● Some of the videos contain adult issues or are accompanied with strong light or loud sounds. As such, discretion is advised. Children below 12 are not recommended to enter.
● Wireless Headphones are available for rent at the reception counter at the entrance of the exhibition hall. Please exercise caution when using this device and remember to return it after use. Please do not take the device outside of the exhibition hall.
Equality Video Club - A Video Art Exhibition about Social Equality
As flowers start to bloom in the warmth of March, National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying) has specially planned the video art exhibition Equality Video Club, which invites directors/artists from Indonesia, the UK, Malaysia, and Taiwan to present their viewpoints on social equality through the compilation of images and visual works.
Pimps on the streets of Manila, a drag queen swaddling a baby in her arms, female workers in the production lines of South America, contingent workers overcome with boredom waiting for work, an Indonesian tribal fisherman that makes his living on a lonely Pacific island, and a desperate housewife kneeling next to piles of laundry. In Equality Video Club, there are no loud protests or disclosures of injustice commonly seen on the streets; instead, a series of gentle and poetic image novels lead visitors to directly face the cold realities of society.
Social equality is not just a slogan for practicing justice; it is a necessary act to find a comfortable place for oneself. This exhibition hopes to promote social equality through a diverse range of exhibition forms so as to help visitors develop a deeper understanding of integrated society and cultural equality, together building a happy future filled with harmony and mutual respect.
Time
March 6th-28th 2021, 11:00-17:00 Closed on Tuesday
Related Program
March 3rd-14th 2021 Lecture Hall
Creative and Production Team
Irwan AHMETT & Tita SALINA
CHEN Hui-ping
HOU I-ting
HSU Hui-ju
JAO Chia-en
LAU Kek-huat
Lana LOCKE
LIN Han
YU Cheng-ta
Films
The Undertow of Sorrow
Irwan AHMETT & Tita SALINA
Indonesia│2020│color│6min50sec
By utilizing movements, tractions, streams of the undertow from the highest tide recorded in this month (October 2020) impacted from La Niña in polluted shallow
seawater, Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina undertook an unusual encounter among three elements that fuse in the crossing of human emotion, destruction of ecology
and clash of ideologies. This intervention is a pilgrimage to stories of sorrow in the islands that led to dead ends except to sink.
Seafarer
A man from the Bugis tribe, an eminent tribe as a tough sea explorer from Makassar, Sulawesi in Indonesia. This tribe has also explored Siam and the descendants remain in Bangkok in an area called Makkasan. To his family, seawave is a way out to survive in Jakarta. Everyday he has to work harder and harder due to the dwindling catch impacted from overfishing, pollution and land/island reclamation.
Ubi Besar Island
An island that has completely disappeared now because of abrasion and sand mining. In 1954, there were climate refugees, an exodus of Ubi Besar island dwellers
due to the quality of life was worsening. Along with the construction of international airport Soekarno-Hatta and the rise of sea level, the island had gone underwater. What can be seen now is dead corals and strong current draws any kind of objects with no escape.
A Rebel
Kartosoewirjo was the leader of rebellion group DI/TII - Darul Islam/Tentara Islam Indonesia (Islamic Armed Forces of Indonesia), he declared an Islamic State in
Indonesia in 1949, led guerilla operations for years until he was captured in his hideout by military and civilians. The freedom fighter was finally sentenced to death
and executed in Ubi Besar Island in 1962, where at that time some parts of the island was still above the water as seen on the photo documentation of the execution of Kartosoewirjo. Although his grave and the island have been submerged, the ideology has not. It changes in many different forms adjusting and lurking the stream of civilization and the fading of democratic values in Indonesia.
Filming location: Ubi Besar Island, Kepulauan Seribu, Jakarta Bay, Indonesia
Cranial Relic
Indonesia|2020|Color|7min4sec
Amidst the pandemic worsening in Indonesia, Irwan and Tita deepen their relations with fear by utilizing gravitation and tens of artifacts they have been collecting for the last 6 years.
Fear is very archaic, it's a chemical chain reaction embedded in the cranial. Itinstructs the body to react to increase heart rate, to produce cold sweats and anxiety irresistibly, the feeling is worrying.
