My father, William Chang, was a new immigrant from China who came to Taiwan in 1949 and started his family in Dawu Township, Taitung County, a Paiwanese area where most of the indigenous people of live. William's hobby was photography, and he left many records of his life in the 1960's. I explored the landscape through his eyes, indigenous people not there, but full of interest in the construction of modernization. I was able to organize my family's history in the intertwined images of the past and present, and to glimpse the post-war topographic of South Taitung.
The Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Cultural Park, as a venue for the exhibition and promotion of the cultures of the 16 ethnic groups on the island, has created a series of traditional buildings and houses of each tribe in the vast Mid-Levels Park. How do short-term artists think about relationship with the space? As a member of the traceability lineage, I invited Sedjam Takivan Kavunga (Chinese name Lin Chih Hsiang, Taitung pacavalj tribe), a young Paiwanese cultural youth who possesses the soul of an old man, to collaborate with me, as I actually live in the park, and present a certain kind of reclamation state in the perfect building; he is well versed in various traditional cultures and knowledge, and I have used the Snail series as an interface for inhabiting and moving about in an imaginary place, discussing everyday life in the traditional sense, and practicing the seamlessness between the imagery of the house and the spatial and temporal scenes in the imagery of the house.
When the smoke rises, it represents the movement of life in the building, an important symbol of life in the traditional sense, and the traces of life are used to present the transformation of spatiality. Sedjam's daily life in the simulated traditional house, and his frequent appearances in the exhibition venue/house during the exhibition, are a dialogue with the "Snails" series.
He left the mountains when a red sun arrived and, when the twelve rays of a white sun came, left their slopes again. Having lost his farmland and hunting ground, this Aboriginal warrior came to a place near the sea, where he blossomed like a graceful lily on the bank of a polluted river.
Derived from Paiwan language, “Ljavek”, meaning “a place near the sea”, is the name of the only indigenous community in the center of Kaohsiung City. The community was formed in the 1950s to meet a shortage of labor in the timber and export industries by a group of Paiwan people who had no choice but to move to the city for a better life. In 1997, a canal that used to lie in front of the community was filled and turned into Jhonghua 5th Road. The entire area was later repurposed by the local government as land for urban planning and named “Asia New Bay Area”. Since then, when they were determined to be “illegal occupants”, community members have been engaged in anti-eviction negotiations and protests for 20 years.
A collaboration between Yang Wen-Shan, a Ljavek sculptor known as Kuljelje Balasasau in Paiwan language, and Chang En-Man, Yang Wen-Shan’s unpretentious handiwork aims to initiate a self-healing process for a broken culture by exploring the essence of life and the state of the times, in the hope of composing a preliminary vision of the future. ( Translated by: NTMoFA)
"As Heavy as a Feather", Video installation, dimensions variable, 2016
Kite, bamboo, canvas, projection: 13’ 45”
“As Heavy as a Feather” Main video: 42' 48"
“As Heavy as a Feather” Chapter: Lin Dou: 29’ 44”
The allusion of “Heavy as a feather” is inspired from a Chinese idiom 200 B.C. ago: “The death may be heavier than Mount Tai but lighter than a feather.” The original intention is to point out the way people value themselves and live out their lifes with own value in the limited lifetime.
Here the meaning is reconstructed by altering the sentence. From the inverse semantics, the artist tries to explore how people with tiny power value and look at their own lifes. By portraiting a kind of abstract power through video images, the artist intends to expand own imagination besides from a singular capitalism value.
Shanyuan Bay locates in Taitung county of Taiwan, its traditional name in Amis language is called Fudafudak, means “a glittering place”, it is also name of a small neighbourhood tribe. Same as many other remoted townships, Fudafudak is facing problems of outward migration and culture loss. Meantime, the natural living area of this tiny village is coveted by many large investors for land development project. By following social activists who work for native culture re-built, take advantage of opportunity to exhibit in Canada, the artist enters into the tribe and co-work with the natives: to produce and reappear the huge legendary sound kite. The video also features scenes that elders tell the story of legend Ngayaw from their childhood memories and sing the song of Ngayaw. (Translated by: Lucyann Tung)
藝術家在能盛興工廠短期進駐的一個月裡製作影片，採訪女性成員們描述她們最喜愛的地方，穿插男性口白以一位虛構人物作串場。藉由身體實踐力十足的能盛興工廠成員，以及所連結的社群，淺談台灣近代藝術的發展脈絡，並對所謂的藝術圈做反身性思考。 Neng-Sheng-Xing Factory is located in Tainan, Taiwan. It’s used to be an abundant 3 levels building over than 20 years, now it’s not only a base of dream, but also a place with multi-activities to public after a group of young people refurbished it. The relationship between space and human is strongly related, a space formed by people are the continuously transitions. These transitions are leading with the organic status to a land of dreams or we can interpret it in a more specific definition: Utopia.
