Scene Alpha. Settler Colonialism VS. Colonialism
Po-Chun Liu, Cheng-Te Chin & Chia-Chen You, Anchi Ring, Wu-Han Chou
Settler colonialism is one of the most crucial aspects of Taiwan’s history, as the settlers who arrived and exploited Taiwan belonged to the indigenous people. This exploitation led to an alternate, modified genocide as they utilized judicial and legislative systems, as well as military and bureaucracy, to construct their power structure over the disadvantaged indigenous people, relocating indigenous territories, renaming homelands, and inaugurating their own religious systems. During this process, the settlers internalized themselves as the dwellers of the invaded land, as Louis Althusser’s ideological interpellation suggests. However, Taiwan’s settlers also faced significant threats from outsider colonizers in terms of modern culture, politics, and military power. This intensified the conflicts and contradictions between the settlers and the indigenous peoples. Both colonizers and settlers arrived by sea, and the conflicts and oppression they brought with them left numerous traces on the biospheres, evidently in places like Keelung, which served as a crucial entry and exit point for Taiwan.
It is still an open discussion within various literary works and scholarly studies that inquire the complexities of settler colonialism and colonialism in Taiwan. Po-Chun Liu’s fable of “ships and oceans” serves as a poetic cautionary tale. Cheng-Te Chin & Chia-Chen You’s work explores the collaboration and struggle among ethnic groups during the Sino-French War at Shitou Ridge, shedding light on historical dynamics. Anchi Ring’s rebellious wartime literature, as represented in Jinbo Zhou’s “Writing Between,” examines the multiple identities of the “imperialist” writers and their engagement with words, medical treatment, and the body during times of conflict. Meanwhile, Wu-Han Chou studies the nomenclature of landscapes influenced by the colonizers’ religion. The clues in the work show the conflict between settler colonialism and colonialism, highlighting contradictions, love, and hatred embedded within. It underscores these issues extend beyond superficial racial differences and are internalized within political and ideological struggles related to identity in culture, nature, and society.
〈Po-Chun Liu〉
Po-Chun Liu
《Anchored》
2018
Steel, LED light
Dimensions variable
《Anchored》
Boats are vessels that carry their own burdens and those of time passed, as well as the vast and distant hopes of others. In the work Anchored, the sculptor and installation artist Po-Chun Liu has created a metallic art piece with a “boat of time” rusted. It bears the accumulated traces of time and its own history, dilapidated exterior as its central concept. Suspended in the air by stiff steel chains, the boat emits blue lights alongside the sounds of the ocean waves and breeze through the holes in its timeworn hull. Liu aims to evoke an impression of the sea and a sense of dense unity, and create a scenario of unease and contradiction.
Artist Bio
Born in Taiwan in 1963, Po-Chun Liu is one of the representative figures among the mid-generation sculptors. He obtained his MFA in Sculpture from École Nationale Supérieux des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France, and is currently a professor of the Department of Sculpture, the dean of the Fine Art College at the National Taiwan University of Arts. He has won innumerous prizes and awards, including prestigious awards in Taiwan such as the Wu San-Lien Arts and Cultural Award, Sun Yat-sen Award for Arts and Literature. He has been invited to exhibitions in Italy, Hungary, Romania, China, Japan, and Korea.
Courtesy of the artist
〈Cheng-Te Chin & Chia-Chen You〉
Cheng-Te Chin & Chia-Chen You
《Depicting & Writing —— the Mountains, Seas, and Sky》
《Depicting & Writing —— the Shelf of Flowers》
2024
Stainless steel, plywood, paper pulp, raw materials
Dimensions variable
《Depicting & Writing》
《Depicting & Writing —— the Mountains, Seas, and Sky》
《Depicting & Writing —— the Shelf of Flowers》
In their collaborative project Depicting & Writing, Chin draws the skyline of Keelung in Depicting & Writing —— the Mountains, Seas, and Sky, by targeting the forgotten triangulation stations in this nature-surrounded seaport and building pillars around Shiqiuling Fort, including the highest point of Keelung Port, Huohao Shan, Ershawan, and Heping Island. Yet, You starts with a more microscopic perspective in Depicting & Writing—— the Shelf of Flowers to closely observe the new ferns on the forts, imagining how far we are from wars in the historical timeline. The contrast between the prospering grasses beside the cannon platform and the cracks and dust of the ruins under the sunshine illustrates the diversity of lives. The two artists explore the connections between the region, objects, and personal emotions through different measuring techniques and perspectives.
Artist Bio
Cheng-Te Chin
Graduated from the Department of Fine Arts at the Chinese Culture University, Cheng-Te Chin is an all-time volunteer at the Little Grass Art Institute. He has been continuously producing postcards using images discovered in Taiwanese historical artifacts as a medium. In terms of artistic creation, he has developed a highly distinctive geographical field method. Chin favors hidden mountain trails, utilizing acts of carving, moving, and erecting stone tablets to engage in conversations with the land, history, and the fleeting words that emerge while wandering in the mountains. His major exhibitions include the solo exhibition “Cold Storage Abstract,” the 9th Busan Biennale in 2018, and the Taipei Biennial in 2020. The “Island Box” he created was presented as a gift from the President at the 21st National Art and Literature Award.
Chia-Chen You
Chia-Chen You, currently studying in the M.F.A. Program at the Taipei National University of Arts (TNUA), Department of Fine Arts, She grew up in the countryside. Her artistic sensibilities have been deeply influenced by the natural environment, leading her to develop a keen interest in various materials found in nature. She often engages in playful interactions and conversations with these materials, resulting in artworks that exhibit experimental, dynamic, and unrestrained creativity. Skilled in using materials to enhance spatial structures, Chia-Chen explores the interplay of time and space with mediums such as soil, plants, and paper pulp. Her work investigates the intricate relationships between humans and objects within a given space while observing the transformative qualities of her chosen materials over time.
Courtesy of the artist
〈Anchi Ring〉
Anchi Ring
《Teeth, Blood and Nostalgia》
2024
Spatial installation
Dimensions variable
《Teeth, Blood and Nostalgia》
Teeth, Blood and Nostalgia tells the story of Jin-Bo Zhou, a dentist and writer living under Japanese rule. Born in Keelung in 1920, Zhou studied in Japan before completing her dentistry degree at Nihon University in 1941. He then inherited the family dental business in Taiwan and submitted several novel drafts to Nishikawa Mitsuru’’s Bungei Taiwan. In his debut novel, Trench Ulcer, which was recorded and broadcast on THK, he tells the story of a dentist returning from Tokyo who encounters a gambling mother more willing to invest in gold teeth than her daughter’s noma treatment. During the Taishō (the 1920s) and early Shōwa (the 1930s) eras, Japan emphasized the issue of dental focal infections and the impact of dental health on overall well-being. In Taiwan, pursuing a career as a doctor was seen as a path to modernity, embodying civilization and financial stability. However, literature faced a more complicated situation, as Zhou’s dual identities as a colonial dentist and a local writer led to a sense of unfulfilled ambition and internal conflict. This paralyzed, voiceless mental state is conveyed through a spatial installation of a dental clinic, where audiences experience the powerlessness and the speechlessness of patients lying in chairs, listening to an official language text being read aloud.