The reaction against fear is existed in every species. It works as a form of self-defense or showing recognition of power beyond self-authority. Turtles, Mimosa pudica, pangolins respond to fear by shrinking their bodies as a form of protection. Humans could be the only species that doing the opposite, they would 'enlarge the size' individually or collectively. Therefore, humans can be the most dangerous group of apes.
Fear is like a relic nests in the cranial waiting to be ignored or resurrected by ourselves.
Bila Anda Tiba Anda Menyesal - When You Arrive You'll Regret
Indonesia|2020|Color|43min51sec
The maritime life and the complexity of matters that accompany conflict interest in one of Asia's busiest waters, the Strait of Malacca are accumulated to bodies.
The other side of stories from archipelago assembled and retold by Irwan and Tita after they conducted visits to several islands in Riau Archipelago especially to Batam Island, a region that was once projected to become an industrial area in the 70s but now is facing tough challenges with social problems and tangling of interests and power centralized in Java Island, which created uncontrolled distortion. Observations were made by sea travel and encounters with equator passers from Nusantara. The rise of issues accompanied geopolitical turmoil such as borders, colonial period, sultanate period and globalization become the initial thought of retelling outside the mainstream narrative. Through artistic intervention, conversation, site-specific visits and an oath, this essay film is the background of the work Name Laundering*.
-------
*Name Laundering: A lecture performance project to reexamine the relation of Indonesia and Singapore in Malacca strait as the most important waters region in South East Asia. Controls and conflicts stretch out as long as sacred oaths thrust Into the Land of Fighters as well agreements of greedy corporations. The development of the work is rooted on the impact of the colonialism, the sabotage armed forces in the confrontation with Malaysia, the practice of seafarers hijack
ships, the 'smokelen' (smuggling) routes and the ecological destruction resulting land clearings and uncontrollable exploitation of natural resources. Irwan and Tita create a 'polite subversive' act to respond the state control haunted by economic interest and dogmatic agenda of nationalism. The acts are eight plans to penetrate
the border of Singapore without state permissions.
***
This essay film and the artist talk is part of the final presentation of Nusantara in Future Tense workshop.
Supervisor: Ministry of Culture (Taiwan)
Organizer: The Cultural Taiwan Foundation
Concept and execution: Nusantara Archive Project Curated Esther Lu, soft/WALL/studs
Coordinated by Esther Lu (Taiwan), Kamiliah Bahdar (Singapore)
Venue supported by soft/WALL/studs (Singapore), OCAC (Taiwan)
Administration supported by The Digital Art Foundation
Special thanks to all members of soft/WALL/studs, ila, Div, Norah Lea, Nurul Huda Rashid, Syaheedah Iskandar, Siddhartz Perez, Tan Zi Hao, Okui Lala, Irwan & Tita, Lo Shih-Tung, Sheryl Cheung
Homesick Tongue
CHEN Hui-ping
Taiwan│2019│color│81 min
Kollyan's hometown is in Cambodia. she has to leave her family in Taiwan, in order to reunite with her parents. Whenever Sally follows her mother's steps of home cooking based on her memory, she feels as though she has returned to her mother's side. As for me, an encounter of an identity mix-up at a foreign country's immigration checkpoint made me constantly wonder "Who am I?" ever since.
Cold Chain
HOU I-ting
Taiwan│2019│color│26 min
Artist HOU I-ting has long been paid attention to the female profile in different social structures, especially female workers in the labor- and skill-intensive production industry. Cold Chain is a documentary that uses interviews as its primary narrative method, and sees artist visits Bogota, the capital of Columbia, to observe the flow line of an international cut flower company. Additionally, workers were surveyed, and an expert in production line improvement was interviewed to better understand the working environment and gender structure of local females. The title is a technical term from logistics that also refers to a type of modern system engineering that helps preserve the quality of delicate flowers during transportation. This in turn further implicates the governmentality behind modern society and the various production relationships humans are involved in, from manufacturer to being the article of manufacture themselves.
Sewing Fields— Li̍k-sú tsiam-tsílâng, 2015
HOU I-ting
Taiwan | 2019
Starting in 2015 and continuing to today, Sewing Fields is a long-term participation-based project that uses the historical documents of female schools in Taiwan in the Japanese colonial period as a foundation and also incorporates live sewing in its performance process. It aims to reflect the gender awareness and bodily politics contained within colonial education through recruiting participants and individuals.
