The Private Times: Beitou Local Image Collecting Project -II

Formerly a community arts empowerment project of Hong-Gah Museum in “Arts Together in Peitou”, it is now the fourth year of the project. In the third year of the event, it was the outdoor artwork “Flipping Landscape: Beitou Local Image Collection Project” that put all the participating parities together. We showcased in various spaces from block to block, engaging art exchanges in the community beyond the wall of the museum. In the past, the museum-school collaborations used to bring art workers and children to imagine and work together, and presented the results in the museum space. This year, apart from the presentation of the participating schools’ creative works, we invite two professional artist workers to enrich the content of the exhibition with more levels to offer, so as to highlight the endeavor and purpose of the museum in offering a wide range of research perspectives on Beitouology. The proposed theme “The Private Times: Beitou Local Image Collection Project Part II” marks the passion of this exhibition toward the study of local life, while “the private times” refers to a kind of informal, private status. Each of the participating parties this time utilized their time outside of their own positions, pondering over their relationships with this land in the most naked life condition. The participating artist LIU Chih-Hung obtained his M.F.A. from the Department of Fine Arts, Taipei National University of the Arts. He has therefore been living in Beitou since he was a student. He even stayed at Fuxinggang for 11 months during his service in the military. Following the concept of “Sound Geography” project series, LIU returned to Beitou he is familiar with. The knowledge of Beitou ever since he was a student and a solider, the stories he listened to, and the sounds he heard on this land shall be showcased via images. The photographer LEE Ya-Yen is an art teacher to Taipei Municipal Chung Cheng Senior High School, dedicated to education as her everyday career. She is also a photographer that expresses herself via images after work. The gloomy, melancholic character of her photographs were like mirrors, reflecting all sorts of realities in the smoky Beitou that belong to the contemporary society. With the collaboration of Datun Elementary School and the Fine Art Class of Fuhsing Senior High School and led by photographers HAN Yun-Ching and Jasmine CHENG, the students created for the art project after school, in an attempt to develop the image narratives of their own. The artworks created in those informal, private times of their own, compared to the duties these individuals are given, stress more on the energy initiated within. As the artists step back and keep a distance from the life patterns they’re acquainted with and try to observe them from yet another angle, what kind of perception as well as imagination would Beitou, an environment for creative souls to indulge, offer or inspire? With this layer of “private” filter added, it is as if you are walking through the places you often tramp in daytime, a bit of familiar and yet strange experience. It is also like walking home via another route and see a landscape strange to your eyes.