14/8/14 randian - The Taiwan-Thailand Axis

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2014.03.28Fri,byZianChenTranslatedby:DanielSzehinHo

TheTaiwan-ThailandAxis

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ThaiTaiA Measure of Understanding

Open-Contemporary Art Center (OCAC)

URS21 Chung Shan Creative Hub, Taipei (No. 21, Minsheng East Road,Chungshan Dist., Taipei) Dec 7, 2013Feb 8, 2014

The night before Hsu Chia Wei headed to Shanghais Rockbund ArtMuseum in order to take part in a finalist artists dialogue for the HugoBoss Asia Art Award, the Open-Contemporary Art Center (OCAC)analternative space run by Hsu and a dozen artistswelcomed greatercrowds than usual at its opening.

Lin Chiwei (), an artist who recently returned from Beijing to settlein Taipei, opened the exhibition with a sound performance, Tape forBangkok, for this exhibition project that has taken over three years tofruition. With the artist handing out one long tape with written phoneticcharacters, the audience passed on loop after loop into the heart of thecrowd. While the sounds recited by the crowd harbored variousintonations, layer after layer slowly emanated outwards, and dissipatedjust as leisurely.

The 31 artists/artist groups participating in the project are all members orfriends of this artist-run space. In the past two years, they have beenmoved back and forth, here and there. Such an exchange on the edges ofempires also differ methodologically from the post-colonial discursiveframework of the West Heavens project, saythe curators, jiandyin [sic](Pornpilai and Jirandej Meemalai), along with these participating artists, have frequently chosen sensorial or direct person-to-person communication as a method of exchange. Sakarin Krue-Ons five-channel work, for instance, has one smalltelevision screen showing how he learned to make tofu from a tofu master through the help of gestures. Jiradej Meemalaisaid that Sakarin found a distinct taste from memorythe tofu that the Kuomintang (the Nationalists) brought to northernThailand. On the screen, the videos close focus was aimed squarely on the strands of mold growing on the tofu, with thewhite cotton-like mesh seemingly respiringrising, fallingthrough the time-lapse filming. On one screen to the side was abeautiful close-up of a peonya video pairing where another master explained, in Chinese, the gongbi (careful, detailed,realist) technique of imitating peonies.

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Sakarin Krue-On, Documentary of Lost in Translation, five-channel video installation, 2013 Sakarin Krue-On2013

A screen in the back showed an interview with a student who came to study in Taiwan; the place where he is from, MaeSalong, has many descendants of the remnant Kuomintang armies in northern Thailand. Sakarin let people interview himdirectly, while he retreated to one side, with the confident dialogue in Chinese narrating a rich tale. Along with Hsu ChiaWeis work from last year, which shot Huai-Mo village, the cultural links to northern Thailand is an important geographicalstrain in this exhibition. In this single-channel video (with the same name as the village), a Nationalist (Kuomintang) agentwho had changed names four times stayed in the jungle with a large group of orphans. One of them, the oldest girl, was incharge of the interview, while the other children operated the cameras. We see the old church in the background andeveryones concentrated looks at night. If ones memory of Hsu Chia Weis exhibition setting from Shanghais Rockbund ArtMuseumespecially of the complex, interlinked, and referential plotlinesis still fresh, then perhaps this vast web arisingfrom the exchange and intimate cooperation of many artists will not be unfamiliar either.

Yeh Wei Li (), whose vast amount of objects and bricolage from his studio (with the sobriquet Antiquity-LikeRubbish Research & Development Syndicate) was shown in the Taipei Biennale last year, is one good example thatillustrates how this exchange has been spontaneous. Yehs Divinity Trace, shown in the exchange exhibition in Thailandlast year, was the result of his cooperation with Jutamas Buranajade and Piti Amraranga; here, it has grown to becomeDivinity Trace #5. On one side, there is also another project collaboratively attempted by him and the brothers Kritsada(curator) and Suwicha Dussadeewanich (artist). The period where these basic, impoverished materials go back and forth ismuch like an improvisation, constantly changing its appearances and structure. The artists remarked that whether thecooperation was smooth and easy or else riddled with misunderstandings, the works were surprisingly equal when it came tothe final result.

The story of this unusual experience is not peculiar to those familiar with the Open-Contemporary Art Center. In fact, eventhe Art Center itself had moved to Bangkoks Chinatown for six months in the process of carrying out this three-year project,while its members went back and forth. In honest truth, the guiding principles in this exchange project was not to organizebut to entangle. Some were obviously moved at the opening: the forking paths of co-operation had led them along bychance occurrences. Just as the 5 at the end of Yeh Wei Lis title Divinity Trace reminds us how every time the works landin a space is very much like a reincarnation, so the different combinations and versions cannot be more natural. And becauseof this, many agree when discussing this exhibition: the numerous videos and installations cannot be clearly narrated; theyonly work with someone from this journey leading the way.