Temporary
HSU Hui-ju
Taiwan│2017│color│25min
Temporary workers looking for "help wanted" signs on the walls of an abandoned factory reflect the reality of the working class. After having served their purpose, these temporary workers are immediately discarded by employers who feel no sense of responsibility or emotions towards them. They are "relics" of the modern industrialization process, cast aside to the empty and barren edge of cities.
With a non-traditional documentary filming approach, the filmmaker hired three real-life temporary workers to play the role of temporary workers in the film. The abandoned factory is their stage where they recreate a temporary home. They live at the edge of the real and virtual world, at the edge of the city and wilderness, at the edge of family life and rootlessness.
REM Sleep
JAO Chia-en
Taiwan│2011│color│26min
Since 1994, Taiwanese government started "Go South Policy" in order to prevent the over investment in mainland China. In the same time, the government followed the idea of Neoliberalism and imported labors from Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesia, in the one hand to reduce the production costs of local industrial and in the other hand to remedy the unbalance of Taiwanese sociality; in October 2011, the number of immigrant workers surpassed 420,000 people.
"REM Sleep" this work distills via a documentary format the dreams of Indonesian, Filipino, Thai and Vietnamese laborers who have come to Taiwan as short-term migrant workers after Taiwanese government policy shifted in the 90s. Documentation of these dreams in a foreign land serve on one hand as an exploration of the range of effects of a change of environment on the individual, as a result of shifting global economic forces. On the other hand, as documents with no legal ramifications whatsoever, they also avail to the global economic system inhabited by these nomadic individuals a possible means of introspection.
Nia's Door
LAU Kek-huat
Taiwan│2015│color│25min
Nia travels far from her home, Philippine, to Taiwan to work as a family maid. Nia likes to keep herself in her private room, where a door separates between her and her employers. This brings displeasure to her female employer and conflicts arise between them. This is a story about a day of Nia's life, which could also resonate for all who are far away from home.
Journeys of a Laundry Mountain
Lana LOCKE
England│2020│color│26min
Filmed during 2020, artist Lana Locke's autobiographical reflection on her gendered responsibility as a mother for the domestic laundry, becomes a vehicle for considering wider global issues through the crises that emerge during the film. Shot between gentrifying South East London and rural Queensland, her own chaotic domestic environment and that of her parents are intercut with confronting and humorous found and archive footage. The laundry here draws out multiple threads, demonstrating the dense entanglement of colonialism, white privilege, and patriarchy, with the political and ecological causes of Australia's 2020 forest fires, and the coronavirus pandemic.
Blossom
LIN Han
Taiwan│2017│color│25min
Due to the economic and social consensus of the present Taiwan, it is a big challenge for those who wants to create a family with a child of one's own. Not to mention for the marginalized transgendered community, there is a great revolution of equalization that has not yet succeeded.
Cherry identified herself as a drag queen. She just had a fight right before the show, finding out her boyfriend had been cheating sleeping with another girl for a long time. Later, she pulled herself together and walked on her way to work, she met with an abandoned baby. When she was performing sparkly on the stage with her close sister, Lena, they discovered something weird about this baby…
The baby that intruded Cherry's life at the night has given her a short fantasy of having an ordinary family with a child. Yet once again, it reminded her and Lena with a cruel reality of their actual life.This is a journey about a drag queen exploring herself with an abandoned baby at an unconventional night. It is also a story about the searching of one's the sense of belonging and one's own.
Tell Me What You Want
YU Cheng-ta
Taiwan│2015-2017│color│61min
Tell Me What You Want is about the exchanges of the gazes, desires, friendship, and wanting between a traveler and an exotic culture. This relationship of exchange started when David was on the street in Malate, Manila. He engaged with the marketeers (or "marketings") on the street as a foreigner, and from this strange encounter, they developed friendships. Owing to the needs of shooting the films, a negotiation as well as transaction came along. The various relationships and processes of exchanges are intertwined with reality, the social network, the diverse desires and imaginative gazes and illusions across cultures local to Malate.
