Tsao Yan-hao (曹彥豪) and indie-electronica group KbN (凱比鳥) want to alleviate the stresses of everyday life.
Their artistic panacea is a collaborative exhibition that utilizes video projections of nightlife scenes from around the world.
“People go inside and listen to the music and dance on the dance floor,” Tsao said in a telephone interview.
The installation is one of roughly 20 on display as part of [Room19] Shake Your Mind!, a group exhibition at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (台北藝術大學關渡美術館).
The exhibit’s theme is a response to Doris Lessing’s short story To Room Nineteen, a work about a woman who embarks on a journey of self-discovery after learning that her husband is having an affair. But whereas the story reflects on the dreariness of life, the exhibition is a celebration.
In Lessing’s melancholic musings on love, the hotel room is a symbol of oppression, but in [Room19] the nightclub is a space of freedom and individuality where people can express themselves without reservation.
Curated by Wu Dar-kuen (吳達坤), the exhibition brings together some of Taiwan’s finest contemporary musicians and visual artists, including Akibo Lee (李明道), New York-based Taiwanese photographer Daniel Lee (李小鏡) and expressionist Lee Ming-chung (李民中), in collaborations that have produced a variety of light, sound and image installations (often a combination of all three) that are designed to lift visitors out of their daily blahs.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
Mongolian influencer Anudari Daarya looks effortlessly glamorous and carefree in her social media posts — but the classically trained pianist’s road to acceptance as a transgender artist has been anything but easy. She is one of a growing number of Mongolian LGBTQ youth challenging stereotypes and fighting for acceptance through media representation in the socially conservative country. LGBTQ Mongolians often hide their identities from their employers and colleagues for fear of discrimination, with a survey by the non-profit LGBT Centre Mongolia showing that only 20 percent of people felt comfortable coming out at work. Daarya, 25, said she has faced discrimination since she