Dispatch from Taiwan

George Clark
Hito Steyerl project at TFAM 2010

Hung over the entrance hall of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum were four large exhibition banners, each with a cross section of a classical European painting and a phrase in Chinese. On the reverse the phrase appears in English ‘Every artist is either a coward or a traitor.’ The other banners replace artist with spectator, curator and critic.

These imposing statements are part of Hito Steyerl’s participation in the 2010 Taipei Biennial which casts itself as a reconsideration of the ‘biennial format’. Through a number of projects, including participation with non-commercial spaces in the Taiwan capital, a range of off-site projects and events, the biennial wasn’t so much a radical reconsideration of the format as a taxonomy of the potential modes of engagement and exhibition practiced in such shows internationally.

Within this broad framework the biennial marked itself out by a commitment to long term projects some of which won’t be realised until 2012 and others are developed with artists responding to their participation in the previous biennial. Such returning artists included Lara Almarcegui who is cataloging all the soon to be demolished buildings in the city, developing on from her previous project in which she removed an external wall from townhouse to reveal it’s Japanese interior and the largely hidden influence of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan during the first half of 20th century. Similarly the Slovenian art group Irwin present folk art by NSK citizens, members of the Neue Slowenische Kunst ‘State In Time’, for which a temporary passport office was set up at TB08.

Wang Ya-Hui, Artist Cinema – The Dark Side, gallery detail at TFAM, 2010

Many projects focused on different modes of engagement, ranging from Superflex’s FREE BEER factory set up in the museum entrance and employing open source brewing techniques, to Olivia Plender’s Google Office, a new age corporate style discussion and social space. Similarly Wang Ya-Hui’s multipurpose Artist Cinema – The Dark Side, a large mobile sculpture, involving a series of circles which rotate and are illuminated at specific times also acted as the biennial’s screening space for a programme of 38 artists work shown throughout the event.

Other projects directly commented on the biennials position in the city such as Jao Chia-en’s Nocturnal Biennial, a proposal for the museum to shut down during the day and open only during the closing hours of the neighboring Flower Expo 2010 , an event which directly overshadowed TB’s last two weeks and monopolised marketing and cultural advertising in the city. Although refused by the museums administration, the project generated considerable debate and public support. Christian Jankowski’s video Director’s Cut (2010) explored the biennial’s host institution, Taipei Fine Arts Museum which had been operating without a director for the past six months, by organising a local X-Factor style contest to select the next director of the museum, which was initially exhibited in the still vacant directors office.

Shi Jin-hua presented one of the most interesting projects in the biennial, extending his detailed exploration of how value is accumulated within the art system, Tetralogy of Contemporary Art Alchemy (2008-2010), that follows the accumulation of value of his sale of a 1NT coin which he cut in half and sold for 50 cents.

This project, which he traced in minute detail, lead to his invitation to participate in the biennial, for which he auctioned of half his exhibition space to the highest bidder (a commercial gallery won and presented a selection of paintings and sculptural work) and used the income to fund X Trees in Taipei (2010), a commentary on arts relation to patronage and a reversal and critique of Joseph Beuys’ 7000 Oaks (1982). With the funds raised from his auction, Shi brought stone obelisks into the gallery, one to mark each tree removed for the 2010 Flower Expo, a further reflection on the cities cultural policies and their relationship to ecology, culture and the economy of the art world.

On show in parallel with the Biennial in the Taipei Fine Arts Museum was the first substantial retrospective of Chen Chieh-jen’s work in Taipei, a fascinating artists whose career reflects upon the unique social political context of Taiwan and its history. Firmly established internationally for his formally rigorous and historically penetrating films exploring the hidden ‘social reality and historical context of Taiwan,’ Chen was first active during the Cold War/Martial Law period in the 1980s when he became notorious for provocative performance work.

Following the lifting of Martial Law in 1987 Chen stopped making art and lived in near poverty supported only by his brother. He resumed his art practice in 1996 with a body of work exploring the history of photography and those whom it depicts, with work such as Revolt in the Body & Soul, a series of digital images using historical photographs of torture. Starting at this point, the exhibition On the Empire’s Borders, surveys Chen’s work from 1996-2010 and his involvement with and examination of the specific conditions of Taiwanese society and history, from Japanese occupation, through Martial Law and recent position as a global capitalist production base.

Chen’s films revolve around specific sites in Taipei, related to his own upbringing and the repressed political and social histories of the city. Organised with reference to the particular layout and history of Taipei, the exhibition presented Chen’s work within the context of the cities development since 1949. Video works such as Military Court and Prison (2007-2008), that examines the Jingmei Detention Center which housed political prisoners during the Kuomintang years, or Factory (2005), for  which he invited back former employees to occupy the now closed factory in which they used to work, both examine the history of Taiwan through the Jingmei area in which the artist grew up. As part of a community of families of lower ranking members of the R.O.C Intelligence Bureau, Chen grew up amidst the military government, near the court and prison but also near an shanty town, with factories and illegal businesses operated by local Taiwanese people who’d left their hometowns for employment in the city.

Other films such as The Route (2006) similarly involve participation but reflect on Taiwan’s international position. For the film he staged a symbolic strike with Kaohsiung longshoresmen, who in the 1980s had unloaded cargo from the Neptune Jude, without knowing that the boat was being boycotted by dockworkers around the world in solidarity with protests in Liverpool against Thatcher’s labour laws.

His most recent installation, the three screen Empire’s Borders II – Western Enterprises, Inc., recently exhibited at Redcat in Los Angeles, explores the influence of America on Taiwan by restaging scenes of his father’s involvement with the Anti-Communist Salvation Army, initiated by the CIA and the nationalist government of Taiwan with the aim to eventually overthrow the People’s Republic of China.

