The 2023 Green Island Human Rights Art Festival – Listening to the Overtones of Fissures is themed on the seemingly passive, gentle gesture of “listening,” hoping to embrace different political, economic and systemic experiences of individuals. These experiences have created wounds, which are like “fissures” that have separated people. At the same time, “fissure” also denotes incongruences and divergencies. Like barriers or differences between individuals and the society produced by the White Terror, these incongruences and divergencies are largely overlooked and await our re-understanding as life progresses. “Overtones” refers to the voices or sounds constantly echoing or emitting from the fissures. An “overtone” is a different frequency that shares the same basis with a fundamental tone; and in this case, it becomes a metaphor for the outcast existences that have been ignored by mainstream opinions.
Launched in 2019, the Green Island Human Rights Art Festival ushers in its 4th edition this year, and has been given a one-year preparation period for the first time, which allows the curatorial team to thoroughly plan the festival, form an academic consulting group, organize co-learning talks and workshops, visit political victims and their offsprings for field research, as well as co-develop and co-create projects with related personnel. Dealing with the complex history and site of the White Terror, the mission of contemporary art creation and curating is not to represent history or recount the facts. Instead, the objective is to employ artists’ viewpoints, chosen media and creative approaches to transform and interpret their observations, understandings and discoveries of historical materials to create a new pathway that enables the audience to approach the difficult history.
“Listening” and “overtones” are mutually engaging and benefiting. Do the sounds from the fissures originate from the downfaults in history or the wounds that are still unsettling to the public? The muffled cries from the depth of the fissures are never a one-time fluctuation but the collective life experience involving tens of thousands of people. Throughout the rather distinctive historical progression of Taiwan, representatives of the authoritarian regime have never been clearly identified as perpetrators. Furthermore, remnants from the party-state system, both physical and spiritual, have never been entirely abandoned by the public, and even still have held a certain degree of political and economic power until today. How do we find a way for those who have followed the regime or even have gained vested interests over – that is, the majority of the society in comparison to the oppressed few – to understand the injustice in this history and system? As one of the most iconic sites in this history, how have the culture and stories of Green Island been ignored? With three subtopics, Listening to the Overtones of Fissures links the White Terror, contemporary reflection, Green Island, and human rights to hopefully widen the distance between contemporary art and history so as to carefully listen to the overtones from the fissures and the other side through art. Facing the complicated and highly divergent history, this exhibition aims to offer the audience more imagination, ideas and a pathway to approach the past, through which we can construct together what this history means in the contemporary time.
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Title
2023 Green Island Human Rights Art FestivalType
ExhibitionWebsite
Organizers
From
May 17, 2023 05:57 PMUntil
September 17, 2023 05:57 PMVenue
Green Island White Terror Memorial ParkAddress