Equality Video Club - A Video Art Exhibition about Social Equality
As flowers start to bloom in the warmth of March, National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying) has specially planned the video art exhibition Equality Video Club, which invites directors/artists from Indonesia, the UK, Malaysia, and Taiwan to present their viewpoints on social equality through the compilation of images and visual works.
Pimps on the streets of Manila, a drag queen swaddling a baby in her arms, female workers in the production lines of South America, contingent workers overcome with boredom waiting for work, an Indonesian tribal fisherman that makes his living on a lonely Pacific island, and a desperate housewife kneeling next to piles of laundry. In Equality Video Club, there are no loud protests or disclosures of injustice commonly seen on the streets; instead, a series of gentle and poetic image novels lead visitors to directly face the cold realities of society.
Social equality is not just a slogan for practicing justice; it is a necessary act to find a comfortable place for oneself. This exhibition hopes to promote social equality through a diverse range of exhibition forms so as to help visitors develop a deeper understanding of integrated society and cultural equality, together building a happy future filled with harmony and mutual respect.
Time
March 6th-28th 2021, 11:00-17:00 Closed on Tuesday
Related Program
March 3rd-14th 2021 Lecture Hall
Creative and Production Team
Irwan AHMETT & Tita SALINA
CHEN Hui-ping
HOU I-ting
HSU Hui-ju
JAO Chia-en
LAU Kek-huat
Lana LOCKE
LIN Han
YU Cheng-ta
Films
The Undertow of Sorrow
Irwan AHMETT & Tita SALINA
Indonesia│2020│color│6min50sec
By utilizing movements, tractions, streams of the undertow from the highest tide recorded in this month (October 2020) impacted from La Niña in polluted shallow
seawater, Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina undertook an unusual encounter among three elements that fuse in the crossing of human emotion, destruction of ecology
and clash of ideologies. This intervention is a pilgrimage to stories of sorrow in the islands that led to dead ends except to sink.
Seafarer
A man from the Bugis tribe, an eminent tribe as a tough sea explorer from Makassar, Sulawesi in Indonesia. This tribe has also explored Siam and the descendants remain in Bangkok in an area called Makkasan. To his family, seawave is a way out to survive in Jakarta. Everyday he has to work harder and harder due to the dwindling catch impacted from overfishing, pollution and land/island reclamation.
Ubi Besar Island
An island that has completely disappeared now because of abrasion and sand mining. In 1954, there were climate refugees, an exodus of Ubi Besar island dwellers
due to the quality of life was worsening. Along with the construction of international airport Soekarno-Hatta and the rise of sea level, the island had gone underwater. What can be seen now is dead corals and strong current draws any kind of objects with no escape.
A Rebel
Kartosoewirjo was the leader of rebellion group DI/TII - Darul Islam/Tentara Islam Indonesia (Islamic Armed Forces of Indonesia), he declared an Islamic State in
Indonesia in 1949, led guerilla operations for years until he was captured in his hideout by military and civilians. The freedom fighter was finally sentenced to death
and executed in Ubi Besar Island in 1962, where at that time some parts of the island was still above the water as seen on the photo documentation of the execution of Kartosoewirjo. Although his grave and the island have been submerged, the ideology has not. It changes in many different forms adjusting and lurking the stream of civilization and the fading of democratic values in Indonesia.
Filming location: Ubi Besar Island, Kepulauan Seribu, Jakarta Bay, Indonesia
Cranial Relic
Indonesia|2020|Color|7min4sec
Amidst the pandemic worsening in Indonesia, Irwan and Tita deepen their relations with fear by utilizing gravitation and tens of artifacts they have been collecting for the last 6 years.
Fear is very archaic, it's a chemical chain reaction embedded in the cranial. Itinstructs the body to react to increase heart rate, to produce cold sweats and anxiety irresistibly, the feeling is worrying.
The reaction against fear is existed in every species. It works as a form of self-defense or showing recognition of power beyond self-authority. Turtles, Mimosa pudica, pangolins respond to fear by shrinking their bodies as a form of protection. Humans could be the only species that doing the opposite, they would 'enlarge the size' individually or collectively. Therefore, humans can be the most dangerous group of apes.