Artist Bio
Born in Toujiacuo, Tanzi, in the winter of 1986, Anchi Ring is a writer, translator, artist, and also an illustrator. While studying in Nara and working in Osaka, Ring became motivated to learn Taiwanese more actively upon realizing her proficiency in Japanese, a foreign language, nearly surpassed her ability in Taiwanese. Specializing in bookmaking and cultural and historical nonfiction, Ring has explored the bilingual reality of Taiwanese literature produced during the Japanese rule since her involvement in the publication of Hipsters’Life in Taipei Never Gets Old (Motifpress Publishing, 2015). In 2019, she transitioned to contemporary art, exhibiting in the AIR program at Treasure Hill Artist Village and participating in the “Sense of Site-specific Artist In Residency At Wan-Hua and Periphery Area” exhibition program curated by Waley Art. Drawing on her personal experiences and academic background, Ring often incorporates literary and historical elements as a form of collective memory in her works, creating video installations through speech-reading performances.
Courtesy of the artist
〈Wu-Han Chou〉
Wu-Han Chou
《A ‘Reib’ Simulator》
2024
Spatial installation
Dimensions variable
《A ‘Reiba’ Simulator》
During the Japanese colonial era, the Japanese created 33 stone Kannon statues, each enshrined in different temples throughout Keelung, to replicate the sacred sites (Utsushi-Reiba) and encourage the act of pilgrimage through these statues. Such an act was certainly done with political and touristic intentions in mind, yet how does one actually recall and replicate the Honyama temples of Japan in Keelung? When the Japanese departed from Taiwan, these temples they left behind eventually grew apart from the Japanese sect, and thus the original connotations and projections behind the statues inevitably underwent changes, their meanings redefined. A ‘Reiba’ Simulator attempts to translate the “simulation” and “pilgrimage” games inspired by the ruins of the “Saigoku Sanjūsan-sho”, by developing these concepts into an architectural space installation.
Artist Bio
Wu-Han Chou uses techniques and borrows the working methods and ideas of architectural design in his work, such as surveying and mapping. He also develops his installation space proposals and compiles them in books as reinterpretations of these urban stories. The artist aims to immerse himself in the process of architectural drafting and model making, exploring without any preconceived notions, capturing emerging elements, and creating spatial images and imagination while seeking possibilities for dreams and interventions. Chou’s work often focuses on the impact of histories from the Japanese colonial period, all the way to the impacts of the contemporary eras. He extensively uses archives to find connections between historical images and the current cityscape, as well as address past activities and urban structures. His work, A ‘Reiba’ Simulator (2023) illustrated the pilgrimage culture in Keelung, which had a strong link with the stone statues of Kannon that were built during the Japanese colonial period.
Courtesy of the artist
Scene Beta. Things as the Historical a priori
Guo-Jie Cai, Engineering of Volcano Detonating, Chia-Yun Wu, Yen-Yen Ho, Nai-Ren Chang, Yu-Sun Wang
The term “thing” represents the objective world in relation to the human subject, denoting a network of relations comprising nature, commerce, the flow of capital, etc., as the result of mutual exchange, consumption, and translation among things themselves. Therefore, objects in the process of interacting and translating each other alter and transform their entities. The historical a priori serves as the formation of historical statements on reality; therefore, attempts to identify how the relationship between things contradicts and changes in a coexisting network to reveal the lurking contextual meanings among themselves.
In Guo-Jie Cai’s work, the process networks are explored to comprehend how natural rainwater transforms into national properties within the process of becoming a nation-state. The work on Engineering of Volcano Detonating has evolved from urban legends, volcanoes, seabed, and mysterious geographical investigations of aliens, transitioning from ‘reification’ to reality. Yen-Yen Ho’s work illustrates the alternative economy of Keelung’s shipping industry in Taiwan, the neo-industrial economics as one of the Four Asian Tigers in the 1970s. Nai-Ren Chang presents the family memory of the flexible micro-economy and retail business, Living Rooms as Factories, in relation to global logistics.Yu-Sun Wang addresses Keelung’s historic neighborhoods from the perspective of advertising signs of the food culture in the neighborhoods. Chia-Yun Wu’s works illustrate the historical nature of the museum building itself in relation to its aesthetic ideology of the Nationalist Party. Scene Beta encompasses the interrelationship between culture, nature, and personal memory—an essential interpretation of the transformed “thingness.” It seeks to delineate both the continuity and rupture of history as well, in one overarching discursive formation, the unapproachable real quality of things that cannot be contained in empirical history.
〈Engineering of Volcano Detonating〉
Engineering of Volcano Detonating
《The History of Yen: Sea of Volcanic Islands》
2022-2024
Multi-channel video installation, document
Dimensions variable
《The History of Yen: Sea of Volcanic Islands》
The History of Yen: Sea of Volcanic Islands continues the creative research practice of the volcano exploration team in recent years. The group collected data from interviews, collaborations, and field studies conducted by the earth science research institute, the Taiwan UFOlogy Society, and the Taiwan Society for Psychical Research. A vision of the relationship between volcanoes, the ocean, and humans intertwines scientific narrative, science fiction imagination, and non-scientific rumors. The Yen, a collective term for living beings and communities around volcanoes, is linked to the history of the 1867 Keelung tsunami. Folklore about UFOs told by Ketagalan elders and residents of the “Sea of Volcanic Islands” reshapes the history of Taiwan’s northern seashore and volcanic islands, including Keelung Island, Pengjia Island, Mianhua Island, Huaping Island, and Sheliao Island.
Artist Bio
Engineering of Volcano Detonating, was formed by Ting-Yu Liang, Po-Yen Hsu, Chun-Chan Lu, and Guan-Hong Lu in 2016. Since 2018, the group has started The Volcanoes Project, a series of corporeal interventions and field surveys of volcanic craters. Using the communities and histories of the Datun Volcanic Group and the offshore volcanic islands, as well as the concept of “neg-geography” developed in 2019, they explore the practice of geo-art in scientific and non-scientific forms of knowledge production and social performance.They focus on the intersection of parapsychology, ufology, and volcanology, and the possibilities of intellectual exchanges and collaborations between them. Their ongoing research concerns the relationship between volcanoes, cities, and humans. They have been awarded the “CREATORS – Creation/Research Support” (2020-2022, C-LAB) and the “Kaohsiung Awards” Merit award (2022, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts). Their essays have been published in the Taiwan Natural Science and Kunpu journals.
