“In the beginning there would be four persons. Maybe five. Just about as many as the needs of the body. A farmer for food, a mason for housing, a weaver for clothing. To these let us add a shoemaker and some other worker to provide for material necessities. This is how Plato's republic presents itself.”

--- Rancière, Jacques. The Philosopher and His Poor.

In 2012, with some funds left from a public art project, artist Liu Ho-Jang rented a factory in Xizhi and named it as mt. black. Liu gradually turned the space into an art project: with the first work Gallery (2012), the local-community-like B-5 Project began. Quoting the concept of “mediation” as deployment for the project, the parallel labor of the local production economy took place, while the identity, social class, substance, institution, interface, economy, production, capital, and labor, all the factors are derived and eventually intertwined. The five-year long B-5 Project includes solo exhibitions of Liu Ho-Jang, Chan Shih-Tai, Chin Cheng-Te, Liao Chien-Chung, and Lee Jo-Mei.  

In the exhibition Boundary Substance in Virtual (2017), Liu attempts to discuss the concept of “image” with the cross-inference of photography and substance. A “non-readymade” installation is completed with ready-mades. Two axes, departing from a strip that resembles a production line and from duplicating the mt. black “gallery” space, are intercrossed and interpreted inside the art museum. Using B-5 Project photo book as pre-preparation, the translation of objects in the space of mt. black is dialectic with the image files of the B-5 Project which is not there, each becoming one another’s virtual and reality.