Fear is like a relic nests in the cranial waiting to be ignored or resurrected by ourselves.
Bila Anda Tiba Anda Menyesal - When You Arrive You'll Regret
Indonesia|2020|Color|43min51sec
The maritime life and the complexity of matters that accompany conflict interest in one of Asia's busiest waters, the Strait of Malacca are accumulated to bodies.
The other side of stories from archipelago assembled and retold by Irwan and Tita after they conducted visits to several islands in Riau Archipelago especially to Batam Island, a region that was once projected to become an industrial area in the 70s but now is facing tough challenges with social problems and tangling of interests and power centralized in Java Island, which created uncontrolled distortion. Observations were made by sea travel and encounters with equator passers from Nusantara. The rise of issues accompanied geopolitical turmoil such as borders, colonial period, sultanate period and globalization become the initial thought of retelling outside the mainstream narrative. Through artistic intervention, conversation, site-specific visits and an oath, this essay film is the background of the work Name Laundering*.
-------
*Name Laundering: A lecture performance project to reexamine the relation of Indonesia and Singapore in Malacca strait as the most important waters region in South East Asia. Controls and conflicts stretch out as long as sacred oaths thrust Into the Land of Fighters as well agreements of greedy corporations. The development of the work is rooted on the impact of the colonialism, the sabotage armed forces in the confrontation with Malaysia, the practice of seafarers hijack
ships, the 'smokelen' (smuggling) routes and the ecological destruction resulting land clearings and uncontrollable exploitation of natural resources. Irwan and Tita create a 'polite subversive' act to respond the state control haunted by economic interest and dogmatic agenda of nationalism. The acts are eight plans to penetrate
the border of Singapore without state permissions.
***
This essay film and the artist talk is part of the final presentation of Nusantara in Future Tense workshop.
Supervisor: Ministry of Culture (Taiwan)
Organizer: The Cultural Taiwan Foundation
Concept and execution: Nusantara Archive Project Curated Esther Lu, soft/WALL/studs
Coordinated by Esther Lu (Taiwan), Kamiliah Bahdar (Singapore)
Venue supported by soft/WALL/studs (Singapore), OCAC (Taiwan)
Administration supported by The Digital Art Foundation
Special thanks to all members of soft/WALL/studs, ila, Div, Norah Lea, Nurul Huda Rashid, Syaheedah Iskandar, Siddhartz Perez, Tan Zi Hao, Okui Lala, Irwan & Tita, Lo Shih-Tung, Sheryl Cheung
Homesick Tongue
CHEN Hui-ping
Taiwan│2019│color│81 min
Kollyan's hometown is in Cambodia. she has to leave her family in Taiwan, in order to reunite with her parents. Whenever Sally follows her mother's steps of home cooking based on her memory, she feels as though she has returned to her mother's side. As for me, an encounter of an identity mix-up at a foreign country's immigration checkpoint made me constantly wonder "Who am I?" ever since.
Cold Chain
HOU I-ting
Taiwan│2019│color│26 min
Artist HOU I-ting has long been paid attention to the female profile in different social structures, especially female workers in the labor- and skill-intensive production industry. Cold Chain is a documentary that uses interviews as its primary narrative method, and sees artist visits Bogota, the capital of Columbia, to observe the flow line of an international cut flower company. Additionally, workers were surveyed, and an expert in production line improvement was interviewed to better understand the working environment and gender structure of local females. The title is a technical term from logistics that also refers to a type of modern system engineering that helps preserve the quality of delicate flowers during transportation. This in turn further implicates the governmentality behind modern society and the various production relationships humans are involved in, from manufacturer to being the article of manufacture themselves.
Sewing Fields— Li̍k-sú tsiam-tsílâng, 2015
HOU I-ting
Taiwan | 2019
Starting in 2015 and continuing to today, Sewing Fields is a long-term participation-based project that uses the historical documents of female schools in Taiwan in the Japanese colonial period as a foundation and also incorporates live sewing in its performance process. It aims to reflect the gender awareness and bodily politics contained within colonial education through recruiting participants and individuals.