Special thanks to College of Earth Sciences, National Central University; Taiwan Volcano Observatory; Taiwan UFOlogy Society; Taiwan Society for Psychical Research
Courtesy of the artist
〈Guo-Jie Cai〉
Guo-Jie Cai
《Beyond the System: Rainwater-powered Charging Station》
2022-2024
Model installation, document, video
Dimensions variable
《Beyond the System: Rainwater-powered Charging Station》
Raindrops do not belong to any country, city, system, or subject before they hit the ground. Guo-Jie Csai’’s proposed artwork for this exhibition, Beyond the System: Rainwater-powered Charging Station, is a “distributable hydroelectric project.”. It allows the audience to access the electricity generated by rainwater from the water tower of Keelung. The “power” granted by rainwater and the live camera feed of the water tower is displayed side-by-side, emphasizing the conflict between the multitude and the system. This hydraulic installation, which symbolizes the idle public function, is transformed through the concept of the artist. The sub-project of Half-Field Plan, Beyond the System: Rainwater-powered Charging Station aims to illustrate how individuals act under the pressure of our systems, presenting the relations between systems, events, ownership, and the masses. He explores how voices can be raised in the discussion on weather, resources, rainfall, storage, supplies, attributions, standards, rules, discretion, and technical problems within these relations.
Artist Bio
Artist Guo-Jie Cai believes that art is about creating descriptions of differences; he contends that artists cannot give up building the power of art in the name of art. Initiating the spatial experiment Half Field Plan, the artist interprets institutional errors and generates an artistic space, a series of behaviors that mark the boundaries of interspace, exploring the concept of “power field” in art. In a fully encoded and verified world, where ambiguity has been eliminated by the “Four Adjacent Parcels,” how can the inherent errors of the system be re-materialized and archived to intervene urban spaces and systems?
Through the interpretations of such urban errors, Cai interprets the generated space by the generative system itself through methods of creating innovative art spaces, once again intervening, integrating, and infiltrating into social systems and spaces. With the series of Half-Field Plan, choice becomes an act of empowerment; mutual understanding becomes a game of power. Cai places his focus on the transfer of permission from “concept” to “entity”, relating the ownership of the gap/differences between boundaries. Thus, the “power of boundaries” and the “power of desire” of the artificial boundary can help us perceive the opposing “infinite”–the freedom we yearn for. In 2023, Cai received the Kaohsiung Award (Project-based and Interdisciplinary Art), and has held several solo and group exhibitions both domestically and internationally.
Courtesy of the artist
〈Chia-Yun Wu〉
Chia-Yun Wu
《Northscape》
2024
Spatial installation
Dimensions variable
《Northscape》
Following the recent renovation, the Keelung Museum of Art welcomes the public with a fresh appearance, while some of the interior decoration still preserves the characteristics of northern Chinese palaces. This seems to reflect the ever-changing and inclusive nature of Taiwan’s history, as well as its chaos and vibrancy, simultaneously preserving both the building’s aesthetic beauty and historical imprints. Yet, the memories of the North now are constantly fading in and out of focus. Is it still the motherland we long for? Or has it slowly become a foreign land? Wu recalls her middle school ink painting classes, where she would imagine the perspectives of ancient artists and attempt to draw from landscapes she had never seen before. In the brush, she found herself both adept and increasingly distant from her subject. Later, she visited The Lin Family Mansion and Garden, which preserves the most complete examples of garden architecture and came to understand how the splendid rockeries and artificial hills reflect the immigrants’ nostalgia for their cultural roots in their homeland. Thus, by constructing gardens, they pass on the memories of their hometown. Northscape is located beneath the palace decoration of the museum. It mixes ink-wash landscape and garden artificial hills to symbolize the obsession and confusion towards history across different generations with its ambiguous shape. Using mapping and inversion, the installation reproduces an invisible ceiling depicting Taiwan’s layered history and invites audiences to explore the relationship between personal identity and nationality.
Artist Bio
Born in 1988, in Taiwan, Chia-Yun Wu is an artist and filmmaker based in New York. She received an MA in Visual Communication from the Royal College of Art and an MFA in Motion Picture from the National Taiwan University of Arts. Starting from film, her creative works have expanded to spatial installations and conceptual directing. In order to explore the materiality of images, she extends the methods of narrative, scene design, and cinematographic language to transmedia experiments and develops dynamic-static images that penetrate different media. Besides her ontological expanded cinema projects, she also creates fiction films that explore indescribable issues of life such as the sense of belonging, freedom, and the human condition by using character and plot-driven storytelling. Her films reflect the hidden turbulence within the tranquility and reveal the invisible and intangible nature of everyday emotions.
Courtesy of the artist
〈Yen-Yen Ho〉
Yen-Yen Ho
《Seemingly Never Been》
2024
Stone, concrete, plaster, sponge, steel plate, tainted oil, dye, etchant, wood, pigment, blueprint, paper sheet
Dimensions variable
《Seemingly Never Been》
Reflecting on her memories from three years ago aboard a fishing vessel, Ho incorporated her experiences and those of the vessel into her work. The lineage of the large vessel serves as a puzzle piece in understanding the hidden realities faced by Taiwan’s distant-water fishing industry under international market sanctions from the 1980s to the late 2000s. Simultaneously, the ruined fishing boat, with its rich and mysterious existence, opens up the creator’s exploration of temporal and spatial states.
As the ship approaches its imminent scrapping,Yan-Yan Ho invites the current ship owner, shipbuilder, and engineer to delve into the details of the fishing vessel’s space from the perspective of structural and materials engineering. Through the fictional potential inherent in the site itself, utilizing retrospective and imaginative rhetoric, the project navigates through the modifications and dismantling of the compartments. Seemingly Never Been guides the audience back to the inspiration brought by visual and materiality, gradually piecing together the appearance of a large ship in their minds.
Artist Bio
Yen-Yen Ho was born in 1993, Taipei, graduated from M.F.A. in School of Fine Arts, Taipei National University of Arts. Her works are often inspired by personal experience through observation of the present. With the knowledge of science, specifically astronomy and geography, she presents the metaphorical state of mind through works. By putting together objects into site-specific works, grasping the connection between space and narrative, the works capture the connectivity and looseness between reality and fiction. HO was awarded the 2017 Next Art Tainan Award, shortlisted for the 2020 Kaohsiung Award, and received the 2016 Taoyuan Contemporary Art Award. She participated in a residency in Seoul Art Space Geumcheon, Korea in 2017.
