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Creation/Research Support
Bathybius Trilogy I: Slime Mold, Cellular Computing and Collective Wisdom

The core of the Bathybius Trilogy is to investigate the relationship between the mind, objects, and humans within the philosophical frameworks of New Materialism and Cosmism, with film prose, sculpture, and installation as its forms of aesthetic representation. The first chapter of the trilogy, included in the CREATORS program this year, is Slime Molds, Cellular Computing, and Collective Wisdom. The research focus is on slime mold and images of protoplasm, beginning with the discovery of Bathybius haeckelii in the 19th century. The story conveys how Thomas Henry Huxley believed the Bathybius that had been discovered deep in the ocean in 1857 was the origin of all life forms and then discusses the order and disorder of history and the perception of movement imbued in ideas of the positive and the negative. During the period of this residency, the project will also explore how various species were involved in the early histories of science and colonialism, in visual history, and in the evolution of the imagination in mental models.

CREATORS

2022.04.01(FRI) 2022.07.31(SUN)

Melmel CHEN & Enkaryon Ang

Born in Taichung, Taiwan in 1984, Melmel Chen holds an MFA degree from Goldsmiths, University of London. Chen’s artworks focus on the heterogeneity of and subject-object relationship between aesthetics and life politics in the context of modernization, and her practice involves photography, sculpture, video, installations, and on-site productions. Her work has been included in events in Indonesia, Norway, Korea, and London with recent collective exhibitions including Future Alchemy for the Ring Project of Jakarta Biennale 2021-2022, Herbal Urbanism Hsinchu: Margins of the City as Method at Hsinchu 241 Art Gallery in 2021, the International Contemporary Art Project Ulsan in 2019, and Herbal Urbanism: Beitou at the Honggah Museum in 2018. Chen’s works were also selected for the Kaohsiung and the Taipei Art Awards in 2019.

Enkaryon Ang is an independent researcher, poet, and critic based in Taipei, Taiwan. Since 2009, he has published several collections of poetry and essays and was honored as a promising young critic by the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) in 2018. He was writer-in-residence at Can Serrat in 2017, for Prague UNESCO City of Literature in 2020, and at Cove Park in 2021 and also served as resident theater critic for Macau City Fringe Festival in 2018 and 2020. Ang’s latest poetry collection, A Galaxy of Howness, describes the emotional impact of the post-digital society in Taiwan. Recently, he has been working with ideas about the entangled facets of gardens, colonial imagination, and third nature.