Since the inception of “ET@T” in 1995, “image” as a medium has always been its focus through which the team explored the unknown and established its presence as a subject. Starting in 1995, ET@T has recorded self-organized talks and filmed three selected artists—HUANG Hung-Teh, WU Chong-Wei, and TANG Huang-Chen—as protagonists in a “movie.” The team also created “snapshots” or “on-spot interviews” of art-making in action, documented the installation of shows, and captured the “backstage” of plays during rehearsals and after closing acts. In 1998, ET@T introduced “ET@T Web TV,” announcing a clear direction to function as a “socially-engaged and web-oriented” institute. Confident in the face of biases, proud of publicness, and highly curious about the unknown, ET@T was driven to regularly publish art journalism in the 90s in the form of images. What quickly followed was its turn towards media art or techno-art at the dawn of the new century.
In recent years, historical studies of Taiwanese art in the 90s has gained considerable popularity. Compared to art in the 80s, a larger amount of archives relevant to art in the 90s points to a much needed reflection on the historical conception of a specific artistic medium: the moving-image archive. The 90s was a time where “art documentary” was still an unprecedented “genre;” it was also a time where the internet as well as numerous unofficial cable TV—“the fourth channels”—witnessed the transmission of waves of images free from constraints of time. As we look back at the documentaries ET@T created through intensive shooting over an extended period of time featuring close-up on-spot interviews of artists and art critics, we need to further ask: what were and are the adversarial relations between the dispositif of images (what soon will be referred to as “archive” today) and its counter movements, back then and now? This not only addresses our experience of media consumption in the late 20th century but also shapes how we write art history as recent as 20 years ago.
As a part of the 3-year “IAST (Independent Art Spaces of Taiwan)” public event program, the talk is facilitated by Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-LAB) and Asia Art Archive (AAA). It endeavors to further the research of art archives through inter-organizational collaboration and to bring into focus the potential publicness of such research, which energizes discussions relevant to the history of art spaces.
TIME: 2022.11.26 (SAT) 14:00–15:30
VENUE: CREATORS’ Space R102 Coworking Space
Online Registration
*The talk will be live streamed on the C-LAB YouTube Channel. Advance registration is required before you arrive onsite.
Speaker
｜YEH Hsing-Jou
Alumna of the Graduate Institute of Arts Administration and Management, Taipei National University of the Arts. YEH joined the ET@T team and Digital Art Foundation (DAF) in 2014 and is currently the CEO of ET@T Lab Theater. Since 2022, she has been working on a research/critique project, “The Spectrum of Noise Activation in the 1990s: Starting with Artistic Practices of ZHOU Yi-Chang, HUANG Ming-Chuan, and Fujui WANG” in which “sounds” are explored in order to understand, to interpret cultural implications of these artistic practices. By doing so, the space and time where sound as a concept holds a standing ground and its dialogic subject—society—are carefully examined.
｜ET@T
ET@T was founded by artist Huang Wen-Hao in 1995 to explore all possible art forms and nascent states of production in digital culture. ET@T’s organizational mission is to blend concept and practice in a cooperative working environment and objectively observe and reach out to various communities in the contemporary art and techno art field. For the past thirty years, ET@T has presented the unique characteristics of Taiwan’s landscape and the figures through different art forms and perspectives. The organization’s goal is to contemplate the connections within Taiwan, and between Taiwan and the world. ET@T hopes that its practice of applying professional knowledge into digital texts, theories, exhibitions, and performances derived from digital culture, will result in abundant experience.
▶ Free Admission via Online Registration.
▶ Upon submission through the Online Registration Form, a seat is reserved for you. A reminder will be sent to your email prior to the event. If you didn’t receive the reminder email, please check your Spam or Junk email.
▶ Please wear a mask at all times at C-LAB.
▶ The organizer reserves the right to adjust and change the activities according to the epidemic situation.