Special thanks to James Fwu Naval Architect Firm、 Chao-Hai Lee
Courtesy of the artist
〈Nai-Ren Chang〉
Nai-Ren Chang
《Ping-xin Dong-lian》
2019-2024
Printing, metal, cardboard, video
Dimensions variable
《Ping-xin Dong-lian》
In this work, the artist uses a document-style format to display merchandise shelves, bags with word prints, and other large prints to depict the current state of factories–to showcase the relationship between Taiwan’s economic history and the challenges local small and medium-sized enterprises endure in order to survive. By contrasting his father’s business with the owner of an operating factory in Taipei, Chang examines how factories survive in a highly competitive market. As such a microeconomic unit alludes to a grander historical structure, the artist attempts to envision what life would be like if his father’s career persisted. Chang also made a film, in which a cargo ship departs from Keelung Port. Carrying goods to unknown destinations, the burning cardboard boxes resemble the release of the water lanterns during the Keelung Zhongyuan Festival. The invisible imagery and unreachable desires created and associated with both acts transform the distant unknown into a spiritual connection to ashes and deities. Through the vision of departing from the earthly world and entering the realm of the dead, the artist hints at the irreversibility of transporting goods in a world of global industrial chains. Though seemingly unimportant at first glance, cardboard boxes play a vital role in our globalized economy as they travel beyond the reach of their manufacturers.
Artist Bio
Nai-Ren Chang was born in Miaoli in 1987. He received his master’s degree from the Tainan National University of the Arts (TNNUA), Graduate Institute of Plastic Arts. Chang disassembles and reproduces media in his works, which are primarily videos, kinetic installations, or multi-media installations. He creates a heterogeneous primary ecosystem by breaking down and reconstructing media to highlight its inherent structure. He also uses different materials to echo the content and express his nostalgia for Mother Nature. Chang blends local experiences into his works and has participated in several art residencies, including Pier-2 Art Center, Kaohsiung (2018), Taipei Artist Village (2019), Seoul Art Space Geumcheon (2019), and Waley Art (2020). He was the recipient of several awards, including the 9th Taoyuan Contemporary Art Award: Merit Award (2011), the Arising Artist Award of New Taipei City: Judges’ Award (2012), the Kaohsiung Award: Judges’ Award (2014), the Taipei Arts Award: Judges’ Award (2014), and the ART TAIPEI: MIT – Young Artists (2021).
Courtesy of the artist
〈Yu-Sun Wang〉
Yu-Sun Wang
《Arousing Tastes》
2024
Action theater, installation, video
Dimensions variable
《Arousing Tastes》
As a place that has been ravaged by multiple wars, Keelung was once a land of a haunting past. The memories of this city have been overwhelmed and dismantled by the capriciousness of the times, causing them to suffer and lose their physical form. The historical ghosts that float around the alleys and lanes of Keelung have had their “physical form” taken away, and these invisible and intangible thoughts need a “physical form” to rely on for solace. In Taiwanese folk religion, particular cakes are often used as offerings for worship and serve as a means of commemoration and healing. The sense of taste provides a physical manifestation of ghosts from the past, which allows historical events to be sublimated. In the artwork Arousing Tastes, Wang uses the image of laboring street vendors and nostalgic food carts to introduce the history of vanished buildings in Keelung through a video work. He transforms these buildings into quotidian cakes and links the commercial content, locations, and history of Keelung’’s architecture on old matchboxes to create an “action theater” that tells the story of Keelung’s ordinary people.
Artist Bio
Yu-Sun Wang was born in Yonghe, Taipei, in 1975. He graduated from the Department of Fine Arts at Taipei National University of the Arts. His works focus on the early phenomenon of “contract manufacturing” in Taiwan, exploring the internal spirit of local culture. Contract manufacturing relied on highly specialized skills, and both large and small businesses made Taiwan a dream factory for Santa Claus, with contractors acting as “little elves” who made every wish come true. Wang’s elderly relatives experienced the bitterness of domestic migration and national change in the early days of Taiwan. They also went through the predicament of having “Living Rooms as Factories’’- a situation in which they could not escape. At that time, cultural and manual production coexisted in the spaces between neighbors, upstairs and downstairs, windows at criss-crossing alleys, houses, street corners, and so on. Elderly people, mothers, and children worked and lived in these multi-purpose studio spaces as the radio played in the background. These contractors were their own bosses and employees, much like those on the “frontier” and the “frontline,” and shared a similar creative environment scenario to the artist. Apart from working on brocade, satin, and glittery gowns, Wang uses hand-painted and ink-stained techniques to illustrate the life stories of his elderly relatives, allowing the audience to enter every emotional landscape of Taiwan through his works.
Courtesy of the artist
Scene Gamma. Cold Cold War
Musquiqui Chihying, Tien-Chang Wu, Yi-Chi Lin, The Sand Pebbles
In October 1945, two months after the atomic bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, George Orwell wrote an article titled “You and the Atomic Bomb.” In it, Orwell considered the world order of the Cold War, living in the shadow of the threat of nuclear war; he used the term to speculate on ‘mass destruction’ in the Post-Atomic Age and its impact on geopolitics. In Taiwan, within the “Anti-Communist Revival Frontier,” there exists a state of tension akin to being friezed in preparation for a hot zone of military conflict, while also haunted by the shadow of the ‘White Terror’ that haunted the island. The complex confrontational relationship between Taiwan, China, and the United States has been internalized into the fabric of daily life, permeating worldviews, popular culture, the population, and even commemorative coins, among other things, creating a terrifying state of preparedness for conflicts within the social body. Tien-Chang Wu examines the culture of memory at Keelung Port as a national allegory. Yi-Chi Lin discusses the biographies of Taiwanese and American mixed-race individuals in the 1960s; Musquiqui Chihying’s issuance of commemorative coins reveals the hidden stories of a bloodstained and tearful journey from China and Taiwan to the frontier of globalization in Africa. These events represent the physical experiences of individual lives under the logic of the global Cold War.
At the same time, The Sand Pebbles was filmed, depicting the Nanjing Incident, a conflict during the Chinese Civil War when the United States Navy was involved in the 1920s. This fictional Hollywood production, starring Steve McQueen—nicknamed the“King of Cool,”culminates with his character being shot dead by nationalist forces at the end of the film, portraying him as a tragic hero. Released in 1966, the film was a hit and earned McQueen his only Oscar nomination. Due to the standoff of the Cold War, Hollywood’s global filmmaking strategy was limited to shooting in the Free China, Taiwan. Most of the Yangtze River scenes were filmed at Keelung Port, especially the panoramic view of the San Pablo gunboat sailing out of Keelung Harbor at the end of the film. Although a fictional Hollywood production, the film paradoxically documents the Cold War confrontation and collaboration between Taiwan, the United States, and China of that era. It preserves the notions of white supremacy, Orientalism, and stereotypes of Asian women, replicating them in the reality of images. During that time, Keelung’s exotic food and bars, influenced by American style, were intertwined with Hollywood’s global cultural industry.
