Fictional Planetarium and New Approaches for Diplomacy

The Taipei Biennial has become an important part of the Asian and even global artistic perspective, and, for more than two decades, it has repeatedly created fascinating landscapes of contemporary art, echoing transformations in the world's cultural and social model. In 2020, it even overcame the challenges of organizing the biennial during the disastrous Covid-19 pandemic, and managed to present a physical exhibition as scheduled, along with greatly enhanced digital content. This accomplishment not only bore witness to the relentless efforts of all participants and of the organizing team, but underlined the urgent importance of the issues raised in this edition of the biennial for the future of our planet.

As people have different "views" or "visions" for the world and even tend to be dubious about the material nature of the world itself, the question of "how nature is composed" has led to a kaleidoscope of answers. With a deep understanding of this, the three curators of this year's Taipei Biennial attempted to turn the museum into a new kind of diplomatic space through exhibitions, workshops, and public programs that enabled the encounter of viewpoints from different "planets" and sought to generate constructive dialogues out of the world's conflicts and differences.

The artistic realizations of the 57 participants—individuals or teams—on display inside and outside the museum’s exhibition spaces, covering diverse fields, including science, ecology, history, politics, and society, compose a fictional planetarium simulating the movement of five planets. These planets represent divergent versions of the world: Planet GLOBALIZATION corresponds to dreams of modernization in disregard of borders and limits; Planet SECURITY is for those who, discontented with the current economic system, build walls to segregate themselves; Planet ESCAPE reflects the wish to settle on Mars to escape doomsday; Planet with ALTERNATIVE GRAVITY is for those who, with their metaphysical faith, question the essence of existence and look for a safe harbor; and Planet TERRESTRIAL calls for those seeking a balance between economic prosperity and the burden weighing on the planet’s resources. Through the mechanism of the biennial, the museum deploys various means to inspire highly positive social agency, giving visitors a perfect occasion to sense and think about the different crises facing humanity and the possibility for change.

The dialectics around the issues raised by the biennial were manifested in a series of public programs. In a curatorial reorientation, these programs were designed not as traditional educational and promotional activities, but as venues for the public to become core participants in the curatorial practice. These programs were so many occasions to trigger a clash between different Planets, and stimulate, via repeated experiments involving thought, body, and the environment, the kinetics participants would need to make micro-revolutions in their daily lives. In the same spirit, for the purposes of further reflection, the biennial catalogue has gathered as fully as possible the concepts of the public programs, as well as related documents and material. The aim is to contribute to an understanding of how those ideas and methods could be transformed in the context of Taiwan, and whether they could bring about the possibility of forming another kind of localized knowledge.

As the biennial ended and editorial work on this catalogue began, the pandemic suddenly worsened in Taiwan. This affected the infrastructure of art and the manners of artistic creation to such an extent that it is hard to see things return to normal any time soon, and we find ourselves forced to face up to "facts" that we had firmly believed in but that have turned out to be far from indestructible. It is my hope that the various models for thinking that this edition of the Taipei Biennial has brought into focus will allow each and every one of us to find the reserves of courage needed to tackle the future.

Jun-Jieh Wang

Director, Taipei Fine Arts Museum

Fictional Planetarium New Approaches for Diplomacy

　Jun-Jieh Wang

　Director, Taipei Fine Arts Museum

Taipei Biennial and TFAM: An Action Drama in the Time of the Pandemic

　Ping Lin

　Professor, Department of Fine Arts, Tunghai University

You and I Don't Live on the Same Planet: New Diplomatic Encounters

　Bruno Latour and Martin Guinard

Without Walking the Land, How Can We Speak of Its Scent?

　Eva Lin

Taipei Biennial 2020 Participants

Exhibition Checklist

References

Acknowledgments

Prelude

Planet Globalization

Planet Security

Planet Escape

Planet Terrestrial (Approaching the Terrestrial-Critical Zone)

Planet Terrestrial (Approaching the Terrestrial-Gaia)

New Diplomatic Encounters

Planet with Alternative Gravity

Moving Earths

Shoreline Movements