The Wild Trail to the World
As natural and manmade disasters become an everyday occurrence and traditional political divisions between left and right no longer apply, humanity needs to study new ways of coexisting with nature. To accommodate this public program, museum space normally reserved for art exhibitions will be transformed into dynamic fieldwork. By offering this interactive learning opportunity based on local knowledge and circumstances, The Wild Trail to the World work camp invites participants to study indigenous nomenclature of the natural world based on their accumulated wisdom of local beliefs, and advance life histories that connect people to their surroundings. A total of three work camps, each extending three days and two nights, will bring participants from the white cube into the wilderness, where bodily perceptions will be used to depict spaces transcending the map's borders. Hunters, oceanographers, naturalists, and artists will rely on the power of nature to reveal the interconnectedness of all plants, animals, technology, and people on this island. We hope this experience will awaken participants to an impending point of no return by guiding them along imaginative paths that go beyond maps, imparting a philosophy of the land different from contemporary mainstream logic, and calling forth memories of open fields free of anthropocentrism.
Notice
The work camp is three days and two nights. Participants must provide their own transportation to the meeting point and be willing to attend the entire three day program. The activity includes traveling through mountains and forests on foot, gathering items in the forest, outdoor cooking, and nighttime activities. Based on the different conditions at each site visited, participants will camp outside, be lodged in indigenous homes, or stay in guesthouses, and shower and bathroom facilities will vary. Before registering, potential participants are asked to read the detailed information at the registration link and evaluate their own physical capabilities or health limitations, as well as be willing to respect the work camp program schedule and accept the accommodations that are offered.
Health Guidelines:
Registrants who are experiencing respiratory symptoms within fourteen days before the program's start are encouraged to seek medical attention, are required to notify the program, and are advised to rest in lieu of attending the event. Registrants with a recent history of fever will be allowed to attend only if the fever resolves (without the use of fever reducers) twenty-four hours before the start of the program. Registrants must confirm that they: have not, within fourteen days before the program's start, traveled to regions designated as Covid 19 Level 2 or above in the Ministry of Health and Welfare Centers for Disease Control's most recent announcement; are not currently under a home isolation or quarantine order by the Ministry of Health and Welfare; and are willing to bear relevant legal responsibility arising from misrepresentation of actual facts or nondisclosure of details related to their health status.
Conversation with Things - The Way to Flow With River
Date: 2021/01/18-01/20
Trail: Zengwen River, Tapangu
Meeting Point: Chiayi High Speed Rail station
Originating in the Alishan Mountain range, the Zengwen River nourishes the Chiayi–Tainan alluvial plain. The upper course of the river is marked by rich geological structures and landscapes with evidence of orogenesis. The middle and lower courses of the river not only are important for the study of paleoecology, include lagoons and wetlands at its delta, and serve as the winter habitat for the black-faced spoonbill, but also are home to many fisheries and businesses dependent on tourism. The Zengwen River has been an important source of people's livelihoods in southern Taiwan since ancient times. Long before dams were erected and sediment accumulated in the riverbed to block the river, the lives of the Tsou People had been inextricably intertwined with the Zengwen, their mother river, which they called atuhcu c'oeha. This work camp program is an onsite investigation of the Zengwen River basin's geological environment, which will focus on the ecological systems of the upper, middle, and lower river courses, as well as changes in the area's human settlements over time. Naming stories of the Tsou People regarding the river and land as told by a Tsou hunter will initiate participants into an investigation of the river basin and suggest ways in which we are all connected to the environment. Participants will also be encouraged to break free from dominant narratives of river basin management and to consider these issues from the perspective of both natural and scientific objects. All things are in conversation at night and further explore the deep interconnectedness as a whole.
Special thanks to Tainan National University of the Arts for collaborating on this event.
Registration Information:
Registration is separate for each program event. To ensure the participation of people from a variety of backgrounds, the program has adopted a selection process.
