Lifetime Warranty—The Romance of Home Appliances
Curatorial Statement
These familiar terms, “R&D, experiment, creation, incubation, and exchange,” seem to correspond with the spotlight of this exhibition—the home appliances. The word string is as if implying “promising one a future,” radiating a forward-looking, progressive, creative, and innovative atmosphere. In such a new century in which technology merges with humanity, home appliances are often not the first “Messiah” that come into mind. The correlation between home appliances and space, in addition, creates an image of “moving into a new home.” Looking back at the development of Digital Art Center, first launched in 2009, this year, through the exhibition, “Lifetime Warranty—The Romance of Home Appliances,” we hope to “move into the new home” again and start anew.
Home appliances must first be used and purchased before becoming the important “enlighteners” of the artists’ digital life experiences. As the basis of digital experiences, home appliances serve importantly as our argument foundation when we are exploring the connection between human and their daily lives for this exhibition. We hence would like to figure out how digital art can be like in the context of “invention” and “innovation”?
Artists
ChunTeng CHU
Born in Taipei Taiwan.Chu, ChunTeng graduated from Goldsmith University of London MFA Fine Art. During this BA period, he had made a number of short films and participated in international film festivals by his graduated work “The House of Sleeping Beauty” which was inspired by Kawabata Yasunari’s novel. After graduation from BA, he shifted the direction toward Fine Art, His works have been selected for group shows of “2014 Taipei Biennial- The Great Acceleration ” Kunsthaus Essen, Shanghai Contemporary Art Museum Glasgow Center for Contemporary Arts and Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Artl. In 2013 Chu ChunTeng found a co- working Art Studio “Polymer” and is its first Executive director until 2015 Dec.
Cheng-Ta YU
Born in 1983 in Tainan, Taiwan, Yu Cheng-Ta earned both an undergraduate and a master’s degree in fine arts from the Taipei National University of the Arts. He was a recipient of the Taipei Arts Award in 2008 and the Beacon Prize at Art Fair Tokyo in 2012. Yu participated in the 6th Taipei Biennial and was featured in the Taiwan Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale. In 2009 he participated in the Biennial Cuvée 08 at OK Center for Contemporary Art in Linz, Austria. In 2012 he took part in the 5th International Biennial of Media Art at Experimenta in Melbourne, Australia, and Le Festival Made in Asia in Toulouse, France. In 2013 Yu held a solo exhibition at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, and took part in the Asian Art Biennial at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, as well as Queens International at Queens Museum in New York. In 2014, he held the solo exhibition “Practicing LIVE” at Taipei Fine Arts Museum and participated in the 10th Shanghai Biennial, the 2nd CAFA Biennial in Beijing, and Asian Art Week at the Asia Society Museum in New York. In 2015 he took part in the 56th Berlin International Film Festival Forum Expanded. In 2016, he exhibited in Gwangju City Museum of Art, and in Centre Pompidou.
Shang-Yang WU
Wu Shang-Yang was born in 1992 in Taipei. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree of fine arts from Taipei National University of the Arts and is currently studying for a master’s degree in fine arts. The artist’s personal life experience influences his reflection on arts and politics. He uses multiple media, inclusive of projection, installation, site-specific, and performance art, to process the relationship between image, light, carrier, machine, body and space. He was selected into the 10th New York Travel Program and 2018 Seoul Travel Program, and won 2016 Outstanding Art Prize of School of Fine Arts given by Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts.
I-Chen KUO
1979 born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, lives and works in Taipei. MFA in New Media Art, Taipei National University of the Arts. Through multiple media, including new media, installation, and video, Kuo creates his unique poetic artistic language. He concerns the floating state of human spirit and keeps searching for the disappearing belongingness in modern environment. In the status of non-existence, he attempts to explore the essence of life. In 2005, Kuo became the youngest artist ever to represent Taiwan in the Venice Biennial. He is the winner of Taipei Art Award in 2005 and the 6th Taishin Arts Award Top 5 Selection in 2008. In 2016, he published picture book “A Babytooth fallen out of the Universe” and in 2017 he founded STUPIN, an artist studio swapping platform. Important exhibition experience include Taipei Biennial, Singapore Biennial, Sydney Biennial, Seoul International Media Art city Biennial, ZKM and other major museums across the world. His works keeps being invited to various international exhibitions in recent years.
