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.
While global attention is finally being focused on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) gray zone aggression against Philippine territory in the South China Sea, at the other end of the PRC’s infamous 9 dash line map, PRC vessels are conducting an identical campaign against Indonesia, most importantly in the Natuna Islands. The Natunas fall into a gray area: do the dashes at the end of the PRC “cow’s tongue” map include the islands? It’s not clear. Less well known is that they also fall into another gray area. Indonesia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) claim and continental shelf claim are not
Since their leader Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and others were jailed as part of several ongoing bribery investigations, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) has risen in the polls. Additionally, despite all the many and varied allegations against Ko and most of the top people in the party, it has held together with only a tiny number of minor figures exiting. The TPP has taken some damage, but vastly less than the New Power Party (NPP) did after it was caught up in a bribery scandal in 2020. The TPP has for years registered favorability in the thirties, and a Formosa poll
Nov. 4 to Nov. 10 Apollo magazine (文星) vowed that it wouldn’t play by the rules in its first issue — a bold statement to make in 1957, when anyone could be jailed for saying the wrong thing. However, the introduction to the inaugural Nov. 5 issue also defined the magazine as a “lifestyle, literature and art” publication, and the contents were relatively tame for the first four years, writes Tao Heng-sheng (陶恒生) in “The Apollo magazine that wouldn’t play by the rules” (不按牌理出牌的文星雜誌). In 1961, the magazine changed its mission to “thought, lifestyle and art” and adopted a more critical tone with
Chiayi County is blessed with several worthwhile upland trails, not all of which I’ve hiked. A few weeks ago, I finally got around to tackling Tanghu Historic Trail (塘湖古道), a short but unusually steep route in Jhuci Township (竹崎). According to the Web site of the Alishan National Scenic Area (阿里山國家風景區), the path climbs from 308m above sea level to an elevation of 770m in just 1.58km, an average gradient of 29 percent. And unless you arrange for someone to bring you to the starting point and collect you at the other end, there’s no way to avoid a significant amount