obsurfator
If the 20th century was the age of machines, the 21st century is the digital age of piracy. This age is no longer infatuated with space and no longer pursues a tangible feeling of speed, we meet in the clouds as if our senses have evolved over the last decade or more. In this world that offers too much and moves too fast, how can wandering be enough? We no longer believe that a certain vantage point offers the best view because the positions of the viewers are side by side like a surfer and the sea. Only by diving in can the scene that only belongs to the adventurous be seen.
In the digital world, the artist is a creator as well as a quiet, keen-eyed observer at the same time. They are in the present but, like navigators, always pursue the relative positions of their own and a creation ideal route. They move long a great route, their ideals maybe pointing to the future, maybe pointing to the world at their feet. When media continually changes people have no choice but to live the digital life; in this time and space, artists are producers and performers, as well as observers and ambivalent outsiders.
Contemporary art in Taiwan is a creative movement that is inseparable from the global artistic dialogue. These digital age Taiwanese observers embrace technology that is every-changing and coming ever-closer while also attempting to keep a suitable distance from it. They see the beauty and extremes of the world before them and, at a time when media has taken over total control of life, seek a distance that allows media to be seen again, even making criticism possibility.
Digital leads the way in the era of technology, giving rise to the 21st century’s world spectacle. But this world spectacle no longer provides an object of admiration or worship, rather is new in nature, an interactive web; internet technology is just like the nervous system, not only extending into every field like our nervous system but at the same time allowing us to change into one of the world’s ‘neurons’. The name of the exhibit EMU and the phrase Je suis ému at the same time come from the digital subject matter and from the ‘neurons’ of the sensitive observer; in addition it also expresses the three stages of transformation in the digital age: Electronic, Mobile, Ubiquitous, which explains Je suis ému in a deeper sense.
The relationship between artistic expression and digital science and technology has become something that cannot be left or departed from; already certain artists hold it very impulsively and passionately, seeking and experimenting with the possibilities that may be provided by the capabilities of science and technology as a new performer. At the same time, it also causes some artists a sense of unprecedented hesitation: they watch carefully as science and technology brings about life changes and perception changes, as well as causing them to become new thinkers. Regardless, this worldwide nervous system is just like the era of the New World: it is capable of flooding unchecked to every person in the universe, capable of covering sky and earth like a ‘New Sea’. The New World historically moulded many great pioneers, and though the historical state of the ‘New Sea’ is not yet known, all the time it asks of us to make a choice between surfing it, or being suffocated by it.
Crush on EMU
Crush on EMU attempts to portray a kind of three-layered view of contemporary art: the observer who is moved by the age (the ambitious, animated pirate), the explorer who plunges in to the digital sea (creating a new waterway) and the sign that stands upright in the middle of the creative path (unique treasure). As a result, this exhibition makes use of the gallery exhibition spaces and visitor routes in Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei to construct ‘passages’- mazes with straight lines. Within this path-like exhibition we have allowed each artist to occupy their own entire space, since the laying out of the works of art can also allow them to express the core of their thoughts, as well as presenting the many possible varieties of ‘invisible waterways’ that digital art can offer.
This is a crowded digital sea. Everywhere there seems not a soul in sight, but you can feel another kind of shoulder barging or heel rubbing, pushing and pulling, pressing down on the body. The feeling of alienation needs re-definition, a re-mapping of connections and of distances near and far. This new way of measuring and conveying distance is a re-arrangement of the context that gives one a sense of growth. At the same time we think about these art waterways we should ask in what ways can dialogue and connections be established between international and artistic development. It would be similar to the One Piece manga series, where the relationship of Monkey D. Luffy (the protagonist) with the entire ocean and universe is one of being an observer and intervener. The story doesn’t originate from the ocean's history, but because of their strong and intense intervention it causes a change in the ocean and the start of a different course of events.
Crush in this exhibit also draws out the relationship between the individual and history. On the one hand 'having a crush on....' can come to mean the artist’s dazzlement in the face of the glamour of the century and the glittering of science and technology: how are they going to react to this century by using science and technology as a source material and environmental surrounding. At the same time, the digital age is also a 'crush' age in social relations, value structures and economic systems just like One Piece extended the theme of Samurai 7 as a nameless gang of seven searching for rule and order in a 'crush' age.
The observers of the digital age head forth from the intersections of the waterways on this ‘New Sea’; whether it be colliding with, guiding or exploring the creative landscape of the new democratic age. These ‘waterways’ have not derived from power or from our predecessors; rather they have come into being from those with a different point of view, and with the aid of potential power of the people we can put our spontaneous intuitions to test in the real world. As a result these waterways are a record of different strings of perception, of the body, and of time and space. This is also the difference between today’s technological art; and it’s critical art, which is too shallow or too abrasive and conceals or avoids ‘probing’. These observers see a waterway that has never been seen before, time after time getting closer to that point where their hearts begin to tremble in anticipation.
Artists
Wang Jun-Jieh, Yuan Goang-Ming, Wu Chi-Tsung, Lin Guan-Ming, Wang Fujui, Tseng Yu-Chin, Yao Chung-Han, LuxuryLogico, Wu Chi-Yu, Chen Ching-Yuan, Yu Cheng-Ta, Hsieh Mu-Chi, Kuo I-Chen, Chang Ming-Yao, Li Cheng-Liang, Huang Po-Chih, Chen Chun-Hao, Chen Shiau-Peng, Wang Sean, Tzeng Yong-Ning, Hsi Shih-Pin, Chou Tai-Chun, Tsai Home, Liao Chien-Chung, and Huang Pei-Ying