〈Tien-Chang Wu〉
Tien-Chang Wu
《Love Song in Harbour City》
2022
4K video
6’32’’
《Love Song in Harbour City》
The exhibition piece, Love Song in Harbour City, showcases the artist’s desires and imaginations toward nationality and constructs the rich and diverse collective memories of Taiwan in the past half-century since the war. Using Jin-Huai Wu’s Taiwanese folk song, Love Song in Harbour City, the artist expresses his own emotions toward Taiwan through the singing of seabirds, sailors, and soldiers. By highlighting the historical atmosphere of the Cold War through the harbor, forts, and tablets, the artist brings attention to the most significant national identity issue in Taiwan today and poses the crucial question of “who” and “why” we are fighting for.
Artist Bio
Born in 1956 in Changhua, Taiwan, Tien-Chang Wu graduated from the Fine Arts Department of Chinese Culture University. During the 1980s, he created oil paintings on political and historical themes, which made him a pioneer in the Taiwanese art scene. In the 1990s, he turned to the mixed media of photography and initiated the “Taike Aesthetic” movement. In 2000, he began using digital composition and body movement design to create “staged photography,” producing powerful and haunting images. He later transitioned to video art in 2010, using one continuous shot and computer editing to create eerie and captivating work. Wu represented Taiwan twice at the Venice Biennale, first in 1997 and then in 2015 at the Taiwan Pavilion.
Courtesy of the artist
〈Musquiqui Chihying〉
Musquiqui Chihying
《The Cultural Center》
2018-2024
Installation, zinc alloy, magnifying glass, 5 coins
Dimensions variable
《The Cultural Center》
In the installation The Cultural Center, Chihying uses display techniques commonly used in museums and cultural institutions to discuss and present images. The work consists of a set of five commemorative coins and transparent monochrome images, inspired by the “China’s Treasure Island of Taiwan General Commemorative Coins” issued by the Chinese government for political propaganda between 2003 and 2005. The artist continues with object design that carries geopolitical imagination and declaration in his new set of commemorative coins, each featuring one of the five African cultural institutions that were founded or constructed by multinational Chinese firms. These institutions include a theater, two cultural palaces, a history museum, and an art museum. The monochrome image boards displayed on the circular light boxes were used as the initial reference material to inspire the design of the coins. In reality, they reveal the global history of colonialism that transcends national borders and time, connecting the invisible nodes behind political tensions into a visible artwork.
Artist Bio
Musquiqui Chihying is a filmmaker and visual artist based in Taipei and Berlin. He explores the cultural and social identities constructed through the flow and circulation of audiovisual elements in physical and virtual spacetime. Specializing in the use of multimedia such as film and sound, he investigates the human condition and environmental system in the age of global capitalisation and engages in the inquiry of and research on issues of subjectivity in contemporary social culture in the Global South. His works have been shown in several international institutions and film festivals, such as 72nd Berlinale (2022), Art Sonje Center in Seoul (2021), Centre Pompidou in Paris (2020), International Film Festival Rotterdam (2020), 2016 Taipei Biennial, 10th Shanghai Biennale (2014) etc. He is shortlisted for the 2019 Berlin Art Prize and the winner of the Loop Barcelona Video Art Production Award 2019 from Han Nefkens Foundation in collaboration with the Fundació Joan Miró. He is a member of the Taiwanese art group Fuxinghen Studio, and the founder of the Research Lab of Image and Sound.
Courtesy of the artist
〈Yi-Chi Lin〉
Yi-Chi Lin
《(In)visible Visitor: Keelung Port》
2024
4K video installation, color, sound
Dimensions variable
《(In)visible Visitor》
During the Cold War, the United States military stationed advisory groups in Taiwan, leading to the appearance of many Western-style buildings and entertainment establishments that sprang up between 1951 and 1979. The presence of these establishments resulted in the births of many mixed-race, Taiwanese-American children; left behind by their American fathers, these children were largely forgotten. These children were often discriminated against due to their appearances, and, left without their fathers, were looked down upon by the conservatism of Taiwanese society back then–the children thus endured a great deal of psychological pressure. Due to their “visible” physical appearances and yet “invisible” life experiences, these mixed-race children have become a witness to history, as symbols of Taiwan’s Cold War era. With such, artist Yi-Chin Lin invited Michael (Hanzhong Qiu), a mixed-race senior, to undergo hypnosis; Lin’s project captures and records how mixed-race individuals experience certain spiritual images beyond objective reality during hypnosis, while also revealing how the hypnosis method may fail. The work also addresses, despite how the individual lives, the soul–dominated by history and authority–may remain misplaced.
Simultaneously, the artwork makes an effort to investigate the bars near Keelung Port, once frequented by the American military. Lin chose the oldest and only remaining American-style bar, the Columbus Bar, and proceeded to project the video of the hypnosis process there. By recording the oral accounts of the local elders on the history of the U.S. military in Keelung, as well as incorporating a contemporary art perspective into the study of the U.S.-Taiwan aid during the Cold War, the (In)visible Visitor project aims to shed light onto the untold stories of the era.
Artist Bio
Born in 1986, Lin Yi-Chi now lives and works in Taipei. Lin received her Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the Taipei National University of the Arts. With educational backgrounds in both contemporary art and film production, her works take the form of video art, experimental cinema, and video installation. In recent years, Lin’s practice centers on the diaspora experiences within Asian geopolitics. Memories and dreams are collected through field investigation, and the dynamic images are transformed into her medium of necromancy. Individual life narratives are re-interpreted and re-enacted into a re-enchantment scenario, which she employs to summon the marginal voices and re-produce bonds among nationalities, histories, and collective memories.
Lin was recently invited to exhibit works in the Jakarta Biennale (2022), 13th Gwangju Biennale (2021), and the Biennale Jogja 2019, as well as her solo exhibition “Selamat, the Messenger over the Sea” (2022) at Hong-Gah Museum, Taiwan. She has also participated in numerous domestic and international curatorial projects, film festivals, and artist residencies. Also, Lin has been accoladed with the Special Jury Prize at Huayu Youth Award (2021), First Prize at Miami Beach Pulse Prize (2019), First Prize of Golden Harvest Awards for Best Experimental Film (2021 & 2019), Finalist at the 16th Taishin Arts Award (2018), First Prize of Kaohsiung Award (2018), MIT New Artist Award by the Ministry of Culture (2018), and Honorable Mention of Taipei Arts Awards (2018).The unique atmosphere her artworks create is outstandingly experimental and subversive.
