Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Jury's Comment for the 15th Visual Arts Award Winner

THE BLACK WAVES is a moving live art project that allows us to contemplate a forgotten history of Taiwan, when the European avant garde arrived through the lens of Japan. The dynamic retrieval in this art work is particularly outstanding for its strategies of reenactment and invention. The powerful spontaneous eruption of poetry, gymnastics, image and sound art harks deep into our memories, revealing a complex moment of the literary landscape of Taiwan, the Le Moulin Poetry Society. The final manifestation from intense research into art archives becomes an exemplary transformation of contemporary interdisciplinary expression in a historical site, bridging two moments in time.

Comments on the Finalist

A comprehensive experimentation that unifies poetry, image, sound, music, and physical performance, the work conducts an archaeological investigation of documents to revisit and reconstruct the avant-garde art movement by Le Moulin Poetry Society in Japanese-ruled Taiwan. This endeavor not only leads to a cinematic poem/documentary that has won critical acclaim in both Taiwan and abroad, it also creates a retrospective production of multi-media theatre due to the collaboration with artists and performers. In The Black Waves, the deconstructive performance of multiple languages and voices as well as the tapestry woven with image and physical performance have presented an avant-garde theatrical piece rarely seen in Taiwan in the recent years. The vocal performance and the use of gymnastic moves are particularly and excellently well-executed. (Commentator: LIN Chi-Ming)

Artwork Introduction

In the 1930s, a group of Taiwanese and Japanese poets founded Le Moulin Poetry Society and explored their own existence by looking into the complex modernity and introduced the avant-garde within the context of imperial colonialism. In the early twentieth century, the avant-garde artistic and cultural waves and practices led by Western European artists influenced Eastern Asian regions through technological communication. Under Japanese colonization, Taiwan became engulfed in the massive and profound waves of modernity.

As a pioneering figure of modernist literature, Le Moulin Poetry Society was the first to introduce the creative concepts of Western European and Japanese Surrealism, which presented rather different interpretations. They were faced with the situation of "losing their own voice" because the pre-war generation wrote in Japanese and was denied the right to their own language, and at the same time, they also needed to use Japanese to "find their own voice" and find an alternative approach to fight against the reality for their creative freedom and will of survival.

This performance originated from Le Moulin, a 2016 documentary film about "Le Moulin Poetry Society" in the Japanese colonial period. After the completion of the film, the director, HUANG Ya-Li, brought together the live art group, Ghost Mountain Ghost Shovel Art Collective, XIE Zhongqi, TING Liping, LIU Fanyi, LEE Shih-yang, and Against Again Troupe, and respectively conducted two micro experimental performances that incorporated sound, live art, and image to foreground and expand the possibility of creating a dialogue with Le Moulin Poetry Society.

The Black Waves was the first act of the two Le Moulin micro experimental performances

About the Artist

Ghost Mountain Ghost Shovel Art Collective (Live Art Group)

Ghost Mountain Ghost Shovel Art Collective (GMGS) was launched in 2009. The live art group aims to explore the unpredictability in performance and view the audience as part of the uncertainty in live performance. Led by LEE Au-Sen and CHEN Pi-Chi, whose academic background relate to video art, sociology, ballet, and costume design, GMGS engages in live art anonymously with a revolving set of members that comes from the fields of independent media, comic, improvisational noise, and art. The goal of the group is to create a visionary foundation with performance, with which everyone could contribute to the development of a fictional reality in different ways. The artists, the audience, and the performers become a unity, and uninhibitedly transform the chaotic art experiences into reality.

Huang Ya-Li (Film Director)

Huang Ya-Li is an independent filmmaker in Taiwan, who is interested in the connection between and extension of images and sounds. In recent years, he has been involved in documentaries concerning Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period. He intends to explore the possibility of interpreting reality in the form of documentaries through historical research and examination, and to reflect on the relationship between Taiwan, Asia, and the world. Le Moulin was his first feature film.

Xie Zhongqi (Sound Artist)

Xie Zhongqi is a sound artist, computer music composer, sound effect artist, and also engages in sound recording, criticism, project planning and Japanese-Chinese translation. His writings and works have won the Honorable Mention in BIAS Sound Art Exhibition and the Sound Art Prize in the Digital Art Awards Taipei, and his thesis was selected in Digital Art Criticism Awards. He is the member of Taipei Sound Unit, the founder of TrafficJam and GhostChoir, the only Chinese choir that combines poetry reading and sound art.

TING Liping (Vocal and Performance Artist)

Through vocal experimental sounding, research on philosophical thinking, and her poetry as art-action, TING Liping continues the exploration on humanistic and environmental sound experiments. Targeting the ever-present unbalanced nature of human survival and facing a chaotic and troubled environment, TING seeks to pose questions through art and incite concern and care! Her works include the sound installation, Noisy-Words-Silence—Nos Souffles d'Echos—Mur de Murmure, the poetry art-action series, Paper Timing, Light Action, which is a collaboration with blind children, Vacuum, 7 Marche en Poésie, My Falling Stone Smile, Fete de Dévoilement, etc.

LIU Fangyi (Sound Artist)

LIU Fangyi has been engaging in the creation of improvisational music, field recording and sound collage. His work focuses on the possibilities of human vocal expression and the relationship between sound and environment. He has participated in interdisciplinary sound performances in dance and theatre, and has collaborated with sound artists from Japan, France, Austria, China, Holland, and the UK. In 2016, he participated in Connect project + Sun ∞ Moon in Stockholm Fringe Festival, which won the Most Provocative Award.

Shih-Yang (Pianist)

LEE Shih-Yang has been dedicated his time to improvised music. He has collaborated with artists from different fields, including painting, theatre, multi-media, and dancing. He is the founder and co-leader of the improvisation ensemble, Ka Dao Yin. LEE has won the Golden Indie Music Award and Golden Melody Award of Traditional Arts and Music several times. He collaborated with HORSE Dance Theatre and served as the composer and live pianist for 2 Men, which was one of the top 10 finalists in the Performing Arts Category in the 11th Taishin Arts Award. LEE is also the founder and music director of Taiwan International Improvised Music Festival.