Han-Sheng CHEN
Born in 1988, Kaoshiung (Taiwan), and graduated from Taipei National University of Arts. He works with experimental animation and mixed media kinetic installations, incorporating his own background and identity. His themes often include agriculture, nature and the coexistence of human beings with our environment. His works have garnered many positive responses, including the first prize of Next Art Tainan, silver medal in the MATA prize, selected for the Taoyuan Contemporary Arts Award and the Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennale. Responding to gender issues that have accentuated over the years, he organized the project “Coexist+Exhibition”, hoping for different means of conversation through curation and art production. His curation projects “Coexist+Exhibition -Death at daybreak?’’ was held in FreeS art space, and “Your Closed Eyes My Extinction” at the National Taiwan Museum of Art, digital ark.
Ya-Lun TAO (Allen TAO)
Ya-Lun Tao, who is pioneering new media arts in Taiwan, is serving as a full-time faculty member at College of Communication of National Chengchi University. He was invited to the 9th Contemporary Audio-Visual & New Media Arts Festival (MADATAC) in Madrid, Spain, and won the New Media Art Installation Award. In addition to receiving Taipei County Award and Taipei Award, which is significant in the community of contemporary arts in Taiwan, Mr. Tao is the youngest winner of the iconic Visual Arts Award of Li, Chung-Sheng Foundation among ethnic Chinese artists. Ya-Lun Tao was once granted by Taiwan Fellowship Program of Asian Cultural Council to visit the United States as exchange scholar, invited to be the artist-in-residency by Headland Center of the Arts in San Francisco and sponsored by Hong Kong Arts Development Council to be the first artist-in-residency at 1a space. He took up residence at Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art that is famous for digital images and technology arts as well. Ya-Lun Tao is also honored with the first prize of the scholarship program from Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris. Invited by the city government of Boston, he went there as exchange artist. Plus, he won the first place of the crossover art project of National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in 2015, 2016 and 2018, and was awarded outstanding alumnus of Tainan National University of the Arts.
Ya-Lun Tao was invited to hold solo exhibitions at Media Lab Prado in Madrid by MADATAC and at the cultural center of San Lorenzo del Escorial in Spain by the city mayor. In 2009, OK Center for Contemporary Art at Linz, Austria, invited Mr. Tao to conduct a large-scaled solo exhibition. Besides these achievements, Ya-Lun Tao has been invited to bring his works and exhibitions to Shanghai International Arts Festival, Taipei Digital Art Center, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art, Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre, Headland Center of the Arts, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Double Square Gallery, IT PARK and so forth.
Yi-Hsuan PENG
1990 born in Taiwan Chungli, graduated from the Graduate Institute of Plastic Arts at Tainan University of the Arts, has regarded painting, video art, sculpting as the tone of speculative art proposition for a long time. Thus, daily objects could directly touch upon the artistic propositions, and further decontextualize them in a dialectical fashion. With an attempt to make the history of neutral objects in Taiwan possible, and to show a new perspective, use and practice system.
Yu-ting TSAI
Tsai Yu-ting was born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan in 1990. She received her bachelor degree from the Department of Fine Art of National Kaohsiung Normal University in 2012 and further received her MFA degree from Graduate Institute of Fine Arts of National Kaohsiung Normal University in 2014. Her works are often inspired by daily objects. She uses white glue as a media to collect the accumulations of objects, and started to develop her work “Phantom of the soft sculpture series”. Through this art work, she attempts to resurrect these objects and bringing them back to real life by using image projection, so as to demonstrate the familiar yet alienated perception people nowadays have toward objects, to explore the intermediary between people and things in life, and to search for the ghosts of the times sneaking around. Her works have not only won the first prices of the Kaohsiung Awards and Next Art Tainan but have also been honored with awards such as The Arising Artist Award of New Taipei City. In addition, they are collected exclusively by the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts and the Tainan Museum of Fine Arts. Through the exploration of various objects, from wastes, second-hand toys which were once loved, to common daily objects, different series of art work were thus born. She attempts to let certain periods of time be reincarnate through spiritual activities. In recent years, she has also been trying to seek the balance between work and creation. Furthermore, she responds to and breaks through artistic expectations from numerous curating. Through the process of becoming a multi-artist, she documented her dream objects as an art worker, uses those objects to look back at different states of her artistic roles, in order to bind the intermediate relationship of life.
