Shezidao is a place without parallel, founded on the imbrication of borders between urban or artificial development, the transitions of nature and the geographical ecosystem, the intersections of river and land, and the coincidence and balance of yin and yang in the local culture. By integrating various field study approaches from artists, playwrights, and film producers, Borderless attempts to build a new form of cultural performance and action and to reveal the extraordinary cultural visions of Shezidao in interactions with the local community.

The project comprises a series of fieldwork on the cultural and natural environment of Shezidao, embracing the transition of time, the people, and the events that have taken place. In terms of the transition of time, this project considers the history of Shezidao, investigating and collecting documents about the changes of cultures and landscapes. In terms of people, the project embeds itself in the local community through fieldwork focusing on the residents of Shezidao—those who have lived there for generations, those who have just arrived, and those who have left. As to events, the project collects the local tall tales of myths, legends, and stories that circulate in the communities and subsequently establishes a database of factual news to compare with the particular events in each story, considering matters such as how government policies influenced territorial narratives and how they were superimposed on the distinctive characteristics of the wetlands in Shezidao.

Borderless continues the experiment in parallel narratives that Chu Chun-Teng has pursued since 2017, in which he uses a multichannel video structure to simultaneously present intertwined and interacting personal storylines. In this project, the playwright Huang Ai-Lun will compose the personal stories based on the residents’ profiles to compile a blueprint of Shezidao. These profiles, collected from previous fieldwork, will be taken from the perspectives of cultural development, life study, policy impacts, and ecotones to piece together the outlook of Shezidao in the form of parallel visual narratives.