In 2022, the exhibition of Amongst the Silence, in the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, explored numerous ways to respond and connect to multiple issues one confronts in this era, while forming one’s own values and viewpoints, via art. As a continuation of the exhibition, Amongst the Silence: How Are We Moving Further organizes a series of seminars and screenings. We have invited ten Taiwanese and foreign contemporary artists to share how their works questioned and explored subjects of urban spaces, media and technology, regime/institution, and public expression, and thus developed more active purposes. As the first part of this project, a series of seminars will be held in Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-LAB). The seminars can be divided into four themes: The Confrontation of the Gaze, The Simulation and Control of the Crowd, Reconstructing the Destruction—Monument and City, and The Tales of Collective. The session of The Confrontation of the Gaze presents JAO Chia-en’s new work of Collection Radauer, extending JAO’s collaboration with Clemens Radauer, a human zoo document collector, to explore the narrative structure of images, exhibition systems, and the power of discourse. The Simulation and Control of the Crowd focuses on works of Dina Karaman, Vladimir Nadein, and Clemens Von Wedemeyer, discussing our controlled bodies, mindsets, and behaviors in the current pandemic, political systems, and societies. In this session, artists also utilize the technology of virtual simulation to deconstruct and analyze collective behaviors in different political systems. In the session of Reconstructing the Destruction—Monument and City, works of Eduard Freudmann, SYU Jia-Jhen, and Clemens Von Wedemeyer are introduced, including their art interventions, analysis of new and old images, and interpretation of several sculpture works, to consider the meaning of memorials, and the relationship between monuments and cities. Finally, The Tales of Collective discusses video works of Karolina Breguła and Your Bros. Filmmaking Group. In these two films made in different political and linguistic environments, interactions and relations between smaller communities and the political system they belong to are presented via immersive and fable-like narrations.
In the four seminar sessions in C-LAB, videos related to respective themes will be showed first. Meanwhile, the screening programs in Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute will formally present the artworks. Similar to the seminars in C-LAB, the screening programs will also be divided into four programs with different themes: Simulation of Crowd Control, Reconstructing the Destruction—What is commemoration?, Fear and Confrontation, and The Tales of Collective. At the first weekend of each program, the sessions will have a short post-screening discussion and Q&A event. Through these sessions of seminars and screenings, Amongst the Silence: How Are We Moving Further aims to open more discussions, finding possible answers to how to be more active in this era, and moreover, finding ways for us to move further.
For more information, please refer to the Event Booklet.
——Programme——
▒ 07/29 Sat. The Confrontation of the Gaze ▒
13:00
Screening∣Inside Human Zoos ∣Bruno Victor-Pujebet, Pascal Blanchard, Michel Fessler ∣ 2018 ∣France∣ 01:31:10
All over the world, from 1810 to 1940, nearly 35 thousand humans were exhibited for over 1.2 billion visitors in world’s fairs, colonial exhibitions, zoos, freak shows, circuses and reconstructed ethnic villages. For more than a century, throughout Europe, the United States and Japan, human beings put other humans on display.
Only a handful of the thousands of men and women recruited from the four corners of the Earth ever managed to tell their story. Through these personal stories and previously unseen images, Inside Human Zoos offers a unique opportunity to understand how our societies used major public events to help shape a portrayal of the ‘Other’ as opposed to ourselves.
♦
15：00
Participant∣JAO Chia-en／Moderator∣Amy CHENG
Participant∣JAO Chia-en
JAO Chia-en’s practice, deeply rooted in his local surroundings, has more recently delved into colonial histories and the cross-cultural tensions in the Asia Pacific region. His anthropological and collaborative approach has led him to work with civilian protests, taxi drivers, and immigrant workers from Southeast Asian countries. For Jao, these personal encounters have generated intriguing and valuable interpretations of history that subtly subvert and question the established, official versions produced by the nation-state and media.
Moderator∣Amy CHENG
Amy CHENG is a curator and writer based in Taipei. In 2010, she co-founded TheCube Project Space, which serves as an independent art space devoted to the research, production and presentation of contemporary art in Taipei. With the aim of delving into local culture and establishing long-term relationships with artists and
cultural practitioners, Cheng explores the possibility of “expanding curating”. Since 2009, she has carried out several research projects, including sound cultures in Taiwan and Critical Political Art and Curatorial Practice Research, for which she contributed to and edited the publication Art and Society: Introducing Seven Contemporary Artists. In 2016, she initiated cultural study program outside the establishment, the Praxis School lecture series.