Those wishing to register are asked to follow the link below and complete a questionnaire. Selected registrants will be contacted by email with the detailed work camp schedule and important information. Due to the large number of applicants, those who are not chosen will not be notified.
Mountain living in the future's past
Date: 2021/02/24-02/26
Trail: Laipunuk
Meeting Point: Taitung county Yanping township office
When walking into the Laipunuk mountain forests, tribal members long for a return to their home in the hidden wilds, but are also reminded of a sorrowful story that can never be found on any map. In 1941, in what is called the Laipunuk Incident, tribal residents of the Laipunuk area were forced by the government to move down from the mountains and concentrated into a number of lowland villages. In 2002, the Bunun tu Asang Foundation started its Seeking Tribal Roots Program aimed at actively helping tribal members find their way back home, and has provided elders who were born in Laipunuk with opportunities to return to their original tribal areas. Entering its nineteenth year, the Laipunuk Kulumah Movement has turned the mountain forests into pasnanavan (“schools” in Bunun) and added the notion of returning home to their programming. Members have also been constructing traditional homes in the area with natural materials sourced onsite to establish a deeper connection with the mountain forests and provide the younger generation with more survival and cultural skills while learning how to coexist with nature. During the work camp, participants will travel on the Yanping forest trail, Mamahav hunter's trail, and Laipunuk historic trail, which, because of their respective use of these trails, represent the Bunun and Japanese peoples, and the Nationalist Government. In addition to learning the story of the Bunun people's migration to the Laipunuk area, participants will rely on local perspectives to become aware of environmental changes in the mountain forests, and learn about interactions between the body and land, and about life in the mountains.
Special thanks to the Laipunuk Cultural Heritage Studio for collaborating on this event.
Registration Information:
Registration is separate for each program event. To ensure the participation of people from a variety of backgrounds, the program has adopted a selection process.
Those wishing to register are asked to follow the link below and complete a questionnaire. Selected registrants will be contacted by email with the detailed work camp schedule and important information. Due to the large number of applicants, those who are not chosen will not be notified.
The Mystery of Formosan Landlocked Salmon's Port of Entry
Date: 2021/03/01-03/03
Trail: Kyawan
Meeting Point: Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Images of Nanhu Mountain, nicknamed Emperor Mountain, and the Formosan landlocked salmon, considered a national treasure and recognized as the southernmost natural distribution of Salmonidae in the world, are printed on the 2,000 Yuan bill, Taiwan's largest denomination banknote. The marine biologist Fang Lee-Shing (Founder and Director of the Taiwan National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium) discovered that the Formosan salmon originated in Lanyang River and did not, as a previous hypothesis held, migrate to Taiwan via the Dajia River during the last ice age. Starting in the late 1980s and continuing for thirteen years, Fang and his research team collected geologic and biogenic fossil evidence in river beds throughout Taiwan to solve the mystery of this national treasure's migratory path. Now twenty years later, this academic achievement has reached interdisciplinary status by capturing the interest of artists and anthropologists, such that we can return to where these east and west coast river basins meet and be enthralled by a reverse engineering of this discovery with the help of interdisciplinary guidance.
Registration Information:
Registration is separate for each program event. To ensure the participation of people from a variety of backgrounds, the program has adopted a selection process.
Those wishing to register are asked to follow the link below and complete a questionnaire. Selected registrants will be contacted by email with the detailed work camp schedule and important information. Due to the large number of applicants, those who are not chosen will not be notified.
About Guides
Conversation with Things - The Way to Flow With River
Mo'o Yasiyungu
A hunter, cultural guide, and member of the Tsou people, Mo'o Yasiyungu started living in the mountains and working as a surveyor of Tsou culture and history when he was 19. With an enthusiastic devotion to his own culture and sense of mission, he has built traditional Tsou houses. Skilled at working with children, he has led student tours of tribal mountain areas, held on-site experiential activities that help children better understand science, nature, and life, and taught how to make hunting traps and traditional Tsou children's toys. For many years, he has offered classes on Tsou culture in cooperation with Charshan Primary School and Dabang Elementary School; and organized children's science camps with the Child Sun Scout Troop, TransWorld University camping group, Kaohsiung travel agencies, and the Taiwan Fund for Children and Families.
