Art X Changes
Moderators:
- Thanom CHAPAKDEE
- Thai Art Critic
- Cheng CHANG
- Founder of Brilliant Time Southeast-Asia-themed bookstore
Participants:
- Leeyawanich, Charintip
- Senior Policy Planner, Policy and Development Department, TCDC
- Wang, Po-Wei
- Assistant Curator, Taipei Fine Arts Museum
- Nguyen Thi Thanh Ha
- Lecturer of Foreign Language Center of NCKU
- Lin, Chen-Wei
- Manager and Reporter, 4-Way Voice / Artist
- Ko, Nien-Pu
- Independent Curator
- Hsu, Fang-Tze
- Ph.D. candidate of the Cultural Studies in Asia programme, National University of Singapore
- Tēnn, Bûn-kî
- Editor-in-chief, No Man's Land
- Tsai, Chi-Min
- Project Manager, Chung Chao Cheng PARK
- Lan, Pei-Chia
- Professor of Sociology, National Taiwan University
- Seedapeng, Arinrat
- Assistant Project Manager, Event and Exhibition Department, TCDC
- Lo, Shih Tung
- Artist
Taiwan is a free and open democratic country and has a unique political environment. Artists in Taiwan can freely participate in social movements without becoming tools for government propaganda. During the café chat, the SEA committee members expressed their pleasure at seeing young artists in Taiwan working for local communities and getting involved in social movements.
However, there are some things that should be noticed and some that should be avoided in such dealings. Nien-Pu Ko, an independent curator, has long been concerned about issues relating to urbanization. He said that artists are very often the motive cause behind the gentrification of urban spaces: when a community or neighborhood attracts artists who gather and create art works, the energized and artistic atmosphere also attracts high-income earners, resulting in increased property prices, the displacement of low-income residents, and the irrevocable change of the urban landscape. Art can easily become tools for developers who want to push up prices and privatize public spaces.
The group also talked about the creators and subjects of art and how to differentiate them but at the same time retain the flexibility to switch between the two. Nguyen Thi Thanh Ha, Lecturer at the Foreign Language Center at NCKU, said: "I'm the subject of art. And sometimes, when I write, I am also the creator.” She expressed her hope that SEA immigrants would write in their own languages and help translate their works into Chinese. She thinks that immigrants are now a frequent subject of art, but that they can be the creators of art as well.
Moreover, as Pei-Chia Lan, Professor of Sociology at National Taiwan University, argued, immigrants are not just immigrants. They have other roles and identities in their own families and home countries. The experiences of immigrants should not be ignored; rather, they are a rich subject matter for artists to use. For example, during their stay in Taiwan for a biennale exhibition, Indonesian artists Tita and Irwen heard about an Indonesian migrant worker who had been accused of murdering her employer and Indonesian crew members, who were involved in another murder case. They went to the detention center to see these people and worked with TIWA to get in touch with their families back in Indonesia. Later, they decided to devote more attention to Indonesian migrant workers who had been convicted of crimes and sentenced to prison in Taiwan. They brought their stories back to Indonesia and held a forum in Jakarta to generate more attention on the issue.
Taiwan is starting to embrace its cultural diversity and see it as an asset. There is already lots of research in the fields of sociology and anthropology on issues relating to migrant workers and immigrants, and these are all great resources for artists who want to explore the cultures of immigrants and migrant workers. Taiwan and SEA countries have much in common and have been through traumas both socially and politically. The effects of the Cold War, the Chinese diaspora, and the fight against dictatorship are all good starting points for Taiwan and SEA to learn more about each other.
Misouda Heuangsoukkhoun said that disability is also a facet of diversity, and it was a pity that there had been no discussion of the disabled community. Moderator Cheng Chang said that while it was great to see so many partners working on SEA issues this time, there had been no opportunity to hear the voices of the 650,000 SEA migrant workers in Taiwan because the event had been scheduled during the working week.
In closing, the group noted that because government policy changes so frequently, the key was to create an environment that is conducive to artistic creation and then leave the rest to the artists themselves.