▒ 07/30 Sun. Simulation of Crowd Control ▒
13：00
Screening∣Letters about the End of the World∣Dina Karaman∣2021∣Russia∣00：29：00
The deserted landscape of the new town which can be seen out of the window day after day, evokes mixed feelings between a dreamy fantasy and a suffocating imprisonment. It almost seems as if people have left this planet and only the small miniatures of builders remain continuing with the construction which they had begun. The voices of adults and children tell stories of isolation in different languages. Some are terrifying, while others are beautiful and fantastical and open to interpretation. They are addressed to the people of the 21st century, on the brink of an apocalyptical fear ahead of the new virus.
Screening∣Dacha∣Dina Karaman、Vladimir Nadein∣2021∣Abkhazia ∣00：15：00
In between Georgia and Russia there lies the unrecognized Republic of Abkhazia where no less than five countryside residences of Joseph Stalin are hidden amid the lush subtropical greenery. Their telltale architecture betrays the many phobias and fears of the ‘freest’ person in the whole Soviet empire. The interiors are identical to the point of blurring into a paranoid multi-chamber labyrinth filled with identical beds, couches, chairs, and carpets.
Screening∣We Prepared a Concert for You.∣Dina Karaman、Vladimir Nadein∣2022∣Russia∣00：13：30
The image of the victorious power of the Second World War, a global event that is reinterpreted locally as the Great Patriotic War, has been sacralized and mythologized by the Russian authorities for decades, justifying imperial ambitions and invasions of the fascist regime. On May 9th, a group of players reenact the script 'The Heart Remembers', originally developed for schools, inside GTA: Criminal Russia, an unofficial online multiplayer roleplay modification of the video game Grand Theft Auto. The digital evidence is processed through documentary machinima, shedding light on the mechanisms of imperialist state propaganda that infiltrate game worlds, promote nationalist ideologies, and glorify wars.
Screening∣Transformation Scenario∣Clemens Von Wedemeyer ∣2018∣Germany∣00：20：00
Simulated life began in the movies and computer games, but is influencing many fields today. In architecture, city planning, traffic navigation, and market and trade predictions, virtual scenarios of human behaviour change the way we live. Transformation Scenario creates a speculative narration on the impact of emulated group behavior in society. The film is part of a long-term project by the artist making reference to the book Mass and Power (1960) by Elias Canetti, shifting the view on images of society, crowd control and the potential and danger of masses today.
Screening∣Emergency Drill Revisited∣Clemens Von Wedemeyer∣2020∣Germany∣00：18：00
AI, 3D software, and algorithms are in fact constantly deployed to formulate response plans. These are then rehearsed through role-play and live exercises until the difference between rehearsal and reality fades away. The point of such exercises is not simply to rehearse rescue operations. Instead, their ultimate goal is to establish complete control over crowds or to prevent them from ever forming by placing restrictions on movement and social contact. In 2018, the artist observed an emergency drill in the vicinity of Leipzig. Its fictitious scenario was the capsizing of a ferry. Everything goes according to plan and without any of the sentiments that we know from blockbusters. The voiceover is a dialogue on the rituals of the state of exception, describing a society obsessed with self-protection.
♦
15：00
Participant∣Dina Karaman、Vladimir Nadein、Clemens Von Wedemeyer／Moderator∣Po-Wei WANG
Participant∣Dina Karaman
Dina Karaman is a filmmaker, video artist, archive researcher and exhibition scenographer. She makes experimental films intertwining found footage, documentary and fictional narratives. A member of the filmmaking duo together with Vladmir Nadein.
Participant∣Vladimir Nadein
Vladimir Nadein (b. 1993) is a curator, filmmaker and producer. Vladimir co-founded Moscow International Experimental Film Festival and directed it for five editions. A member of the filmmakers' duo, together with Dina Karaman. Now he is based in Taipei, Taiwan.
