主編語
Editor-in-chief’s Note

Editor-in-chief’s Note

Tseng Shao-chien

Abstract

In the current capitalist society, we live in a culture covered, publicized and produced by the mass media. Evolving from traditional channels such as print, radio, TV and film to new forms like the internet, virtual games and social media platforms today, media culture provides news and entertainment, shaping public opinion and popular trends, and creating a world of images where fiction and truth are indistinguishable. Very often, through sponsoring museums, media companies influence or even determine the curatorial direction of exhibitions in order to enhance their company image and business interest.

In terms of the development of art, ever since pop art adopted news events and the consumer culture as their raw materials, contemporary art has engaged in a complex dialogue with media culture. Playing different cultural roles, art production and the mass media are shaped by different factors, and have different effects on society. However, there is still a close relationship between the two. This issue explores how the topics and technology of media culture are appropriated and adapted by artists, how artists employ or intervene into mainstream media, or create alternative media, and what role the media play in the promotion and marketing of art. 

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Ai Weiwei’s Social Media Utilization and Identity Development

Cheng Hui-wen

Assistant Professor, Fine Arts and Culture Creative Design Department, Hua Fan University

Abstract

In recent years, social media has gradually become a focal point for public attention and discourse, and of artists. Among those artists interested in social media, Ai Weiwei is among the most passionate. He employs social media as a channel to give himself a voice, and in the flexible creation and development of large-scale community times features. However, the larger the social media art creation, the more powerful the Internet presence needed for participation. How Ai Weiwei attracts netizens to work for him is the question at the core of this research, and from this other questions derive, such as: how is social media used? What kind of image recognition does it develop? This research focuses on two social platforms, blogs and Twitter, which are most often used by Ai Weiwei, analyzing how he utilizes social media, establishes the meaning of actions, and develops recognition. I begin by elaborating the rise of social media era via changes in society and art. Secondly, I analyze how Ai Weiwei rehearses autonomous propagation and organizational connections through his blog to create a force strong enough to contend with the government. Lastly, I will indicate how Ai Weiwei repeatedly, intentionally designs an Internet movement via Twitter capable of directing his followers.

Keywords: Ai weiwei, social media, blog, Twitter, identity

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Looking at “China: Through the Looking Glass”

Chu Chi-jung

Assistant Professor, Graduate Institute of Museum Studies, Fu Jen Catholic University

Abstract

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s spring exhibition of 2015,“China: through the Looking Glass”, drew a record number of visitors to the Costume Institute and became the fifth most popular exhibition in the museum’s history. Met Gala, the fundraising event designated to benefit the fashion exhibition, also attracted considerable media attention and raised a significant amount in donations to the museum. “China: through the looking glass”, an exhibition resulting from a collaboration between the Asian Department and the Costume Institute, was the first at the Institute to combine fashion, film and art in a single exhibition. It presented how, in their creative processes, Western designers were inspired by Chinese aesthetics. How was the exhibition presented, and what issues arose out of the exhibition? Through materials from the museum’s website, media reviews, fashion literature, audience responses, and the author’s own observation, this article discusses several inter-related issues including the curatorial ideas, exhibition design, the promotion of the exhibition, the ethical dilemma involved in fashion exhibitions, and critiques from the audience. This article concludes that, with abundant resources, the exhibition constructed a succinct curatorial statement. Together with a design team consisting of talents from various fields—especially the film industry—the exhibition created an unprecedented on site visual experience and established a new milestone in exhibition design. However, the dynamic between the museum and its sponsors, and the ethical issues involved in fashion exhibitions, remains contested.

Keywords: curatorial study, exhibition design, fashion exhibitions, museum ethics

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Animation as the Tinkerer’s Dream: The Animator and the Operational Aesthetic

Tai Peng-yi

Assistant Professor, Department of English, National Central University

Abstract

The tinkerer may not be the most pervasive character in the history of the American animation, but its presence often marked important turning points in the early development of the animation industry. In the late 1920s, the character of the tinkerer first appeared in popular animated cartoons, but disappeared within a decade. Interestingly, its demise coincided with the labor rationalization process that was implemented to produce feature-length animated films. In many ways, the division of labor clashed with the work of the tinkerer, not only in industrial society as a whole, but with animators, who I argue to have always invested in the tinkerer identity. Moreover, the development of the tinkerer character can be identified through the transformations of the operational aesthetic which in turn began to eclipse the tinkerer character in the final stage of full labor rationalization. The essay will therefore approach the tinkerer character in animation from the perspective of the animator, the mode of production of the studio and the operational aesthetic in the major works by early Disney, Fleischer, and Aardman Animations in order to explore their social and cultural meanings.