Performance
Keyang ZHANG
Zhang Keyan graduated with a bachelor’s degree in geosciences from National Taiwan University and with a master’s degree in dance choreography from Taipei National University of the Arts. He is currently a dancer in both Greenwave and Dancecology. He has travelled to Macau and Portugal to perform and exchange with Dancecology, Boo-Way-Who, and other groups. In 2015, he presented Whatever at Taipei Fringe Festival under his team name “Happy Cola’s Friends“ and won Yong Zhen Future Star and Audience Award. Since then, he has ventured around in the name of his team, in which he assembles interesting people from different origins. Together, they perform and criticize aspects of the society. In 2016, he was awarded the “Young Star, New Vision” grant by the National Culture and Arts Foundation to present his work Kiss My Textbook, Oh Sucks around the north, central, and south of Taiwan.
Fang-yi LIU
Fang-yi Liu lives in Kaohsiung. He is concentrated in free style musical/ tonal improvisation. Also he re-mixes and edits sound recorded in the fields as demonstration works. He mentioned two major points. First is about the human voice. The pronounce action from different races and cultures contained not only languages, but also the sound of out of languages, before languages, distortion and lapsing of languages, etc. Even the unestablished pronouncing still can bring the signal or context to the receivers. Second is about the environment sound or sound field. People are surrounded with sounds induced by every vital or mortal things. The problem of sensing or recognition environmental sound are his major projects. He tries to use any kind of materials or methods to approach these two topics. He also created a Facebook group called Cochlea and try to introduce the musician from different fields to the new audiences. He hold several performances to promote new audio experience.
Feng-Chen HSIEH
Hsieh Feng-Chen is an artist who uses sound as her main creative material. She was born in Kaohsiung, Taiwan in 1987. She received her bachelor degree from the Department of Fine Art of National Kaohsiung Normal University in 2009 and further received her MFA degree from Graduate Institute of Plastic Arts of Tainan National University of the Arts in 2014. She has participated in live performances, sound installations, experiments on the relationship between sounds and images, and field recordings. Yet at present, she is focusing her main concern on relationships and mutual influences among people, environment, space, and time. Most of her sound installations are produced on the spot. Since 2012, she has begun to issue a series of sound installation work project “Space Prying Machine”. She sees different spatial characteristics of exhibition halls as inspirations for her sound creation. She collects field recordings and combines them into different sound clips. During her live performances, she tries her very best to interact with the audience by responding with sounds in accordance with the atmosphere of the events. In 2016, she participated in the artist-in-residence program of Centre d’Art – Marnay Art Centre, France, and in 2015, she participated in the artist-in-residence program of Daedam Art Center, South Korea. Her recent performances and exhibitions include 2018 joint exhibition “OASIS” held at Vital Space, Taichung, along with 2018 play reading performance “#Who’sThere?” held at Sunrice Yehjinfa in which Hsieh was in charge of the sound design.
Works
ChunTeng CHU《After The Foaming Weariness》
burned adapters, 5x5cm, 2010
Cheng-Ta YU《Ours Karaoke》
8-channel video installation, Video length(m:s): 4’44”, 3’45”, 3’19”, 4’52”, 4’08”, 4’38”, 3’45”, 5’21″, 2011
Shang-Yang WU《Inbetweening:No.4》
Video Installation, Dimension Variable, 2018
I-Chen KUO《Full HD TV-Buddha》
Video Installation, 15min.39sec., 2018
Han-Sheng CHEN《Walk and look》
robot cleaner, television, cellphone, surveillance camera, the Internet, mobile power pack/Real-time video, 30x30x20cm, 2018
Ya-Lun TAO (Allen TAO)《Vanish No.5-6》
Bulb, iPad, 3D modeling, digital image, AR, interactive programming, Dimensions variable, 2015
Yi-Hsuan PENG《The death of light》
Mosquito lamp, Dimension variable, 2016
Yu-ting TSAI《Make-believe》
White glue, Video inst