It's not every day you get to see a tree growing through the hood of a car — especially a NT$12 million (US$370,000) vehicle belonging to a rich chief executive.
Yet renowned French artist Hubert Le Gall and Bob Yeh (葉兩傳), CEO of Lao Tzu Say (老子曰), a Taiwanese tea manufacturer, promised the public just that yesterday as they announced the start of an exhibition that blends manmade beauty with the natural world.
Nowhere is this more apparent than the tree growing out of the hood of Yeh's beloved Bentley.
PHOTO: NICKY LOH, REUTERS
“We had an idea about [helping] the environment and that human creation should work with nature instead of against it,” Le Gall said.
He said the tree and the engine were essentially very similar, yet vastly different as the engine emitted pollution while the tree cleaned it up.
“The difference between this car and art is that the car has a function while art has none; if I take out the engine, [the car] becomes a work of art,” he said.
Both Le Gall and Yeh expressed grave misgivings about the fight against global warming. Yeh said he believed the world was on a crash course.
“Our world's current journey is like the Titanic about to crash into the iceberg,” he said.
Yeh said Taiwan's average annual per capita carbon emissions are around 10.25 tonnes — the fourth highest in the world and ahead of Japan and European countries.
Along with Le Gall, Yeh stressed the importance of changing attitudes toward combating global warming. They hope that through their exhibition, the public can become better informed.
In addition to the Bentley, the exhibition will feature 100 works of art created from the remnants of the car's engine. The exhibition is expected to be completed late next year and Yeh expects it to be on display in Taiwan.
Yeh’s Bentley has been donated to the Taipei County Government.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
RSS