Temporary
HSU Hui-ju
Taiwan│2017│color│25min
Temporary workers looking for "help wanted" signs on the walls of an abandoned factory reflect the reality of the working class. After having served their purpose, these temporary workers are immediately discarded by employers who feel no sense of responsibility or emotions towards them. They are "relics" of the modern industrialization process, cast aside to the empty and barren edge of cities.
With a non-traditional documentary filming approach, the filmmaker hired three real-life temporary workers to play the role of temporary workers in the film. The abandoned factory is their stage where they recreate a temporary home. They live at the edge of the real and virtual world, at the edge of the city and wilderness, at the edge of family life and rootlessness.
REM Sleep
JAO Chia-en
Taiwan│2011│color│26min
Since 1994, Taiwanese government started "Go South Policy" in order to prevent the over investment in mainland China. In the same time, the government followed the idea of Neoliberalism and imported labors from Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines and Indonesia, in the one hand to reduce the production costs of local industrial and in the other hand to remedy the unbalance of Taiwanese sociality; in October 2011, the number of immigrant workers surpassed 420,000 people.
"REM Sleep" this work distills via a documentary format the dreams of Indonesian, Filipino, Thai and Vietnamese laborers who have come to Taiwan as short-term migrant workers after Taiwanese government policy shifted in the 90s. Documentation of these dreams in a foreign land serve on one hand as an exploration of the range of effects of a change of environment on the individual, as a result of shifting global economic forces. On the other hand, as documents with no legal ramifications whatsoever, they also avail to the global economic system inhabited by these nomadic individuals a possible means of introspection.
Nia's Door
LAU Kek-huat
Taiwan│2015│color│25min
Nia travels far from her home, Philippine, to Taiwan to work as a family maid. Nia likes to keep herself in her private room, where a door separates between her and her employers. This brings displeasure to her female employer and conflicts arise between them. This is a story about a day of Nia's life, which could also resonate for all who are far away from home.
Journeys of a Laundry Mountain
Lana LOCKE
England│2020│color│26min
Filmed during 2020, artist Lana Locke's autobiographical reflection on her gendered responsibility as a mother for the domestic laundry, becomes a vehicle for considering wider global issues through the crises that emerge during the film. Shot between gentrifying South East London and rural Queensland, her own chaotic domestic environment and that of her parents are intercut with confronting and humorous found and archive footage. The laundry here draws out multiple threads, demonstrating the dense entanglement of colonialism, white privilege, and patriarchy, with the political and ecological causes of Australia's 2020 forest fires, and the coronavirus pandemic.
Blossom
LIN Han
Taiwan│2017│color│25min
Due to the economic and social consensus of the present Taiwan, it is a big challenge for those who wants to create a family with a child of one's own. Not to mention for the marginalized transgendered community, there is a great revolution of equalization that has not yet succeeded.
Cherry identified herself as a drag queen. She just had a fight right before the show, finding out her boyfriend had been cheating sleeping with another girl for a long time. Later, she pulled herself together and walked on her way to work, she met with an abandoned baby. When she was performing sparkly on the stage with her close sister, Lena, they discovered something weird about this baby…
The baby that intruded Cherry's life at the night has given her a short fantasy of having an ordinary family with a child. Yet once again, it reminded her and Lena with a cruel reality of their actual life.This is a journey about a drag queen exploring herself with an abandoned baby at an unconventional night. It is also a story about the searching of one's the sense of belonging and one's own.
Tell Me What You Want
YU Cheng-ta
Taiwan│2015-2017│color│61min
Tell Me What You Want is about the exchanges of the gazes, desires, friendship, and wanting between a traveler and an exotic culture. This relationship of exchange started when David was on the street in Malate, Manila. He engaged with the marketeers (or "marketings") on the street as a foreigner, and from this strange encounter, they developed friendships. Owing to the needs of shooting the films, a negotiation as well as transaction came along. The various relationships and processes of exchanges are intertwined with reality, the social network, the diverse desires and imaginative gazes and illusions across cultures local to Malate.
● Some of the videos contain adult issues or are accompanied with strong light or loud sounds. As such, discretion is advised. Children below 12 are not recommended to enter.
● Wireless Headphones are available for rent at the reception counter at the entrance of the exhibition hall. Please exercise caution when using this device and remember to return it after use. Please do not take the device outside of the exhibition hall.