Participant∣Clemens Von Wedemeyer
Clemens Von Wedemeyer creates films and media installations poised between reality and fiction, reflecting power structures in social relations, history and architecture.
In his ‘cinema about cinema’ normally hidden aspects of film production – such as the dressing of a set or the casting of actors – are incorporated in the final edit alongside scripted and improvised actions, thereby pushes the viewer to question the conventions of theater, film, news reportage and reality TV.
Moderator∣Po-Wei WANG
Po-Wei WANG is the artistic director of Digital Art Foundation, Taiwan. His research interests include Media Theory, History of Contemporary Art, Sociology of Culture and Art, and Art/Science/Technology (AST). Translated Niklas Luhmann´s Liebe als Passion: Zur Codierung von Intimität into Chinese together with Chin-Hui CHANG.
▒ 08/05 Sat. Reconstructing the Destruction—Monument and City ▒
14：00
Screening∣Poeta Laureatus! ∣ Eduard Freudmann∣2017∣Austria∣00：10：48
The project deals with a memorial to Austrian poet and Nazi Josef Weinheber (1892-1945) which stands at the Schillerpark in Vienna’s city centre. The monument was a focus of historical and political disputes since it’s installment in 1975, as it dismisses Weinheber’s background as a renowned Nazi functionary and propaganda poet. Monuments to other poets, among them Friedrich Schiller, and Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts, are situated on the same square.A temporary intervention, carried out in 2013, aimed at exposing the monument’s conflicted history. Public debate and years of negotiations with the authorities led to the permanent artistic reconfiguration and contextualization of the monument in 2019.
Screening∣S-C-H-A-N-D-E∣Eduard Freudmann∣2022∣Austria∣00：12：56
On October 5, 2020, an artistic intervention was carried out at the monument to Vienna's antisemitic mayor Karl Lueger. Golden letters were applied to the monument: SCHANDE. The letters were casted of concrete and painted in gold. They resemble the shape of graffiti which had been put on the monument's plinth in the beginning of July 2020 by unknown authors. A group of artists started a Schandwache – a "vigil of disgrace" – in front of the monument.The action took place in the week before Vienna’s local elections. Four hours after the opening of the artistic intervention a group of neofascists appeared at the monument to knock off the golden letters. However, there was plenty of support by civil society and political organizations as well as wide media coverage.
Screening∣Bakhmut, 2023∣ Clemens Von Wedemeyer∣2023∣Germany∣00：11：03
Artemovsk (Bakhmut) was occupied by the Wehrmacht from 1941 -1943. The front passed through the town twice, and it was immensely destroyed by the Germans, war crimes and mass murders were committed. The blowing up of the monumental avant-garde sculpture of Artyom in 1943, a work of sculptor Kavaleridze on the central square, was symbolic; we were looking for its former location. We walked together through the town and I imagined locations where the cameraman could have filmed with his 16mm camera. Here I show the raw footage from Bakhmut as a sighting of the town between three different times, now being destroyed again, by the Russian war of aggression.
♦
15：00
Participant∣Eduard Freudmann 、SYU Jia-Jhen／Moderator∣Yunyu Ayo SHIH
Participant∣Eduard Freudmann
Eduard Freudmann’s approach is characterized by transdisciplinary work, artistic research and critical discourse. He always strives to relate contemporary aesthetics with political analysis and, above all, to encourage a critical public. He is interested in both official and unofficial history-political manifestations in public space as well as approaches to the writing of microhistory, e.g. through the transmission of family histories.
Participant∣SYU Jia-Jhen
SYU Jia-Jhen re-examines the spaces we live in with his own experience in sculptures. In addition to media, he also seeks new possibilities in existing materials. In his works, he always aims to reveal the backgrounds and contexts hidden beneath their straightforward appearances. Seeing the definite shapes and characteristics of sculptures, Hsu takes great interest in finding our unique positions in this world.