The female members described their favorite places when the artists filmed the interviews during the one-month term residency at Neng-Sheng-Xing Factory, they also mixed a male narration as imaginary character in the film. This video is trying to present the development and history of Taiwan Modern Art and offering a reflexivity thought to art circles by the team members of Neng-Sheng-Xing Factory’s practice force. (Translator: Daphne San)
The Happy Mountain is, by all practical accounts, invisible. Located around a seaside highway in northeast Taiwan, Happy Mountain doesn't have any visible mapping points. The people who live there are primarily elders of Amis (Pangcah), cohabiting with the natural environment and sustainably living off the rich resources found between the sea and mountains. They subsist off collecting wild vegetables and seafood, as well as building different types homes by collecting recycled construction materials for the last thirty years.
In Taiwan, many of the urban indigenous tribes are dotted around suburban areas of cities. The typical reason they came to live in these suburban areas —away from their hometowns such as Hualien and Taitung— was to make a better living wage as manual laborers, namely off of the early boom in urban construction. Due to nostalgia and homesickness, these laborers gradually started to gather, one by one, in Happy Mountain due to its geographical similarity with their hometowns.
This type of movement is not unlike how their ancestors began to gather and live together in the past, forced on by the continued development of their country by outside occupation. After those major early develops waned in Taiwan, the land was no longer seen as belonging to these migrant laborers. Instead, the land came into the possession of the government and became just another piece of capital. Therefore, these laborers have now been deemed illegal occupants, treated without the proper respect, for their sacrifices and years of hard work for the collective good of Taiwan. As it stands today, every resident who make The Happy Mountain their home are being accused of illegally occupying National property and face losing the place they worked so hard to call home.
From the outside looking in, Happy Mountain seems like a utopian space, complete with a rare balance found in other parts of Taiwan, that being a harmony and peace within the dedication to sustainability. If anything, the hard work of these people have made it more attractive to outsiders, who now envy and look forward to living there.
En Man's entry into this space was to simply explore this area, soon finding a mysterious house of glass abandoned on the high point of mountain, shrouded within a foggy political atmosphere. En Man uses this kind of loose exploration in order to gradually and unpretentiously build experiences tied to this mountain area and, in so doing, try to recognize and understand the process of mapping from outside to inside, as if looking for the path to some form of hometown.
2014, video, 31' 40"
The term “decriminalization” refers to a situation where a previously illegal activity or action is designated legal. When legal behavior is suddenly reclassified as illegal, that is called “criminalization.” In a civilized society, how is it that the traditional hunting of indigenous peoples results in them being subject to the legal system of a different culture? In the past, hunters were the pride of the tribe, but they are now labeled criminals by the legal system because the prevailing political-economic system declines to respect cultural diversity. By focusing on one example and creating a work , the artist identifies this phenomenon and highlights the contradictory nature of existing law. ( Translation by TB2014)
From city to countryside, body is moving along route like a detector. The plan covered the south part of the Provincial Highway No. 9 on the east coast of Taiwan. I tried to find the connections through the route and turned them into depiction of the cultural landscape and social scenes with cuisines and record.
Provincial Highway No.9 is the only way to go home in addition to railway. This is also the route I took to explore the island and the cultural identification, while picturing ‘home’ as if a wanderer.
In this interview program, I invited the people from the aboriginal village to show the snail dishes. Meantime, I hope to introduce their unique culture and the connections with life via the interviews and conversations.
These are images from a documentary film of a Thai-boxing practice arena in Ching-Mai, forming dialogues to a boxing practice rink in an aboriginal tribe located at the foot of a mountain in southern Taiwan. Through the connection of the two locations, a simple social geographical spectacle is thus delineated. The boxing arenas are in a sense like performance stages, whereupon the live show we witness reflects the reality of survival and the audience becomes the authoritative viewers, offering the narrative and characters of the story fictional and realistic qualities.
真實激烈打鬥的拳擊比賽加上柔美娛樂的老歌，歷久不衰的KTV伴唱帶成為影像創作的介面，而我想像著；如果是藝術家會如何來使用或操作這個介面？也許作品的動機有來自Rosenberg的競技場說，或是歷史回溯對應至古羅馬競技場的"表演"，亦是Marx Ernst 對拼貼的註解：「兩個距離遙遠的實體在雙方都陌生的平面上相遇」。
