Specimens are the outcome of humankind’s purposiveness, as well as the extension of its will and desire. The modernization of Taiwan commenced from the Japanese colonial period, with Tainan Prefecture Educational Museum as the departing point for the establishment of scientific venues around Taiwan, which included research institutes and educational exhibition spaces. Substantial specimens were thus produced for the needs of the scientific outreach venues, and now we can regard the specimens as an embodiment of the modernization, which actually displays an intriguing and complicated situation: the bodies as specimens have become the symbol of the species, of the science, and even of the empire.
What if the specimens wish to stand for themselves? How can they attain to represent themselves instead of others? Based on the forementioned questions, the project expects to communicate with the specimens in the fields of science and history with a non-scientific way, via which a show will be created in collaboration with the specimens, letting them stand for themselves beyond the science, empire and history.
TSAI was born in Chiayi in 1986, who now lives and works in Tainan. He has been loving animals since he was a child, and his recent works mainly focus on the relationships between humans and animals, with concern for how to deliberate about and create human-animal bonds distinct from the existing ones, for the human-animal relationships have become more intricate as human beings have developed more sophisticated ways of living.