Taipei Biennial Announces 2020 Presentations and Public Programs

Highlights include “The Ghost Acres of Architecture” installation by Los Angeles-based design practice MILLIØNS (pictured above), which presents terrestrial descriptions of the Seagram Building in Manhattan and aims to explore how to maximize the impact of architecture on its environment in the most positive, generative ways possible. With the commissioned video installation “Frame of Reference,” Taiwanese artist SU Yu-Hsin addresses the question of formatting scalar relations between the field, laboratory, and database, and explores the role images play in the fieldwork of the Critical Zone.

Works exploring the relations between the earth’s surface and the life activities above include Norwegian artist Marianne Morild’s paintings, which will depict fragments of suspended landscapes “torn” from the ground. Taiwanese artist Cemelesai Takivalet from the indigenous Paiwan tribe will present a newly commissioned work Virus Series, which depicts imaginary enlarged viruses released from wildlife as a reaction to human intrusion. With this, he subverts the logic of invasive species, in which humans are seen as a main perpetrator of constant disruptions and attacks. French artist Pierre Huyghe’s installation “Exomind (Deep Water)” will present a female figure whose head is obscured by a beehive. Giving new heights to this “exomind” ecosystem, the statue grows by pollinating other living symbols and constantly modifying itself in this transitory, porous, and entangled environment.

As the Taipei Biennial is a simulacrum of various theoretical planets, its public programs for 2020 represent a collision between these different astronomical bodies. Programming begins with “Theater of Negotiations,” a collaboration between TFAM and researchers and students from five universities and the Taiwan Science, Technology, and Society Association. The discussion will take the form of realistic exercises in negotiations, debate, or public governance to explore new solutions for the current deadlock surrounding pressing issues in Taiwan. Cross-disciplinary panels and interactive workshops are open for attendees of “The Wild Trail to the World,” which include science-fiction writing, air detection performance, critical reading, and inspection of historical materials. Participants will also be led out of the museum to experience and understand nature and the country in a new way.

Eva Lin, the curator of public programs, states: “We believe the current imperative is not simply fostering discussions from multiple perspectives: instead, our aim is to explore alternative procedures to reach a point of mediation since we realize the importance of divisions. It is through irreducible boundaries, native philosophies which differ from contemporary mainstream logic, and non-anthropocentric memories out in the field that a turn in the irreversible ending could be possible.”