LIU Johanna Chien-Mei/劉千美 (University of Toronto, Department of East Asian Studies)
"Toward an Aesthetic Multiculturality? Questioning Cross-cultural Reading, Translation and Adaptation in Contemporary Art"
Abstract:
This paper aims to discuss the aesthetic questions of multiculturality in the process of thinking, making and reading contemporary art, in taking a Taiwanese American contemporary conceptual artist Lee Mingwei’s work Through Masters' Eyes (2004, commissioned by Los Angeles County Museum of Art) as a case study. When looking at this installation artwork, the first thing we read is a story of cross-cultural journey of an image of Mount Huang, painted by Shitao (1642-1707) in 17th century China, while collected in LACMA today. The journey is initiated by Lee Mingwei for an art project to challenge the concept of contemporary art. In this project, Lee Mingwei invited two sets of artists, one in Taiwan and the other based primarily in New York, to emulate Shitao’s painting. Lee initials the journey firstly by sending the image of the painting to two skilled artist-copiers who each made a copy of the work. Those copies were then sent on to two additional artist-copiers, who subsequently made their own copies, and so on. At the end of circulation of the image, Lee collected all the returned paintings, 11 pieces of works, produced separately by those artist-copiers with divers cultural background, then made an installation to display their pictures in the exhibition entitled Through Masters' Eye at LACMA, and exhibition entitled Transmitting by Copying 傳移模寫at National Taiwan Museum of fine art in Taichung in 2004.
The original idea of Lee’s project is to challenge the artistic values of originality and authenticity of artifacts by art-copying, and to rethink the concept of art when encountering of East and West in the context of contemporary multi-cultures: “what art is, what it was, and what it will be?” As a conceptual artist, Lee takes the art as way of thinking, invites the artists and audiences to think the philosophical question of art. For me, Lee’s project of Through Masters' Eye inspires more other interesting questions, such as art transmitting, art remaking and art renaming, than art copying. As matter of fact, during the long journey of image-migration, the image of Shitao’s painting has been transformed into 11 different pictures, under different cross-cultural reading, translation and adaptation, among the artists, who even are not culturally familiar with each other. The cross-cultural features Through Masters' thus arouse crucial issues relating to multicultural aesthetics that cannot be ignored, especially in the cultures highly globalized today.
Firstly, how’s possible to read a Chinese painting cross-culturally beyond orientalism? Whether the poetic meaning of the painting is translatable, when the art-work has been displaced by transfer to another civilization and by the disruption of its continuity? What and how to understand the adaption as a poetic step of remaking? I am trying to discuss these questions in an alternative way, taking multiculturality as an aesthetic characteristic, or an aesthetic attitude, to look at and appreciate the unfamiliar alterity when multicultural encountering.
By contrasting with the Taylorian concept of multiculturalism, here I understand the aesthetic multiculturality beyond political recognition of identity, to bring us the Beauty of the things beyond the boundaries with familiarity.
Besides, in questioning Chinese aesthetics through cross-cultural reading and translation in contemporary art, I will discuss the multiple cross-cultural readings on concept of trans-mimetic aesthetics, the poetic theory of “xiangwai beyond image,” to see how the aesthetics of the image beyond representation in Chinese literati culture have been re-interpreted as alternative way of knowing, as energy of creating and dynamic of social movement by different contemporary western scholars and sinologists’ cross-cultural reading and translation.
In short, I argue, to discuss the issue of aesthetic multiculturality in contemporary art refers not only to the cultural appropriation of artifacts in producing, but also to the poetic existence of art works, and to the aesthetics of picturing self as multiple others through the way of self-in-the-making to reach mutual enrichment in multicultural encountering.
HSIEH Hsin-Chin/謝欣芩 (National Taipei University of Education, Graduate School of Taiwanese Culture)
“Documenting and Materializing Multiculturality of Japanese Colonial Taiwan in Le Moulin (2015)”
Abstract:
This paper explores how contemporary documentary filmmaking and curating revealed and represented the lesser-known poet society “Le Moulin” during the Japanese colonial period. “Le Moulin” comprised Taiwanese and Japanese poets and was known for its aesthetic experiments regarding surrealism and avant-garde. Under the Japanese regime, and owing to the Japanese’s mediation, Taiwanese surrealist poets were influenced and trained with the western knowledge, philosophy, and techniques. Due to the transnational flow, the cultural landscape of Taiwan has been constructed with multicultural elements ever since. In 2015, the filmmaker Ya-Li Huang produced his first feature-length documentary, Le Moulin, to unveil the artistic achievement and historical significance of “Le Moulin” and demonstrated the synchronic cultural production among Taiwan, Japan, and the West. In 2019, Huang curated the “Synchronic Constellation” exhibition at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts to continue the reproduction of archives, materials, and images of Japanese colonial Taiwan. Taking the form and strategy of filmmaking and curating into consideration, this paper examines how materiality was employed to represent everyday life as well as the transnational circulation of arts and knowledge during the Japanese regime. It proposes that materiality as a form of mediation not only reflects the multicultural production of the poet society but also challenges the boundary of reality and fictionality of the historical narrative and curation. With the employment of materiality, both Le Moulin and “Synchronic Constellation” represent the transnational cultural flow in Japanese colonial Taiwan and recapture the relation between Taiwan and the world.