I was able to visit these two shows whilst I was in Taiwan conducting research for the Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, during the first half of October. The festival, co-directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Gridthiya Gaweewong, will hold its next edition at the end of 2011 in the Thai capital. Under the thematic direction of May Adadol Ingawanij, the 6th edition will concentrate on archival films from South East Asia, seeking to explore marginal histories in the region. Under the title ‘Raiding the archives’ the project seeks to explore the neglected archives and historical collections in the region with particular attention on amateur film production – a virtually unmapped area of activity in South East Asia.

The project is being perused by a range of international curators looking at collections in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, Vietnam, China, Hong Kong, Great Britain, and Holland. I am focusing on the main archives in Taiwan and Hong Kong, connected regions whose film and art sectors have a long history of dialogue but developed under remarkably different social-political contexts.

I spent the majority of my time at the Chinese Taipei Film Archive  (whose very name is evidence of the still contentious issue of Taiwan’s nationhood and its relationship to China) where I watched numerous films made in Taiwan, including early films produced during the Japanese occupation from 1895-1945. Made by Japanese government or visitors, these films range from documentation of aboriginal communities on the island, to depictions of the Japanese infrastructure as well as various travelogues which sought to promote tourism to the region.

As well as revealing the important influence of Japan on the island, these films are the only real glimpses of life there prior to the withdrawal of the Republic of China (R.O.C) to the island in 1949 under Chiang Kai-shek and the declaration of Martial Law which instigating a 40 year cold war with the People’s Republic. Under these conditions which lasted into the late 1980s, all media was strictly controlled, especially during the 1950s and 1960s leaving only a very small number of films made outside of the state controlled film industry.

Tony Wu an established artist filmmaker and dynamic curator in Taipei, who launched the city’s first experimental media arts festival at the end of November 2010 called EX!T, told me that generally when looking for a point of origin or beginning of independent or experimental film people start with the group of artists and filmmakers who introduced European art and film theory to Taiwan through the magazine, Theatre.

These included Chen Yao-qi, Qiu Gang-jian, Chen Ying-zhen, Zhuang Ling, Huang Hua-cheng and Zhang Zhao-tang. From this group only a small number of films are still known to exist and as such are important glimpses of the possibility of film outside of state control during these years. I watched two films by the photographer and documentary filmmaker Zhuang Ling, in which he independently filmed his family and pregnant wife in Life Continued (1966) and then a year later filmed scenes from the first year of his baby in My Newborn Baby (1967).

Together they present a rare image of life under martial law, in stark opposition to the majority of images of the time which are all official productions and generally regarded solely as propaganda. In the late 1970s the film culture becomes more complex and also less historically defined. There was there an increase in filmmaking during this period in part due to the establishment of film schools and the advent of organisations such as the Golden Harvest Awards in 1977 which aimed to support ‘experimental’ and independent documentary filmmaking.

Among the fascinating films from the late 1970s and 1980s in the Golden Harvest collection I was able to see, there were striking examples of a variety of modes of filmmaking, but more intriguingly the works at the film archive constitute only a cross section of work made during this time. As such the films constitute a tantalising suggestion of a whole variety of alternative film practices at this time.

Works range from ethnographic and documentary films such as Ruey Jing’s Wang Yien The Puppeteer (1982), a portrait of a traditional puppet master commenting on the waning influence of his art, to early surreal shorts by director I-Cheng Ko’s such as his folktale Labyrinthine Forest (1981) and the Deren-esque psycho-drama The End of Flow (1981), or  (1980s) a materialist textural film, using fragments of archival film to evoke the fate of the filmmakers parents generation and the massive social changes they lived through.

Other works by Chung Shi-Yang (The Monthly Magazine, 1982), Yang Tseng-chi (Kleidoscope, 1985), Chou Chi (Blurry in the Eyes & Noisy in the Ears, 1980s) and Hou Shou-Chien (Following the Image / Looking for the invisible, 1980s) employing fast editing, psychedelic effects and reflection on filmic mechanism testify to an local inventive materialist cinema.

Some of the most fascinating films where also those produced at the film school, in particular Art of 24 Frames (1980s) produced by the motion picture department at National Taiwan National Academy of Arts (now called the Taiwan University of the Arts), where Hou Hsiao-Hsien and other established directors studied, present a taxonomy of experimental techniques, such as a distorted view of the street, followed by an instructional image of a woman moving a piece of molded plastic in front of the lens. Made by the department as a technical exercise, this is a literal experimental and collective film which provides an insight into the pedagogical area of film practice within the context of state run film training and production.

In contrast Family movie (1981) made independently by photographer Liao Shuzhen, follows the build up to the birth of the filmmaker’s child, as well as their life as a photographer, is a remarkably moving portrait. Shot on super 8, it intimatly shows family and communal life among friends and artists. Given the scarcity of independent depictions of family, it echoes Zhuang Ling’s films of his family from the late 1960s, as well as exploring the possibilities of developing an independent life and culture during the 1980s.

Internationally cinema from Taiwan has largely been in the context of world cinema and international festival culture. The attention and acclaim generated by the New Taiwanese Cinema and films of Hou-Hsiao Hsien, Edward Yang and the later Tsia Ming-Liang in the 1980s and 1990s, has come to define cinema in ideas of Taiwanese cinema along the lines of these films. With such accomplished contemporary artists as Chen Chieh-Jen, who powerfully explores repressed labour histories, cinematic language and the potential of documentary form within the context of contemporary art, other ways are emerging in which to understand and approach film practice in Taiwan.


George Clark is a London and LA-based curator, writer and artist.

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