An exhibition exploring the experiences and traumas of people involved in the 2014 Sunflower student movement is being held at Academia Sinica’s Museum of Institute of Ethnology.
Amis singer Panai Kusui attended the opening ceremony on Friday, singing songs composed for many previous social movements.
The exhibition is open to the public from 9:30am to 4:30pm every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. It started yesterday and runs through Aug. 31 next year.
Photo: Yang Yuan-ting, Taipei Times
Institute of Ethnology president Chang Hsun (張珣) said the exhibition aims to portray the subjective experiences, desires and vision of victims, while the audience, playing the role of a therapist, acts as a companion on the journey toward an unknown destination.
Exhibition curator Peng Jen-yu (彭仁郁) said that the exhibition’s theme, the Sunflower movement, featured the most violent state suppression of the public since the nation lifted martial law in 1987.
By reading and listening to the experiences of those who were suppressed by police on March 23 and March 24, the audience can reflect on how to create an “imagined community” on which the common values of Taiwan are anchored, she said.
She was referring to student leader Dennis Wei (魏揚) and 20 others who stormed and occupied the Executive Yuan building overnight in 2014, prompting then-premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) and then-National Police Agency director-general Wang Cho-chiun (王卓鈞) to order the students’ removal.
Peng said the students’ injuries and their demonstration are closely related, and the exhibition shows how young people with a strong vision of what a government should look like can clash with the state.
People who experienced violence are often depicted as passive and pitiful, while demonstrators are lauded as people experiencing injustice, but they are both part of the same picture brought together by emotion, vision, personal desires and the tendency of the public to glorify some incidents, she said.
The audience can therefore reflect on current events, as well as history, she added.
The exhibition has three parts: “The Secrets of Wounds” presents special symbols — a collective marker imprinted on society through state violence that has changed history — affiliated with known protests and social movements in Taiwan and abroad, Peng said.
“The Protesters’ Image” displays demonstrators’ wounds, and explains why they took to the streets and how their fight continued after the movement’s termination, she said.
The third area features video clips of demonstrators sharing their stories, and their narrative acts to pick apart the pieces of fragmented memories, slowly piecing the events of the day back together, she said.
The audience, which takes on the perspective of a therapist, is transported to the scene of suppression, she said.
REPORT: Taipei has expressed an interest in obtaining loitering munitions matching the AeroVironment Switchblade 300 or the Anduril Altius-600, ‘Foreign Policy’ said Taiwan is seeking US-made kamikaze drones in an apparent concession to pressure from Washington to focus on asymmetric capabilities to defeat or deter a Chinese attack, Foreign Policy said in a report on Wednesday. Taipei has expressed an interest in obtaining AeroVironment Switchblade loitering munitions or other devices with similar capabilities, it said, citing four sources familiar with the matter commenting on condition of anonymity. The Switchblade 300 is a tube-launched drone designed for attacking ground troops, while its larger sibling, the Switchblade 600, could be used to destroy tanks and entrenched troops. Ukraine has utilized both systems extensively in its fight against
Police officers yesterday morning apprehended the prime suspect of a triple homicide case, after raiding the suspect’s hideout in Taichung. They transported the suspect to New Taipei City for questioning and recorded his statement last night. The suspect, identified as a 24-year-old man surnamed Chang (張), is believed to have used his hands to strangle his wife, surnamed Chen (陳), 29, along with his three-year-old son from a previous marriage and his wife’s mother, 69. The three dead bodies were wrapped in blankets when they were discovered inside their apartment in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) on Saturday. Chang was holding a
Hungarian Member of Parliament Tompos Marton said he considers Taiwan to be a better alternative to China as a strategic partner. Marton, who is the vice president of the opposition Momentum Party, made the remarks in an interview with the Central News Agency on Sunday. He draped a Republic of China flag across his shoulders to protest Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) visit to the capital city, Budapest, on Thursday last week, and openly voiced support for Taiwan on social media. He said in the interview that he wanted to remind the world that there were alternatives to China, and that “Taiwan has
A female physician at New Taipei City’s Shuang Ho Hospital was bullied and made to work for 32 consecutive hours by a senior colleague while pregnant before later having a miscarriage, an internal investigation found, the hospital said on Monday. The perpetrator has been removed from his post, the hospital said. The attending physician in the hospital’s Medical Imaging Department, identified by the pseudonym Y, earlier on Monday told reporters that she had been bullied by a male senior colleague who arranged shifts in her department. In January, shortly after she became pregnant, Y asked the department director if she could avoid overnight