TIAN Chen/田晨 (EHESS, Paris)
"Cultural Opening in Materiality: Chinoiserie and Artistic Power in Eighteenth-Century France"
Abstract:
This article will focus on the crucial role that the Chinoiserie objects and its aesthetics played in Franco-Chinese exchange during the eighteenth-century. We will try to understand the link between materiality, aesthetics and social power in the particular case of the very first broad-scale opening of a culture to a foreign one. Our main concern, in a more general plan, is to explore the expression of cultural encounters through material art. We endeavour to see that to what extent the Chinoiserie object was able to embody the innovations of human thoughts in art, aesthetics and epistemology, which was generated by the encounter of cultures. The Chinoiserie reflects the diverse artistic creativity of the Enlightenment. In the imagination of a foreign world, the interaction between humans and objects will illustrate the dichotomy of self and other in the local culture as well as the understanding of modernity by the people in the centre of this eighteenth-century cultural opening.
We will proceed by exploring the historical and social background of the means of artistic production under the Old Regime, that is to say, the role of art and the ways through which the foreign culture was introduced. From there, the aesthetics will make our emphasis that will be furtherly discussed through the hybrid form of Chinoiserie objects and their stylization as motifs. We will then continue with the idealized expression of philosophy and aesthetics about the world through the Chinoiserie objects seen in representations, which, in return, profoundly influenced the image of the objects. We argue the idea that the Chinoiserie projects a double imagination, which is, on one hand, the innovation of artistic styling, and the other, the imagination of the exotic world residing in the design concept.
〈物质性与文化开放——十八世纪法国的中式艺术品与艺术创造力〉
本文将以中式艺术品为主题，重点探讨中式艺术品及其审美在18世纪中法交流中的关键作用。文章尝试通过中法历史上第一次大规模文化开放的案例来理解物质性、美学和社会力量之间的联系。不同文化间的碰撞怎样通过物质艺术表达出来？从微观层面讲，就是要了解中式艺术品在何种程度上体现了十八世纪异域文化感染下的法国社会在艺术、美学和认识论等方面的创新。中式艺术品反映了启蒙运动时期多元的艺术创造力。在对陌生世界的想象中，人们通过与物品的互动，体现了本地文化中自我和他者的对立关系以及他们对时代和时代感的理解。
文章将探讨法国“旧制度”下艺术产业的相关历史和社会背景，讨论艺术的地位以及外国文化（特别是中国文化）的引入方式。为理解中式物品的另类审美形式，文章将着重分析十八世纪欧洲美学理论和中式物品的风格化之间的关系，通过中式物品的图像再现，讨论影响其造型的文化内在因素——哲学和美学关于世界的理想化表达。中式艺术品上投射出双重的想象力，一方面是艺术风格的创新，另一方是对设计理念背后的异域世界的想象。
CHU Meng-Tze/朱夢慈 (Tainan National University of the Arts, Graduate Institute of Ethnomusicology)
"Creating the Normalized Rock Band Wave in Taiwan: Community-Based Hit Music Instrument Stores as Mediator"
Abstract:
This article analyzes the formation and maintenance of the rock band wave in Taiwan since the late 1990s, which is characterized by the increasing number of teenagers involved in bands and by a normalized positive image. The identity of the underground rock music community started to crystalize in the early 1990s in the Daan District of Taipei. However, since the late 1990s, rock music has gradually been regarded as a legitimate cultural activity by the mainstream society in Taiwan, thanks to the institutionalization of the rock community. This transition does not result only from rock’s commercial success, the growing presence of famous musicians in the media, or their engagements in social movements. It also benefits from the musical community network that is woven by the hit music clubs of high school students and the supporting music instrument stores in the neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the low cost of musical equipment in Taiwan makes rock more accessible. The band wave seems to have risen at the convergence of all these factors. But more importantly, what makes it a success story lies in the fact that the moral values promoted by its practitioners do correspond to the ones of the mainstream society.
