No Sex, No Drugs, But Closer to Rock 'n' Roll Than Anything Else

Su Yu-Hsien, Drummer No. 10, 2011 © Su Yu-Hsien

The protagonist in the video Drummer No. 10 is a drummer, or shall we say, was a drummer.

Born in Zuoying, Kaohsiung, in southern Taiwan, to a working class background, our protagonist started learning the drums at a young age. He later earned a living as a musician in a dance hall orchestra, but then quit because he believed a career in music was unrealistic. That was twenty years ago. Today he is listed as a vagrant with Kaohsiung County, receives his meals from the Social Affairs Bureau, and lives in a shack made of discarded materials under the Renwu Interchange along National Highway No. 10.

Concerning History, Yao Jui-Chung's Examination of the Remains

Yao Jui-Chung, Mt. Jade Floating,
Single Channel Video, Colorful, 1' 01",
2007 © Yao Jui-Chung

Out of three films in Yao Jui-Chung (姚瑞中)'s latest show Phantom of History, two are two minutes and twenty-eight seconds long. Yao Jui-Chung said he didn't intend to make a reference to the 228 Incident, it was just a coincidence. Perhaps what revolves around these three sensitive numbers is a task that political language would gladly carry out, but it probably doesn't lie within the province of art, at least not now. What attracts my attention is that Yao Jui-Chung seized this coincidence and then played on its dark humor.

Perhaps we should say that the stories Yao Jui-Chung wants to tell in Phantom of History and Liberation of Taiwan are basically ghost stories concerned with how the ghosts of the authoritarian era make their presence felt in society today. Anyone who grew up in Taiwan during the cross-strait cold war can easily detect the atmosphere of the authoritarianism in Yao's artwork. However, this reading doesn't possess the necessary emotional construct to create feelings of nostalgia, instead, Yao Jui-Chung gives us even more delightful parodies and fantastic thoughts. In his work, the two opposing yet great historical undertakings of recovering the Mainland and liberating Taiwan never seems to be taken too seriously. Therefore, when we watch the grandiose scene of the Generalissimo reviewing troops for National Day celebrations beside the ever-shrinking presidential palace, we can't help but split our sides with laughter. In another film, when the national anthem starts to play, we see a PLA soldier donning his red star insignia hat and successfully occupying the peak of Taiwan's Jade Mountain, and Yao Jui-Chung quietly mutters, “Finally, he's liberated Taiwan.” All done with minimal effort.

Enigmas of the Absent

There was once a wooden shack full of trash on the rooftop of Yeh Wei-li (葉偉立) and Wu Yu-xing (吳雨心)’s studio in Treasure Hill (寶藏巖), Taipei.

The illegally built shack was filled with all kinds of remains and collected objects by its original owner, a retired soldier who left for China after obtaining his pension a few years ago. As if peeling the layers off a giant cabbage, Yeh, Wu and some of their friends spent four months removing the entire structure and its accompanying debris from the rooftop. Some of the trash was burned, some was removed to the other abandoned house in front of their studio, and more was just placed in between two fences behind the house. The trash remains clustered, scattered or disappeared “just within two or three meters of this house,” said Wu Yu-xing.[i]

During the process of cleaning up the shack, Yeh and Wu found many objects of the original owner kept in good order. They came across a military diary, which records the house owner’s life after he left the military service and started working in the city. To Yeh and Wu, this diary is the most precious item found in the shack.

Illusion Laid Bare

Wu Chi-Tsung, Rain, 2002 © Wu Chi-Tsung

“This is only what the camera sees.”

In 2002 Wu Chi-Tsung (吳季璁, b. 1981) finished his work Rain. In this thirteen minute single channel video recording, the artist used a digital camera to record the view through his home window. The Guandu Bridge which spans the Danshui River is centered in the picture frame, with Guanyin Mountain in the distance and Dadu Road, Guandu Bridge Interchange and the Danshui line of the MRT (Mass Rapid Transport) in the foreground. This is a typical rain scene in northern Taiwan and at first glance it seems like an uninspired home video, but close-ups of the raindrops appear to be unusual. Under the extremely fast 1/8000 second shutter speed that the artist used to make this recording, the quickly moving raindrops no longer appear as streaks and are instead cut into non-continuous fragments of movement. Each little globule of rain seems to flutter chaotically in front of the ordinary scene, creating an effect a little like montage. But in reality, this short video hasn’t been edited and doesn’t use special techniques, and is merely created by the artist’s single camera focused on a definite place documenting an actual event.

‘It’s simply that they’re two worlds,’ said Wu Chi-Tsung describing this photographic reproduction of a rain scene and how it differs from what is seen by the naked eye. The video seems to have been made with little effort, however, the appearance of the eerie and strange raindrops creates a disintegrating world as one tries to reconcile the completely different feelings of time in the distant scenery and the close-up. This break in continuity makes it impossible for this merely to be a ‘landscape’, instead the audience is reminded that ‘this landscape is simply what the camera sees,’ as Wu Chi-Tsung has said. Although an overcast and rainy scene is still emotionally expressive, Rain certainly wasn’t intended to be an indulgent appreciation of beauty. By presenting an experience of this landscape that differs from what can be seen by the naked eye, the artist was seeking to initiate a critical reading of the image. The work is permeated with threads of vigilance, intrinsically woven into the video by the image technology that slices the flow of time into segments.

Reflections on Chien-jung Chen’s Paintings

I

With their structural lines and artificial colors, Chen Chien-Jung (陳建榮)’s paintings remind us of our familiar visual experiences. These features have never been overlooked by critics: 'They are artificial symbols of newspaper columns, buildings, machinery and etc.'[1] 'They symbolize wheels, steel sheets, engines and steel frames, the machine parts in a modern industrial city.'[2] Huang Hai-Ming (黃海鳴) further explains: 'His works now have more references to urban civilization: lines as sharp as those in construction draft, stripes as hard and rough as steel structures, shapes as bulky as gigantic concrete cubes. No matter how abstract they are, these elements convey the hustle and bustle of a big industrial city and present an echoing cacophony of violent energies.' Similar descriptions can be found in many other articles about Chen Chien-Jung’s paintings. As a result, his paintings are interpreted as pictures, the pictures of a modernized city.