Courtesy of the artist
Scene Delta. Politics of Exosomatic Memory
Chris Marker, Fei-Hao Chen, Chao-Liang Shen, Ching-Tai Ho, Papaya Costermonger at Keelung Harbor
Writing represents the earliest and most mature form of exosomatic memory. With the evolution of memory technology, from manual replication and mechanical reproduction to current digital virtualization, various mediations reflect the outcome of exosomatic memory. The temporality of memory, transitioning from “it-has-been” to “it-will-be,” often serves as evidence and testimony of the history-to-come—a kind of memorandum bestowed upon the future. The political relationship between memory objects, methods, and technologies can also mark the trajectory of subjectivity. Artists utilize self-reflexive external memories to speculate on the positions of their subjects and objects. Among them, Chris Marker’s prophecy announces the labyrinth of digital virtual reality. Fei-Hao Chen employs the reconstruction of archives and documents into Keelung’s new historical memory; Ching-Tai Ho speculates on the politics of technology in relation to wet-plate photography and indigenous people. The photography work of Chao-Liang Shen captures the primary scenes of the four-hundred-year history, serving as a mediated biography of Taiwan.
A footnote to the media reproduction technology of the Japanese era is the 78-rpm gramophone record Papaya Costermonger at Keelung Harbor, featuring lyrics by Itsurō Yamamoto, music composed by Shizuo Toki, and performed by Shin Segawa. The piece presents the technology of sound reproduction in Japan and how it mediates the colonial subject. On one hand, it portrays the imagination of the exotic colonized and the imagination of the port, specifically Keelung. On the other hand, the song, together with its exosomatic technology, reflects the cultural and artistic sentiments of the era as a kitsch product within the cultural industry. The issue of who can remember, which usually lurks in the entangled dark corners of history, addresses the politics of art.
〈Chris Marker〉
Chris Marker
《Immemory》
1997
CD-ROM
Dimensions variable
《Immemory》
Immemory (1997) was Marker’s first multimedia CD-ROM project, a computer game and a non-linear memoir. He used the elements of subtitles montages, and mixed multiple layers of material pieces in the work to represent the images flashing past our minds. He explained the idea of “memory” comprising several relevant incidents and recollections that fade away with time through voice-overs. The audiences are the players through the experience of ‘pausing’ and ‘playing’ the video at different sections. Moreover, the actions of audiences clicking and watching videos can trigger the production of memories. The concept of “I’m memory” implies that memories are composed of the collective experiences rather than the perspective of a person. Marker ingeniously arranged various images and videos with different playback speeds and sizes, exploring the interaction of image and memory.
Artist Bio
Chris Marker, Christian Francois Bouche-Villeneuve (1921–2012), was a famous French writer, film director, photographer, and multimedia artist engaged in interdisciplinary artistic productions. He is viewed as a unique pioneer in both the film and art fields. As a leftist artist, Marker traveled extensively throughout the political hotspots in the 20th century, including the Soviet Union, Israel, Cuba, Japan, and China. He wrote plenty of political commentaries during his journalism career after World War II. He also made documentary films featuring political and cultural recognition issues, telling stories such as Anti-Vietnam War protests and strikes in the 60s. Since the 1950s, Marker has started to adopt abundant interview footage, letters, famous quotes, old movie clips, photographs and postcard collections in his work, and eventually developed his distinctive style of essay film. Voice-over also plays a crucial role in Marker’s films, where Marker himself or a cartoon version of his beloved cat represents the narrators. With the above elements, Marker created a virtual “traveler” that wanders through time and space, exploring video art and offering the audience different ways to interpret “travel” in “texts.” His famous works include La Jetée (1962), Sans Soleil (1983), and Level 5 (1996).
Special thanks to Roy Lee、Daniel L. Potter、Christine Van Assche, Conservatrice honoraire, Centre Pompidou
〈Fei-Hao Chen〉
Fei-Hao Chen
《The Tale of Daijisho: The Secret Chapters of Keelung》
2019-2024
Video installation
Dimensions variable
《The Tale of Daijisho: The Secret Chapters of Keelung》
The Tale of Daijisho: The Secret Chapters of Keelung is a work inspired by the classic Japanese literature The Tale of Genji and Baku Yumemakura’s Hichou Genji-Monogatari Okina, a contemporary adaptation that transforms The Tale of Genji into fantasy literature through reconstruction of historical perspectives and cultural reenactment. Similarly, Chen’s two works, Hae-eo-hwa Shinjū (2022) and Prince Kitashirakawa Yoshihisa, Taiwan West Coast Line and Moon Over the Ruined Castle (2019), drew on the performance art related to the Japanese rule and the project, “The story of the Seal of the Government-General of Taiwan” respectively, which depicts the diverse experiences of life of Taiwanese people in the Japanese colonial period. “The Secret Chapters of Keelung” focuses on contemporary Keelung and investigates local stories off the beaten path.
Artist Bio
Born in 1985, Fei-Hao Chen specializes in writing and employing conceptual photography and moving images to interpret various issues related to historical, cultural, and social changes. The artist also explores the possibilities of multimedia by combining images with installations, videos, and literature. He participated in Taipei Biennial 2016 and Tokyo Biennale 2020/2021. In 2022, his solo exhibition “Murder-Suicide in the South of Empire” was held in the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei.
Courtesy of the artist
〈Chao-Liang Shen〉
Chao-Liang Shen
《Ｈistorical Sites from the Authoritarian Period-Xindian Military Prison/Keelung Port》
2020-2024
Photography, video
《Ｈistorical Sites from the Authoritarian Period-Xindian Military Prison/Keelung Port》
On March 8th, 1947, the Nationalist Government deployed troops to Keelung Port to quell the unrest caused by the 228 Incident. After disembarking at the West No.2 and No.3 piers, the troops clashed with civilians, eventually leading to indiscriminate street arrests and killings. Suspected criminals and innocent citizens alike were tied up by iron wires around their palms and ankles, shot and pushed into the bay now the East Coast Plaza and the Tianliao River. Keelung, the gateway to Northern Taiwan, was instantly filled with brutality and bleakness.
The Xindian Military Prison, established in 1952, was the site where the Ministry of National Defense carried out sentences during the White Terror period in Taiwan. It was not until martial law was lifted in 1987 that the prison stopped detaining political prisoners. As the longest-operating prison for political detainees, it stands as a testament to the state violence during Taiwan’’s White Terror era. The prison has a radial layout, with five buildings named Ren, Yi, Li, Zhi, and Xin surrounding the central building. The majority of political prisoners were held in the Ren and Zhi buildings.
Responding to the possibility of the above-mentioned spatial/landscape writing, The Injustice Site – Xindian Military Prison/Keelung Port is a photographic reproduction and visual construction of the interior and exterior space of the Xindian Military Prison during the White Terror and Keelung Harbor where the 228 incident took place.