LEE Wang-Han/李王瀚 (EHESS, Paris)
"When the Monument Started to Be Seen: Multicultural Context, Changing Materiality and Culture of Commemoration in Modern China"
Abstract:
The culture of commemoration in ancient China has its own tradition. According to this traditional model, the creation of the“monumentality”mainly sprang from people’s participation into a variety of rites rather than erecting concrete objects such as a statue or a monument set into the public space. In this regard, it seems that there is a gap between the habitus of the commemoration and the materiality. Observing objects that are in forms of ancient Chinese“monuments”, a stone tablet for example, its function was largely based on the inscriptions carved on the surface. However, neither the materials nor the plastic expression, has a decisive role in the making of monumentality. The fashioning of monumentality has not changed until the arrival of modern epoch.
During the second half of 19th century, the western social habitus and cultural model has been introduced into the Chinese society. This phenomenon started with the foundation of the foreign concessions in China, first in Shanghai, then in many other cities that are designated as“treaty ports”, such as Canton or Tianjing. In a short time, these cities managed by European and Americans became the areas where cultural influx were highly present. Furthermore, the growth of foreign population and the increase of Chinese people being in contact with western cultures (eg. the students or the diplomats sent to the European countries) in China brought an even closer interaction between the Chinese and western civilization. This particular historical condition deeply shaped the multicultural context of Chinese society in modern era. And it is no coincidence that a number of new monuments that were very different from the tradition ones began to appear during this period. Their unique materiality and plastic expression quickly caught the eyes of Chinese people. As the project of modernization was one of the primary tasks of the republican China, the practice of commemoration, including the monument design, became more and more westernized. Since then, one notices the significant change of materiality, including both the adoption of certain new materials and the intentional hybrid of different plastic expressions and substances.
Comparing to the traditional Chinese monuments, the materiality has been raised to a much higher place than before. This could also imply a structural shift of the epistemic frame which is about the formation of ocularcentrism and the invention of national myth. On the one hand, we can say that all of these phenomena are based on a multicultural environment created by the specific context of Chinese modern history; on the other hand, the physiognomy of modern China is exactly shaped by these brand new cultural factors. Through this paper, we intend to touch upon this complicated and crucial issue in the Chinese history.
CHANG Chun-Chang/張純昌 (National Taiwan University, Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature)
"The Emergence of the New “Pure Literary” Aesthetics After Post-Martial Law Period: the City, Daily Life and Object Writing of “Introversion Generation”"
Abstract:
In the 1990s, Taiwan was in a period of arrogance and enthusiasm after the martial law. This period was also the time when Taiwan began to be actively localized, all kinds of artistic creators have shown abundant creativity at this time, and they have tried hard to break through the restraint of thought and body left by the past martial law system. However, there are a group of young writers in the literary field, which do not involved the chaotic political society at that time. Instead, they in turn look at themselves and portray the inner visual landscape. These writers expressed their own inner and inner world by describing the trivial things and objects that occur in daily life, and projected their inner colors into the outer world where they are. This group of writers is therefore called "introverted generation" and is regarded as inheriting Taiwan's "modernism" literary techniques in the 1960s. Thay was seen as "pure literature" writers who did not talk about politics in the 1990s and only pursued literature.
This article will first explore how this group of "introverted generations" writers, on the one hand, are emphasized by later commentators as traits that seem to be alienated from society. On the other hand, this article wants to inherit the above discussion, which in turn emphasizes how the social context of rapid urbanization and globalization at that time influenced the works of these writers. At the same time, the preferences of describing the objects and daily life, as well as the literary techniques that further "materialize" "writing", presente that how the young writers who emerged as martial law are constructing a new identity belonging to Taiwan through literature.
