For this upcoming edition, our focus shifts dynamically to the vibrant cultural landscape of Taipei. At this moment, Taipei stands as a paramount hub for a burgeoning community of emerging digital media artists. In collaboration, these artists will embark on a transformative project that not only mirrors the avant-garde spirit of the new digital artistic generation but also underscores the influential and emergent role that Taipei’s artistic scene is currently playing.
This endeavor aims to encapsulate the dynamism and groundbreaking creativity emanating from the Taipei region, spotlighting its profound impact on the global art stage. As we delve into the project, we anticipate unraveling the rich tapestry of ideas and expressions that define the powerful and compelling narrative of Taipei’s flourishing artistic movement.
Through the theme ‘Intimacy: the Moments of Social Skin‘, the exhibition delves into the intangible forces of geopolitics, gender, power, and culture that have shaped Taiwanese contemporary social development since the 1990s. It dismantles the social structures and historical imprints of human existence through the narrative of images depicting the nation, the city, the tribe, and the family.
Anthropologist Terence Turner coined the term ‘social skin.’ It ranges from ornaments, hair styles, make-up, cover-ups, clothing, tattoos, piercings and scratches, to bodybuilding or slimming, muscle development and cosmetic surgery. Whether natural or artificial, extreme or seemingly whimsical, social skin is meaningful to the times we live through and is always influenced and represented by the socialization of human behavior.
In conclusion, as demonstrated by the exhibition titled ‘Intimacy: The Moments of Social Skin,’ our society is a rich tapestry woven from the diverse threads of different generations, each reflecting unique dimensions of social interaction and identity. Despite coexisting within a vast and interconnected environment, we often find ourselves unable to fully grasp its entirety. Yet, this very incompleteness is an integral aspect of the beauty of society, as it embodies the intricate rhythm of human existence and interaction.
Within this intricate web, images serve as invaluable artifacts of what we might term ‘futuring typology’—capturing not only moments frozen in time but also hinting at the potential trajectories of our collective future. Through the narrative use of video imagery, Taiwanese artists participating in this exhibition offer poignant insights into the nuances of regional and global development, particularly in the realms of pluralism and social status.
As we draw closer to these depictions, we find ourselves increasingly immersed in the authenticity they convey, forging deeper connections with the realities they portray. Thus, by bearing witness to, portraying, and memorializing these pivotal moments, we contribute to a richer understanding of the complex interplay between individuals, societies, and the evolving landscapes of our shared world.
Artists:
Chen Chieh-Jen / A Field of Non-Field
Wu Chi-Tsung / Perspective
Hsu Che-Yu / RABBIT 314
Ciwas Tahos (Anchi Lin) / Pswagi Temahahoi
Video Box｜SWAB Barcelona
Intimacy: the moments of social skin
Curated by Yipei Lee
Location: Textile Pavilion.
Fira de Barcelona, Avenida Rius i Taulets, 10, 08004 Barcelona
Fair Schedule
Thursday 3 October
4pm – 9pm (only with invitation)
Friday 4 October
4pm – 9pm
Saturday 5 October
12pm – 9pm
Sunday 6 October
12pm – 8pm
Chen Chieh-Jen
Field of Non-Field, 2017
Medium: Single Channel Video
Size: 61’07”
Under the development of financial competition and technological capitalism, which has developed a global manipulation that is more penetrating than previous forms of governance, not only are more people being reduced to the status of pan-dispatched workers under “global imprisonment and local exile”, but it is also more difficult to open up the desire structure, sensory structure, and way of thinking of contemporary societies which have been encompassed and penetrated by the post-internet era’s global manipulation technology. This puts the survival of contemporary societies into the battlefield for each other.
“Is there any other way out for human beings? In response to this difficult question, to which no simple answer is possible, the artist rethinks the topic of “emptiness” in “Zhongguang Xue” created by Avalokiteshvara, and puts into practice the “Middle Way” method with its spirit of multi-dialecticism. In order to embody and practice how to establish other epistemologies, modes of thinking and values of life in a world that is encompassed and penetrated by the technology to qualitatively change the way of life. This is one of the ways to qualitatively change the global manipulation technology.
Wu Chi-Tsung
Perspective, 2008
Medium: Single Channel Video
Size: 06’07”
The central locus of his creative work has always been a discussion as to the real nature of images; how they are produced, perceived by viewers and the impact they have. However, the way in which this is executed has never been particularly disciplined or scientific, resembling something more akin to a game. Sometimes he experiments with just one part, or exchange some of the elements to see what changes that causes in the creation of images and whether there is anything of interest hidden inside.
A great deal of the depth of illusion created by pictures or images comes from the single point of perspective. In other words, all straight lines not parallel to the picture disappear into some point in the distance, almost as though space is being sucked into a bottomless hole. It was this view point that made him wonder what the viewable world would be like if there was no point of disappearance.
‘’I guess it would be really flat.’’
Hsu Che-Yu
RABBIT 314, 2020
Medium: Single Channel Video
Size: 7’17”
A glove puppetry performer reinvents and reenacts the movements of a dead rabbit, which ended its life in a laboratory. Rabbit 314 questions the manipulation and appropriation of animals by humans. The project was initiated by the death of a laboratory rabbit, and was inspired by the artist’s family memories. The artist’s grandma served in an animal laboratory for thirty years, during which, due to the particularity of her job, she had to dissect living animals for observation and experiments.
Ciwas Tahos (Anchi Lin)
Pswagi Temahahoi, 2022
Medium: Single Channel Video
Size: 12’00” Edition:1/4
Pswagi Temahahoi connects different methods of artistic imagination to explore the space of Temahahoi; it’s oral storytelling among Atayal people of a place where only women and gender non-conforming people live who can communicate with bees and become impregnated by wind. This video work combines documentary and audio-visual performance to weave a hybrid video installation piece.
The documentary follows the path taken by Atayal Elder Yumin, who uses a technique named pswagi, utilizing sunlight as an embodied tool to trace the locations of wild bee hives and also as a way to find Temahahoi, alongside a staged performance piece with a self-invented and assembled ceramic instrument, the wind (breath) blowing from the queer bodies goes into the genderless ceramic instrument to relocate the fluid space of Temahahoi through sound.
IN COLLABORATION WITH:
Special thanks:
Penny Kuo, Lorena Tabares Salamanca
細着藝術 SUAVEART 