Artist Bio
Chao-Liang Shen was born in Tainan, Taiwan in 1968. He graduated from the Graduate School of Applied Media Arts at the National Taiwan University of Arts and served as a photojournalist and Vice Convener for the Entertainment, Art and Literature News Center of the Liberty Times. Shen is currently engaged in visual projects, commentary, and research, and has been invited to host workshops and curate exhibitions. Shen also serves on the 9th and 10th boards of directors of the National Culture and Arts Foundation. He is also an associate professor at National Taiwan University of the Arts, and is the convener of Photo ONE. Shen has received numerous awards, including the Golden Tripod Award for Best Photography in the magazine category of Taiwan (2000, 2002, and 2012), the Asia Award in Sagamihara, Japan (2004), the Dong-gang Photography Award, Korea (2006), the Artists Wanted: Photography Category Award, NY, USA (2011), the first place in Professional: Book of Documentary in the International Photography Awards, LA, USA (2012), and the Wu San-Lien Award (2015).
Courtesy of the artist
〈Ching-Tai Ho〉
Ching-Tai Ho
《A Hundred Years’ Covenant Between Man and God – the Paiwan Maljeveq festival》
2018
Wet-plate photography, aluminum base plate
20.32×25.4 cm
《A Hundred Years’ Covenant Between Man and God- the Paiwan Maljeveq festival》
A Hundred Years’ Covenant Between Man and God – the Paiwan Maljeveq Festival is a photo series by Ho documenting the traditional Maljeveq Festival of the Tjuabal tribe of the Eastern Paiwan. By implementing traditional wet-plate photography, the artist hopes to capture the sacred and ancient aspects of the Maljeveq Festival, intending to convey rich cultural content through a traditional photographic approach. The photos were developed in a darkroom converted from a car immediately after shooting. Despite the complex and error-prone process, the resulting images bear the marks of handcrafted artistry. For Ho, this technique represents a resistance to the dominance of digital imagery and a return to the essence of photography.
Artist Bio
Born in Busan, South Korea in 1956, Ching-Tai Ho graduated from the Department of Philosophy at National Chengchi University. He has worked as a photographer for various publications, including CommonWealth Magazine, China Times Weekly, Min Sheng Bao, Independence Morning Post, Independence Evening Post, China Times News Weekly, and Commercial Times. He also served as Director of Photography for Playboy’s Chinese edition, Chief Editor of Photography for Smart Business Weekly, and Deputy Editor of Mingpao Weekly. In 1990, he held a solo exhibition, Shadowed Life at the Xiamen Photography Gallery, and published a photography portfolio under the same title. The File of White Terror exhibition and portfolio was exhibited in Taipei Jazz Photo Gallery and published in 1991. The artist participated in Eslite Bookstore and Taipei Photo Gallery with his work Industrial Injury, and was featured in Kunsten Festival des Arts in 1995. In 2003, Ho exhibited Industrial Injury II in Taipei NGO House, published The Color of the Kapok Blossom: Occupational Injury Victims, and won the 7th Taipei Cultural Award in 2003.
Courtesy of the artist
Scene Epsilon. Archive Fever
Yi-Chun Lin, Shang-Hsi Cheng, Chin-Yun Kuo, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Hung-Chih Peng
Archives can access the unconscious of history; thus, they always inscribe contradictions and irrationality feverishly, akin to the unconscious. The writing of archive fever thereby resembles a children’s toy called a “wunderblock,” marked by repeated writing and erasure, embodying chaos with stacked and unidentifiable marks. The earliest storage place of archives was the home of the ‘archon’; therefore, the site where the “archive fever” occurred was the “home,” where the primary scenes of the unconscious were inscribed and preserved. The sudden transformation of the “home” between forgetting and memory is the uncanny place of the “unheimlich” in psychoanalytic theory. Through various media carriers, the inscription operations of “archive fever” oscillate between alteration, destruction, and delay. Vietnamese director Trinh T. Minh-ha interprets the Mekong Delta as a repository of political and cultural memories dependent on the homeland. Just as she has emphasized in her past work, the narrative of visual storytelling is grounded in “speaking-nearby.” Hung-Chih Peng’s personal experience of his own house demanded mystical catharsis through artistic rituals. Yi-Chun Lin’s artistic research places the task of the role of the indigenous leader’s translator akin to the cultural allegory expressed in the proverb, “Traduttore, traditore” (translator, traitor). Through the defaced obelisk of Prince Kitashirakawa, Chin-Yun Kuo meditates the biosphere of the immigrants of Keelung. The homegrown photographer Shang-Hsi Cheng documented the urbanization process of Keelung as home since the 1960s, recording the changing history of urbanization of home and offering image archives for the future. These ever-changing writing impressions on the complexity of home mark human deep desire and longing.
〈Yi-Chun Lin〉
Yi-Chun LIN
《Circularity》
2024
Mixed media installation, sound, performance
Dimensions variable
《Circularity》
Circularity takes the contact zone’s geospatial environment and Quimaurri community leader Theodore Hermano as the artwork’s starting point, to explore the embodied agency of a middle-ground and its temporal-spatial journey of entwining deep materiality, and interplay/connection of events. With Taiwan being a colonial center during Dutch and Spanish rule, some indigenous people who spoke foreign languages became translators, mediators, or middlemen during the colonial period. In Spanish, “Hermano” stands for “brother” or someone with whom a person shares a close bond. Within the context of colonization, this term can also imply the colonists’ manipulative motivations, a label designated by them to those whom they considered as glorious, resourceful, or worth protecting. In Yi-Chun Lin’s project Circularity, the arts presents “Hermanos” in diverse modalities and forms, inviting audiences to explore the more direct and inharmonious motivations led by colonization and the settling in different environments–by taking a direct glimpse at the history.
Artist Bio
Yi-Chun Lin obtained an MFA degree in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work captures the fragmented and phrases of the transition elements within the modern daily system. Also, exploring the transformations and fluidity that occur under material, identity, and memory. Lin currently participates in long-term projects of art creation and cultural action, as well as a number of exhibitions and collaborations with art communities, including Mediations Biennale Polska (2022), Asian Art Biennial (2022), Migratory Earth God: The Divine Land History of Beitou Bau-De Palace (Bau-De Palace, 2020), Challenging Time: Online Exchange and Research Residency Program between Thailand and Taiwan (Hong-gah Museum, Jim Thompson Art Center, 2020), and Okinawa Asia International Peace Art Project 2020 (Haebaru Cultural Center, 2020). She was also once elected the Taipei Arts Award (2015), and was one of the curators of “Sisyphus Ver. 20.18” at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Digital Ark in 2018.