Keywords: animation, labor, tinkerer, Winsor McCay, Fleischer, Disney, Aardman, DIY, operational aesthetic

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Tit for Tat: Pierre Huyghe’s spectacle-as-format

Chen Chiao

Assistant Professor, Graduate Institute of Plastic Arts, Tainan National University of the Arts

Abstract

In the media society, the strict binary opposition between fact and fiction no longer exists. The real and fictional intertwine and mutually nourish each other in a way that blurs easy distinctions between them. Through a case study of three of Pierre Huyghe’s works, The Third Memory, Snow White Lucie, and One Million Kingdoms, this article investigates the following questions: How can art enter into a set of rules that produce imaginary actualities to discover and intensify the potential of fiction and to “extend fiction into reality” rather than simply accusing the media of alienating society? How can art, by creating a spectacle, present the complicated transformation between fact and fiction in the self-identification process? How does one become an “actor” who builds his/her imaginary self in this transformation? How can the real eventually disappear due to the presence of something that is more real than the real?

Keywords: reality, fiction, self-identity, becoming-image, hyperreal

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Reframing Disaster: Word and Image in Tacita Dean’s The Russian Ending

凱瑟琳．布朗

Lecturer, Modern and Contemporary Art, Loughborough University, United Kingdom

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between word and image in a suite of photogravures produced by Tacita Dean in 2001 entitled The Russian Ending. It is argued that this intermedial encounter expands the signifying content of documentary photographs beyond that which is visible on their surface. This thesis is supported by an analysis of the different uses to which handwriting is put in the work. This includes the creation of fictions derived from the original photographs, the placement of images within different historical frameworks, the superimposition of cinematic directions, and the signaling of chance features that have impinged on each photographed scene. In her transformation of ‘found photographs’ of early twentieth-century disasters into a series of hand manipulated photogravures, Dean liberates photographic images from indexicality and broadens the nature and extent of information that they communicate about the world.

Keywords: cinema; Roland Barthes; Tacita Dean; documentary; handwriting; intermediality; photography

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Cosmetic Surgery in Contemporary Korean Art

SooJin Lee

Assistant Professor, Liberal Arts, Hongik University (Sejong Campus), South Korea

Abstract

This essay examines how South Korea’s conspicuous cosmetic-surgery culture is represented and critiqued in visual works by young Korean artists. In particular, I pay attention to the recent works by Mind C (Kang Min Gu), Kim Tae Yeon, and Ji Yeo (Yeo Ji Hyeon), widely circulated online and attracting much viewership, but which have not received much in the way of critical evaluation or in-depth examination. Based on a close analysis of the images, I argue that they raise some important and complex issues with respect to cosmetic surgery and beauty culture that have previously been under-discussed in popular culture, such as gender stereotype, side effects, and the pain and desire involved in extreme makeovers, and the changing aesthetics and ethics of contemporary South Korea. For comparison, I will first review pop-culture representations of cosmetic surgery before discussing the artworks under consideration. My analysis of the artworks will highlight the role of artists as cultural critics, but it will also suggest that the artworks are products of the culture, and partake in the production of the growing discourse on South Korea’s expanding cosmetic surgery culture and industry. Both scholarly and journalistic writings on South Korea’s cosmetic surgery practice and culture will be used in this analysis. 

Keywords: cosmetic surgery in contemporary art; cosmetic surgery; Korean art; Internet culture; beauty culture

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Discussion of the Relational Aesthetics of Marcel Duchamp Prize-winning Artists: A Study of 2014 Win

Lin Su-hui

Associate Professor, Department of Graphic Art Communications, National Taiwan Normal University

Abstract

French art curator Nicolas Bourriaud undertook exhibition planning for the Taipei Biennial 2014 following the approach outlined in his 1998 work Esthétique relationnelle (Relational Aesthetics).The publication of the original French edition of Esthétique relationnelle and the launch of the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2000 each reflected major international trends in contemporary art in the 1990s, and many of the artists who have been awarded the Marcel Duchamp Prize since its establishment produce work characterized by embodying some of the characteristics of “Relational Art” as outlined in Bourriaud’s book. In particular, the works of Julien Prévieux, the winner of the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2014, demonstrate a very close relationship with society, history, culture and the future; his thought-provoking art encourages the viewer to engage in deep reflection. The present study begins with a review of the literature relating to Relational Art, and to the winners of the Marcel Duchamp Prize, before analyzing works created Julien Prévieux and exploring the characteristics of his Relational Art. It is anticipated that the results obtained in the study will provide useful references for research on the development of contemporary art in Taiwan, and for those working in related fields. The results will also contributing to raising public awareness of the potential for collaboration with contemporary artists on the completion of art works, and thereby develop new insights and perspectives.

Keywords: 關係美學、關係藝術、杜象獎藝術家、朱利安．佩維厄

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