（解嚴後新「純文學」美學的浮現：「內向世代」的都市、日常與物件書寫）
1990年代，台灣正處於解嚴後各種進步思想狂飆的時期，這也是台灣開始積極本土化的時期。各種藝術創作者都在此時展現豐沛的創造力，並且努力的突破過去戒嚴體制所留下來對思想與身體的箝制，然而，在文學圈卻有一群年輕的作家，不涉及當時紛亂的政治社會，而是反過來探視自身，刻畫內在的視覺風景。這群作家透過描寫日常發生的瑣事與物件，來表達自身幽微細緻的內心世界，並將自身內在的色彩投射到他們所處的外在世界。這群作家因此被稱為「內向世代」，並被視為繼承了台灣1960年代的「現代主義」文學技法，成為1990年代不談政治、只以文學為追求目標的「純文學」作家。
本文將先探討，這群「內向世代」作家，一方面如何被後來的評論者強調其看似與社會疏離的特質，這樣的論述帶有怎樣的「去政治」意圖。另一方面，本文想承繼上面的討論，反過來強調，在台灣當時快速都市化與全球化的社會脈絡，如何影響這些作家的作品。同時他們描寫物件與日常的喜好，以及進一步將「書寫」「物質化」的文學技法，其實正呈現出他們作為解嚴後浮現的年輕作家，正在透過文學建構一個屬於台灣的新的認同。
Mathias Obert/宋灝 (National Sun Yat-Sen University, Institute of Philosophy)
"Self-Embodiment Through Artistic Practice"
Abstract:
From the stance of a transcultural phenomenology of the bodily self, ancient Chinese arts of the brush, as well as contemporary Euro-American painting, has quite a lot to teach us. Contrary to what the inadequate title “calligraphy” may suggest, Chinese ink brush writing is not so much concerned with formal beauty but rather with an ethics of self-formation through writing practice, the latter being deeply rooted in body movement and embodied sensitivities. Not very different from writing, premodern painting in China - although it may be considered as “mimetic” - makes pictorial figuration in a crucial way rely on the breathing and moving body, thus yielding the general paradigm of “body mimesis”. Combining these insights into how the moving body engages directly in artistic creativity, finally sheds new light on experiences made by modern and contemporary painters in the so called West. If they sometimes hold their painterly work responsible for the revelation or formation of their own self, this self is much deeper indebted to embodiment than the common opinion would expect it to be.
LIN Szu-Yen/林斯諺 (Chinese Culture University, Department and Graduate School of Philosophy)
"Artworks as Culturally Emergent and Physically Embodied Entities"
Abstract:
Arguing against the essentialist view of art, Joseph Margolis famously claims that artworks are culturally emergent and physically embodied entities, hence lacking an essence. This claim can be unpacked into two sub-claims: to say that something is culturally emergent implies that it has intentional properties; to say that something is physically embodied implies that it has certain physical properties. According Robert Stecker, Margolis’ claim, taken in the way suggested, commits him to an essentialist view of art, because that claim seems to entail that artworks are essentially things having both intentional and physical properties. I show that Stecker’s criticism is inadequate by clarifying and reinterpreting some of the important points made by Margolis in his original formulation of the view in question.
LAU Yick-Sau/劉亦修 (National Taiwan University, Graduate Institute of Musicology)
"Making a Local Gebogan: Perspectives on Practicing Balinese Gamelan in Taiwan"
Abstract:
Gamelan, a name familiar in the realm of world music, has been brought and anchored in many places in the world. Theories, transcriptions, and critical analysis on gamelan have long been attractive topics for scholars and musicians. Nowadays, many famous gamelan ensembles can be found in the United States, Australia, and Japan etc. Taiwan, nevertheless, has been following the world trend, with both Balinese gamelan Angklung and Javanese gamelan had been introduced to the Island since 1980s. Yet, the phenomenon has not been flared up until the mid-2010s, when more Southeast Asian instruments and musical culture were introduced to universities in Taiwan. In 2018, Balinese gamelan Gong Kebyar, a popular type of gamelan on the Island of Bali, has been first brought to Taiwan too. With the instrument itself present in classroom, it provides opportunities for practice-based learning. Hence, it would be important to raise the question: why is this a crucial time for practicing Balinese gamelan in Taiwan? Aside from political strategies, how could practicing and promoting the musical culture of gamelan be significant to Taiwan?
Building on the personal experience to participate in several Balinese gamelan courses and performance held at National Taiwan University, this paper shall discuss the importance of musical practice in understanding the underlying diversity and multiculturality of Balinese gamelan. Through engaging with the musical instrument, one shall be able to explore the diverse sounds and practices of gamelan. This paper argues that although the popularization of gamelan may seem to be related to political strategies and institutional decision, the diversity of Balinese gamelan music and dance itself accelerates its development in Taiwan since 1980s and enables a high degree of flexibility and adaptability in actual execution. Furthermore, this paper shall elaborate the necessary participation of gamelan in the broader discussion of Southeast Asian culture in Taiwan.