Courtesy of the artist
〈Shang-Hsi Cheng〉
Shang-Hsi Cheng
《Port 》
1955-1966Nostalgia
Gelatin silver photograph
《Port Nostalgia》
Port Nostalgia is Cheng’s masterpiece, documenting in detail the urban development of Keelung during the 1950s and 1960s. One of his most extensive and prolific series, it encompasses a range of celebrations, landmarks, customs, and diverse experiences of people’s lives in his hometown. Cheng’s geographic proximity enabled him to repeatedly capture the same scene at different times, from various angles and with different equipment, resulting in multiple images and pictures. His documentary-style photography authentically preserves the culture and urban landscape of Keelung during that period, possessing tremendous historical value.
Artist Bio
Born in Keelung in 1937, Cheng embarked on his photography journey using a Pigeon camera during high school. At eighteen, the budding photographer joined the New Harvest Film Festival, founded by photographer Tsai Chang, and frequently exchanged ideas with fellow members. After university, Cheng worked at the Government Information Office, where he excelled in developing a powerful humanistic documentary style. Emphasizing the authenticity of his work, Cheng has a talent for capturing fleeting, realistic images while also presenting the natural appearances of his subjects, granting the photographer a sense of alibi.
Collection of Keelung Museum of Art
〈Chin-Yun Kuo〉
Chin-Yun Kuo
《Monument》
2024
Multi-channel video installation, 5.1 surround
Dimensions variable
《Monument》
A monument bearing a damaged inscription was discovered in an alley near the container port. Research indicates that this monument was erected approximately a century ago to honor Prince Kitashirakawa Yoshihisa, who took part in the Japanese invasion of Taiwan alongside the Imperial Guard. Within six months of his arrival, various rumors surrounding the Prince’’s death spread across the island of Taiwan. The imperial family member was exiled to the colony to “reclaim the homeland,” an unusual occurrence. As a symbol of colonial power, the Prince was celebrated as the god of territorial expansion by Imperial Japan. The colonists erected 38 monuments in locations where the death rumors began. The monument found in the port city of Keelung is the only one that remained intact or was not replaced after the regime change.
A man carting a monument appeared in an alley near the harbor, where a group of people with a shared fate of exile had gathered. The labor demand in maritime transportation across different eras attracted coal miners from Wenzhou, dockworkers, Amis deep-sea fishers, Southeast Asian fishermen, and other migrants to the area. They moved along the margins of the system, salvaging discarded materials and building settlements on untamed wastelands. Their maritime experiences, navigating between the high seas not governed by any national laws and various systems, as well as their complex life histories formed within multiple temporal orders, resist the ancestry and orthodoxy imposed by national myths.
Artist Bio
Chin-Yun Kuo’s artwork focuses on the multi-layered landscape created by contemporary diaspora and postcolonial experiences. She interprets the human influence on landscapes and reconstructs collective consciousness through field study, oral history interviews, and documentary research. Based on her own immigration experiences, she explores the concept of “the place of arrival,” the liminal space occupied by immigrants, and challenges the essentialized history of state formation by considering individual memories within communities.
Special thanks to Morning Rain Studio、Sheming LTD.、Heping Island Park、Keelung City Cultural Affairs Bureau、Second Floor Bar、Jie ZHAN、Han-Jin ZHAN、Hsiao-Yu TSAI
〈Trịnh Thị Minh Hà〉
Trinh T. Minh-Ha
《Forgetting Vietnam》
2016
Digital Film
90 mins
《 Forgetting Vietnam》
In her geo-political situation, Vietnam thrives on a fragile land and water management equilibrium. A life-sustaining power, water is evoked in every aspect of the culture. The film was shot in Hi-8 video in 1995 and HD and SD in 2012; the images unfold spatially as a dialogue between the two elements—land and water—that underlie the formation of the term “country” (đấtnứớc). In conversation with these two parts is a third space, that of historical and cultural re-memory – or what local inhabitants, immigrants and veterans remember of yesterday’s stories to comment on today’s events. Through the insights of these witnesses to one of America’s most divisive wars, Vietnam’s specter and contributions to world history remain present and all too easy to forget. Touching on a trauma of an international scale, Forgetting Vietnam is made to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the end of the war and its survivors.
Artist Bio
Trinh T. Minh-ha, a filmmaker, writer and composer, is a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School. Her work includes:1) nine feature-length films (including Forgetting Vietnam (2016); Night Passage (2004); The Fourth Dimension (2001); A Tale of Love (1996); Shoot for the Contents (1991); Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989); Naked Spaces: Living Is Round (1985); and Reassemblage (1982) honored in over sixty-four retrospectives around the world; 2) several large-scale multimedia installations, including In Transit (Manifesta 13, Marseille, 2020) L’Autre marche (Musée du Quai Branly, Paris 2006-2009), Old Land New Waters (3rd Guangzhou Triennial, China (2008), Okinawa Museum of Fine Arts (2007), The Desert is Watching (Kyoto Biennial, 2003); and 3) numerous books, such as Lovecidal; Walking with The Disappeared (2016); D-Passage：The Digital Way (2013); Elsewhere, Within Here (2011); Cinema Interval (1999), and Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (1989). She received numbers of awards including the 2014 Wild Dreamer Lifetime Achievement Award at the Subversive Film Festival, Zagreb; the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award from Women’s Caucus for Art; the 2012 Critics Choice Book Award of the American Educational Studies Association; the 2006 Trailblazers Award at MIPDoc in Cannes, France; and the 1991 AFI National Independent Filmmaker Maya Deren Award.
Courtesy of the artist
〈Hung-Chih Peng〉
Hung-Chih Peng
《Justice Road Requiem》Second Movement: Night Rain in the Harbor City
2024
Video installation
Dimensions variable
《Justice Road Requiem》Second Movement: Night Rain in the Harbor City
The project “Justice Road Requiem: Second Movement: Night Rain in the Harbor City” began when Hung-Chih Peng purchased an old house in Keelung. Peng aims to bring peace to the soul of the house, not through research but by building a narrative with otherworldly communications. He transformed the two original chandeliers into devices that sway souls, creating an illusion of motion within the exhibition space. Audiences can see a boat made from the house’s partitions , supposedly belonging to a sailor, the house’s owner, as well as drone footage of traveling from the exhibition hall to the old house. The exhibition culminates in the symbolic burning of the boat, with a film documenting this process displayed alongside other works.
Artist Bio
Hung-Chih Peng was born in 1969 in Taipei. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts in oil painting from National Taiwan Normal University in 1992 and a Master’s degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1997. Studying abroad inspired him to pursue contemporary art. Peng’s trans-disciplinary, socially engaged work explores global conflicts, environmental destruction, spirituality, and politically charged religious extremism, videos, performances, sculptures, and installations. For Peng, creating art serves as a form of Daoist meditation. He has participated in solo and group exhibitions in China, Europe, the United States, Israel, and Asia. Currently, Peng lives and works in Keelung.
Courtesy of the artist