{"id":11645,"date":"2012-12-20T15:06:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-20T15:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/?p=11645"},"modified":"2023-04-26T15:09:16","modified_gmt":"2023-04-26T15:09:16","slug":"where-the-wild-things-are-taipei-biennial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/zh-hans\/where-the-wild-things-are-taipei-biennial\/","title":{"rendered":"Where the Wild Things Are: Taipei Biennial"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Taipei Biennial 2012<\/strong><\/a>. Sep 29, 2012 \u2013 Jan 13, 2013.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Curated by Anselm Franke (critic and curator based in Berlin), the Taipei Biennial 2012 with its title \u201cModern Monsters \/ Death and Life of Fiction\u201d tackles the questions around modernity and the systematic violence that has been inseparable from its expansion and growth. By referring to David Der-Wei Wang\u2019s book, The Monster That Is History: History, Violence, and Fictional Writing in Twentieth-Century China<\/em> (2004), the show appropriates the monster called Taowu (\u68bc\u674c) of Chinese mythology as its central metaphor. In Chinese literature, Taowu has been used in different historical periods to symbolize different things, from demons to fiction to history. In the context of the Biennial, Taowu is the amorphous incarnation of atrocities inherent in the process of modernity on a global scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Franke states, the show addresses the need to \u201cbreak free from the \u2018frame\u2019 of colonial modernity and its narratives, its way of describing the world, and the need to tell different histories of modernity (\u2026 ) \u201d. He writes, \u201cThe idea is to make an exhibition that shifts between fiction and historical analysis, just as the identity, or face of the \u2018monster\u2019 in this exhibition constantly changes.\u201d (1) The entire repertoire consists of contributions from around 43 artists (a third of the works were commissioned for the Biennial) and several \u201cmini-museums.\u201d It features some of the most interesting Taiwanese artists such as Kao Chung-Li (\u9ad8\u91cd\u9ece) whose \u201cTaste of Human Flesh,\u201d an audio-visual installation with slide show and audio cassette, reveals the story of his father who got shot during the civil war in China around 1948. The work employs a mixture of images including archival photos, footage, hand-drawn animation; the work is narrated from the point of view of the bullet that remains inside the father\u2019s body, voicing an overall criticism on the political and economic mutations which are brought on in times of war, colonization and globalization. (2)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also find Chen Chieh-Jen\u2019s (\u9673\u754c\u4ec1) latest project, \u201cHappiness Building I,\u201d about the generation that grew up in the period of neo-liberalism in Taiwan. The video is based on accounts of chosen individuals who are also protagonists in this video. It makes a portraiture that reflects both separate cases and a collective experience influenced by policies carried out in the name of freedom and progress (3).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notably, Taiwanese photographer and journalist Chang Chao-Tang (\u5f20\u7167\u5802) presents a selection of photos extracted from his photographic ouevre accumulated over about five decades. Characterized by a symbolic and poetic atmosphere, his photography wavers between the documentary and the realistic; life and death, motion and stillness. These opposing elements often co-exist in the images that implicitly reflect particular local circumstances or the inner states of people in the country. Such is also the case for Jao Chia-En (\u9976\u52a0\u6069) whose Arms series is composed of drawings of coats of arms with graphic elements and symbolic meanings drawn from different aspects of Taiwan (political, economic, and industrial) under different regimes \u2014 Japan, the U.S. and the Kuomintang. Through particular combinations of iconic details, the Arms series incarnates the medley of related ideological projections, cultural influences and the heterogeneous character of Taiwan\u2019s history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Echoing the central idea of the show \u2014 that fiction can be appropriated as a means to reveal obscure interstices beyond historical accounts \u2014 Indonesian artist Jompet Kuswidananto\u2019s video work \u201cWar of Java, Do You Remember #2\u201d uses a dance ceremony called Cembengan as a starting point. Cembengan was developed by the plantation workers and sugar farmers in the mid-nineteenth century as an reaction to the Dutch who built sugar factories in the north coastal region of Java. The video shows dance ceremonies being conducted among the gigantic machinery of a sugar factory. This work uses the ritualistic and the spiritual to examine issues of capitalist exploitation and the country\u2019s colonial histories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Natasha Ginwala\u2019s \u201cMuseum of Rhythm\u201d (one of the \u201cmini-museum\u201d series of the Biennial) also investigates the positivist temporality and the linear progression of history. Apart from featuring various time-keeping devices in human history, the museum also represents temporal phenomena explored in the cinema: Eadweard Muybridge\u2019s photos of animal movement (during the pre-cinematic era) and \u201cOntic Antics Starring Laurel and Hardy: Bye Molly\u201d \u2014 a radical experimentation in cinematic temporality by contemporary experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a whole, the works and \u201cmini-museums\u201d in the Biennial act as \u201csymptomatic mirrors\u201d (4) which reflect different faces of these modern monsters and in doing so reveal the process, the causes and possible fictions which surround the myth of modernity and its construction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interviews of artists and mini-museum curators : http:\/\/www.tfam.museum\/TFAM_Media\/Default.aspx<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes
1. See Sylvie Lin\u2019s interview with Anselm Franke, http:\/\/sylvielin.wordpress.com\/2012\/09\/30\/interview-with-anselm-franke-curator-of-the-taipei-biennial-2012\/#more-424.<\/a>
2. Sylvie Lin, \u201cDissect the Image. Gaze upon the History\uff0d\u2018Cinema Otherness of Cinema\u2019 : A Film and Art Exhibition of Kao Chung-Li,\u201d http:\/\/www.atfm.asia\/en\/article.php?id=103<\/a>
3. Sylvie Lin\u2019s interview with Chen Chieh-Jen http:\/\/sylvielin.wordpress.com\/2012\/12\/08\/interview-with-chen-chieh-jen-part-i\/<\/a>.
4. Franke\u2019s curatorial statement for the Taipei Biennial 2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taipei Biennial 2012. Sep 29, 2012 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20],"tags":[7445,7446,1019],"yoast_head":"\nWhere the Wild Things Are: Taipei Biennial - \u71c3\u70b9 Ran Dian<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/where-the-wild-things-are-taipei-biennial\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"zh_CN\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Where the Wild Things Are: Taipei Biennial - \u71c3\u70b9 Ran Dian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Taipei Biennial 2012. Sep 29, 2012 … Continue reading →\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/where-the-wild-things-are-taipei-biennial\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"\u71c3\u70b9 Ran Dian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-12-20T15:06:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-04-26T15:09:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Lien\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"\u4f5c\u8005\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Lien\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"\u9884\u8ba1\u9605\u8bfb\u65f6\u95f4\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4\u5206\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/where-the-wild-things-are-taipei-biennial\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/where-the-wild-things-are-taipei-biennial\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Lien\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/#\/schema\/person\/52a3fdee246825a3356b50e0c44bbeeb\"},\"headline\":\"Where the Wild Things Are: Taipei Biennial\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-12-20T15:06:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-04-26T15:09:16+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/where-the-wild-things-are-taipei-biennial\/\"},\"wordCount\":832,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"2012\",\"Sylvie Lin\",\"Taipei Biennial\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Reviews\"],\"inLanguage\":\"zh-CN\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/where-the-wild-things-are-taipei-biennial\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/where-the-wild-things-are-taipei-biennial\/\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.randian.art\/where-the-wild-things-are-taipei-biennial\/\",\"name\":\"Where the Wild Things Are: Taipei Biennial - 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