紹綱) that examine the concept of youth. Deep Blue shows a group of young men and women in the ocean, frolicking suggestively in the water, while Apple Green, set in a forest, portrays how answers are sought about the future through tarot cards. “There is often a sense of uncertainty stemming from not fully knowing one’s path,” the artist says. “Yet this sense of uncertainty is not absolute, but rather a speculation of what will be.” The works explore the feelings of vitality, hope, anxiety and fragility associated with being young.
■ Michael Ku Gallery (谷公館), 4F-2, 21 Dunhua S Rd, Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段21號4樓之2), tel: (02) 2577-5601. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Starts Sunday; until Jan. 19
Photo courtesy of Michael Ku Gallery
To celebrate its 25th anniversary, the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts is re-launching its third-floor gallery space as the South+ Special Collection Gallery (大南方多元史觀特藏室), and the first exhibition to be held there will be South as a Place of Gathering (南方作為相遇之所). The exhibition challenges existing notions of the “global South” and its meaning within the context of Taiwan’s history. The exhibition is in conversation with the 14th edition of the quinquennial German contemporary art exhibition Documenta, which was held in 2017 and pushed the idea of the South as a “state of mind.” It features works from the 1930s to the 1960s by Chang Chi-hua (張啟華), Liu Chi-hsiang (劉啟祥), Chuang Shih-ho (莊世和) and other southern Taiwanese artists. Through these works, selected from the museum’s collection by curators Fang Yen Hsiang (方彥翔), Wu Hui-fang (吳慧芳) and Hung Ching-chan (洪金禪), the exhibition also maps the arrival and development of modern art in southern Taiwan.
■ Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (高雄市立美術館), 80 Meishuguan Rd, Kaohsiung City (高雄市美術館路80號), tel: (07) 5550-331. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm
■ Starts tomorrow; until Sept. 5, 2021
Photo courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei
One-Forty, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering Southeast Asian migrant workers in Taiwan, yesterday kicked off a week-long exhibition to tell some of the stories of the approximately 700,000 migrant workers in Taiwan through 300 photographs. Turning Point: Taiwan (轉機: 台灣) is divided into four “stops”—“Leave For,” “Landing,” “Grow,” and Glow”—designed to follow the migrants’ journeys. A section in the end helps viewers learn about the work the organization has done. Photographs include submissions from migrant workers across the nation, as well as ones taken by Joan Pabona, an award-winning Filipino street photographer based in Hong Kong. The exhibition also showcases three costumes designed by Mark Lester Reyes, a Filipino artist and factory worker in Taoyuan, and a collaborative piece by Taiwanese artist Lo Yi-chun (羅懿君) and an Indonesian migrant worker. “This is not just a photography exhibition,” One-Forty co-founder Kevin Chen (陳凱翔) said. “Its greater significance is in providing a stage for migrant workers to express their voices.” At 7pm tonight, Still Human (淪落人), last year’s film about the bond between a Hong Kong man with a physical disability and a Filipino domestic helper, will be screening at the exhibition. Talks with Pabona, Reyes and the One-Forty team, and guided tours, have also been scheduled throughout the week. For more information, visit: www.one-forty.org/exhibition-2019.
■ Songshan Cultural and Creative Park Warehouse No 1 (松山文創園區一號倉庫), 133 Guangfu S Rd, Taipei City (台北市光復南路133號), tel: (02) 2765-1388. Open daily from 10am to 6pm, with extended hours until 8pm from Fridays to Sundays
■ Until Oct. 30
Photo courtesy of Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts
Founded in 1952 by painter Kuo Po-chuan (郭柏川), the Tainan Fine Arts Association is hosting its 67th anniversary exhibition at the Tainan Cultural Center. Works by more than 100 member artists working in four categories—traditional Chinese painting, Western-style painting, sculpture and photography—will be on display. Exhibited alongside the members’ works will be the works of 78 artists nominated or selected for one of the association’s nine awards. This year, the association is dedicating its Achievement Award to Shen Ming-hui (沈明輝) and its Lifetime Contribution Award to Wang Wen-chung (汪文仲) and Liu Wen-san (劉文三), who passed away in 2014 and last year, respectively.
■ Tainan Cultural Center (台南文化中心), 332 Jhonghua E Rd Sec 3, Tainan City (台南市中華東路三段332號), tel: (06) 2692-864. Open Wednesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm
■ Until Nov. 10
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
RSS