Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Comments on the Finalist 

TSAI Pou-Ching and LI Cheng-Liang dismantled an old signboard of “Lucky” from around the Tainan Train Station and exhibited it in the exhibition, Signal Z. The LED installation emits iridescent colors regularly and includes “Lucky” stereo sets collected from various channels that broadcast sounds and music arranged by FENG Zi-Ming. The newly arranged renditions of old popular songs alter the ambiance around objects and the quality of the space. The work revolves around the financial crisis in 2009 thematically, which is not only a revisit to the news event but also an archaeological attempt to investigate the body that resonates with broadcast media and music, as well as the life memories of many people. Linking the old “Lucky” signboard from a real landscape with a traumatic history involving the development of Taiwan’s industry, the work re-evaluates historical remnants through a contemporary perspective and releases a force of nostalgically charged sensibility that utters an active meaning of this era. (Commentator: CHEN Kuan-Yu)

Artwork Introduction

Made in Lucky re-imagines past memories through a large, abandoned signboard above the Tainan Railway Station. Using the “Lucky” signboard as an index to history, the work looks at the first significant change in the 21st century due to globalization: the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Utilizing an emotive narrative shaped by light and music in the form of a stage, musical events conjure up the state of affairs in Taiwan at the time of the financial crisis. By recalling this brand that fosters happiness, the work enquires about what individual happiness means in the age of globalization.

About the Artist

LI Cheng-Liang (b. 1986, Keelung) holds an MFA in Media Art from Taipei National University of the Arts. In the early period, Li and his friends founded the “Fuxinghen Studio” and adopted non-sensical approaches to experiment with the possibility of artistic creation. In 2013, he started working in Tainan and with various creative media. Through integrating handicrafts into his ideas, he has developed an aesthetic that harmonizes arts and crafts while echoing three-dimensional modeling and the spatial environment, following moments of life to provide annotations for living conditions.

TSAI Pou-Ching (b. 1986, Chiayi) currently lives and works in Tainan. He mainly works with video and installation. His work often amalgamates different possibilities of the occult, collaboration, and ecological conservation, centering on the relations between humans and other creatures. To Tsai, humans, as a species, can never be isolated from this world. However, humans have developed an extremely complicated mode of survival in the modern world, which further complicates our relations with other species. Thus, it has become imperative to contemplate how to produce relations with other creatures that are out of the ordinary within such a structure. 

Production Team

artists:

Li Cheng-Liang & Tsai Pou-Ching

Dismantling signboard：

Working at heights by Pioneer International

Traffic control by Chen Xaio-Nan,Ting-Yu Haung

Photographic record Jason Goh

Videographer Chen Yi-Ru,Chen Liang-Hsuan 

Music consultant Clytie Huang

Music Supervisor Feng Ziming

Sound Designer Chen Chieh Hsi

Respondents Hsu Wenting