Moderator∣Yunyu Ayo SHIH
Yunyu Ayo SHIH (b. 1985) currently lives and work in Taipei. He graduated from National Taiwan University with a BA in History and School of The Art Institute of Chicago with an MFA in Sculpture in 2014. He frequently explores different appearances of memorial and memory while at the same time involving interactions between himself and state apparatus, tends to choose coexistent or penetrated attitudes to explore gray areas. Shih’s work currently has been exhibited at Fotoaura, DAAD Berlin, Para Site(HK), Time Museum(GZ) and many other space. He also had participated in the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He is now a group member of Hide and Seek Audiovisual Art Ltd.
▒ 08/06 Sun. The Boundary of Collective ▒
11：00
Screening∣Ký Túc Xá(Dorm)∣ Your Bros. Filmmaking Group∣2021∣Taiwan∣00：54：00
Vietnamese female workers are divided into three shifts in this dormitory, day, night, and late-night shift. Some of them are preparing a strike: making sign boards, props, and practicing the action play. However, the dorm manager persuades them to give up, and threatens them with repatriation. A newbie just moves in tonight, and witnesses the conflict with her cold eyes… Here, they exchange their experiences, culminating in a unique upheaval.
♦
13：15
Screening∣The Tower∣ Karolina Breguła∣2016∣Poland∣00：78：29
The Tower is an opera musical about a group of people living in a concrete block of flats and planning to construct a sugar tower in their district. The quite absurd and upsetting story of a utopian project alludes to post-war residential architecture, analyzing it from the perspective of its users, inhabitants of modernist districts and residents of the city, rather than its creators and theoreticians of architecture. Memories of desires, dreams and the belief in a new better future are confronted with hard reality and contradictions inherent in modernist designs.
♦
15：00
Participant∣Karolina Breguła 、Your Bros. Filmmaking Group / Moderator∣Yung-Wei TUNG
Participant∣ Karolina Breguła
Karolina Breguła graduated from the National Film School in Łódź. She creates films, photographs, installations and performances. Her works explore the state and significance of artistic creation and examine contemporary art and its reception. She creates stories about art and architecture, which are a field of her anthropological and sociological observations. She is interested in the connection between art and reality – the favorable and detrimental effect of artists’ work, the remedial and destructive force of artistic activity, rituals connected to art and art’s social role. Many of her works are co-created with their protagonists and participants, blurring the border lines between professional and amateur artistic activity.
Participant∣Your Bros. Filmmaking Group
Your Bros. Filmmaking Group is an informal filmmaking group formed by three amateurs: LIAO Hsiu-Hui, TIEN Zong-Yuan, and SO Yo-Hen, in Tainan, Taiwan. Each member comes from a different field of art: Contemporary art, Architecture, and Theater critics. They believe that immaturity is exactly their own peculiarity. They focus on field research during the process of filmmaking, creative workshops, unforeseen circumstances, flexible scripts that can be changed in different situations.
Filmmaking as a method, re-interpreting reality, endowing it with an aesthetic form, and transforming it into a medium of thinking.
Moderator∣Yung-Wei TUNG
Yung-Wei TUNG is an art critic and independent researcher. His writings cover fields across video, performance, digital and visual art. To expand such practices, he is now devoted to editing certain issues and collaborating with artists, theater companies or arts organizations on various research projects. His thesis has won "S-An Aesthetics Award". He used to work as the editor of online art magazine, "ARTouch.com" and the manager of "Absolute Art Space" in Tainan. He had also been the executive editor of publications such as "Fa - Film Appreciation Journal" and "ACT - Art Critique in Taiwan". His current research interests focus on film theory, leftist art, media studies, media activism.
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▶ 7/29、7/30、8/5、8/6 (The time of each screening will vary according to the schedule)
C-LAB Screening & Seminar discussions
▶ 8/12、8/13、8/19、8/20
TFAI Screening
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Curators｜
LAI, Yi-Hsin Nicole
TIEN, Zong-Yuan
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主辦單位 Organizer｜草埕文化藝術工作室 Art Square Taiwan
贊助單位Sponsor｜財團法人國家文化藝術基金會 National Culture and Arts Foundation、財團法人東和鋼鐵文化基金會Tung Ho Steel Foundation
合作單位 Collaborator｜臺灣當代文化實驗場Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab、國家電影及視聽文化中心 Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute
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▶The time of each screening will vary according to the schedule
▶ Free Admission and No Registration Required
▶ The Schedule depends on the Actual Situation.