Gong Jow Jiun
Curator, philosopher, and aesthetic researcher, Gong Jow Jiun is the director and an associate professor at the Doctoral Program in Art Creation and Theory of Tainan National University of the Arts, the editor in chief of ACT Art Critique of Taiwan, and a curator for the Mattauw Earth 2022. His main areas of research are Phenomenology and contemporary French philosophy, and he has closely followed topics such as philosophy of the body, aesthetics, Phenomenological psychology, and psychoanalysis for many years. Since 2013, Gong has curated many contemporary art exhibitions, and been interested in aesthetic propositions related to connections between local culture and history, folk art, contemporary visual art events. He won the Annual Grand Prize in The 16th Taishin Arts Award for Kau-Puê, Mutual Companionship in Near Future: 2017 Soulangh International Contemporary Art Festival.
Mountain living in the future's past
Dahu Takishusungan
Dahu Takishusungan is the leader of the Laipunuk cultural heritage studio, dedicated to tribal forest education, a teacher of food and farm education at tribal elementary schools, and spends the balance of his time farming. He was also a member of the construction team that rebuilt the Takishusungan home in Laipunuk, participating in the renovation of this dilapidated house for a month in 2013. He is currently involved in farming the land following tribal traditions.
Katu Takishusungan
After participating in the “seeking roots” movement promoted by the Bunun tu Asang Foundation, Katu Takishusungan was inspired to learn more about the history of the Bunun Tribe's migration to Laipunuk. If one visits Laipunuk, attending Katu's history class is a must in order to really enter the mountains, as he is the best storyteller of Laipunuk's history. He is currently a teacher at Taitung's Junyi School of Innovation and a member of the Laipunuk cultural heritage studio.
Langus
After becoming acquainted with the Laipunuk area while working as a field surveyor of Formosan black bears, and then spending twenty days with the Laipunuk Kulumah Movement, Langus started the Min Bunun course, which is the process of learning to be an authentic Bunun person. She works with the tribe to promote Bunun forest education, recently began studying the traditional Bunun craft of rattan weaving, and started Manyi Lifestyle Studio to promote her projects. She is also the author of the book Kulumah—Laipunuk, Seeking Roots and Finding Way Home.
The Mystery of Formosan Landlocked Salmon’s Port of Entry
Fang, Lee-Shing, Dr.
Dr. Lee-Shing Fang is a well-known marine biologist internationally. He received his Ph. D degree in marine biology and biochemistry from Univ. of California, San Diego, USA, then became a staff in the National Sun Yat-Sen Univ. in Taiwan. In addition to teaching and research, Dr. Fang was the planner and founder of the National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium in Taiwan. He also was the founding chairperson of Coral Reef Society, Republic of China (Taiwan), as well as was the chairperson of Wetland Protection Taiwan. For his contribution, he has been awarded the Cultural Medal by the Ministry of Education, the Meritorious Medal by the Executive Yuan, and the Outstanding Research Awards by the Ministry of Science and Technology.
Wu Mu-Ching
The art critic, curator, and writer Wu Mu-Ching writes subtle, multivalent commentary and has tried to maintain an outsider status. He disliked the art classes he attended while growing up in Taiwan. However, after entering adulthood, his main area of work became art. He found himself in the passive position of having no choice but to teach himself and taking action. The former has widened his interests, while the latter has made him widely regarded as a writer-activist in cultural policy and art politics. Even though mountain and forest exploration has become a hot topic in contemporary art today, Wu believes he is still engaged in a modernist dialogue of reflexive surveying. He climbs mountains for the purpose of mountain climbing, hiking for hiking, and accidentally connecting in time and space certain people, events, and things that capture his interest.