HIGH UNDERTAI, 2014
Installation in process with Irene Pascual
Howl Space/ Tainan [TAW]
We consider travelling as one of the most exciting and fascinating experiences.
Although we are conscious that a forced travel can be a horrible trauma, a loss of identity and pure loneliness; in our case the cultural shock is just the opposite: The possibility to grow and explore our limits, a source of inspiration and a motor for creativity. Travel, as Miriam Beard in the “Realism in romantic Japan” described, is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.
With the globalisation the airports became sort of cathedrals and internet an open holy scripture, artists are more and more using the travel as a life model, feeding their works with discovery.
Our plan started in Berlin one year ago, when we got in contact with the director of Outsiders Factory, Nobuo Takamori, through the initiative of the curator WANG Chun-chi. We decided to create a collaborative exchange in which some Taiwanese artists would travel to Berlin and we would go to Taiwan. The exhibition that Takamori presented in Berlin was called Sommerreise including the artists Hou Yi-Ting, Lin Shu Kai, Adiong Lu, Niu Chun-Chiang, Ablica Wang, Yeh Wei-Li and Tsai Chi Minh.
In our initiatory journey to Taiwan we did not come like the Portuguese and the Dutch explorers pretending that we are the first and that we can reach some kind of truth; we came to visit, to observe, to be impressed and to share all the curiosity through our works. The residency project in the Howl Space turns into a laboratory, as a digestive apparatus where we transform our daily experiences in Taiwan in an ongoing installation.
The idea is that we will never reach a final result, every day we transform our installation until the last day. The viewer has the opportunity to see the show in its process, as it would be a breathing being.
THE CALLIGRAPHIC MACHINE
Inspired by the possibility that the temples in Tainan offer to ask direct questions or wishes to god, as well as with the tradition of Planchette-writing or spirit-writing, in which automatic writings serve to bridge communication between men and spirits, we created our calligraphic machine.
The Machine uses a “Made in Taiwan” special device normally used in market places, hanging above sweets or fresh food products to get rid of the flies.
It was a big surprise for us how much the people (old and young) took our machine so seriously and really believed that a superior force was communicating with them. This reaction would not be possible in our European context.
How to use the Calligraphic Machine:
1- Prepare a white blank sheet of calligraphic paper
2- Suck the brush in black ink
3- The visitor asks for a wish or a question
4- The visitor presses the button to activate the calligraphic machine while concentrate in the question
5- The answer will be created in the form of an abstract drawing
6- The visitor can take the drawing home and interpret it in calm
