From "Air Plant" to "Kau-Puê Realm": Exploring the Possibility of a Primal Artistic Theory

Text｜Sheng-Hong WANG

I
Recently, I was invited to participate in a series of panel discussions at the Taipei National University of the Arts' Zhangyi Art Museum, focusing on the exhibition "Air Plant: The Performative in Contemporary Art," curated by Chun Yi Chang. The session I attended was organized and moderated by Professor Kung-Yi Chen, emphasizing the discourse production issues that arise from curatorial practices. Two aspects intrigued me the most: first, the pineapple-like botanical imagery outlined in the curatorial discourse of "Air Plant." Second, the exploration of a possible discourse production in geographical terms.

What makes this exhibition noteworthy is its ability to present insightful perspectives while closely aligning curatorial mechanisms with the thinking patterns of artistic practices. The curator adopted an approach that provided each artist with ample time to inhabit the exhibition space and engage in dialogue with it. Simultaneously, it allowed the creators to seek possibilities of mutual influence and juxtaposition between their works. An excellent example of this is the fascinating resonance between Peng Yesheng's "Trajectory and Collision" and Su Weijia's "Free Steps – Listening to Bodily Transformation." The former, a surround-sound installation, fills the old building's exhibition space with crisp sounds of a dancer running through space, creating an immersive audio landscape. Even though the audience only hears the sound, the dancer's presence feels close. In contrast, the latter is a video installation featuring two dancers in close proximity constantly intertwining, grinding, pushing, and stretching in various bodily patterns. While initially resembling classical sculpture, the work is filled with visual beauty, and the choreography suggests a symphony of "sound" made by their tactile communication. The dynamic and static qualities of Peng Yesheng's and Su Weijia's works, one in motion and the other still, not only bring out rich sensory dimensions but also stimulate the audience's imagination.

"Air Plant" exhibits pervasive and organic dialogues like the aforementioned one, extending beyond interplay between artworks to repeated convergences at the interfaces of "objects-props," "behavior-performance," and "installation-scenery." Overall, this blending of visual and performance arts, where elements of the body, image, event, and object, as well as temporality and spatiality, intertwine, has become increasingly common in recent years. Exhibitions like "Alice's Rabbit Hole – Real Lives: Understandable and Unfathomable Entanglements" (2015) and "Social Scenes" (2017) curated by North America curator Shu-Wen Hsiao actively create an awareness of blending visual and performance arts, hoping that this cross-disciplinary integration will generate a distinctly different "performative force."

However, what makes "Air Plant" intriguing is the distinct botanical imagery in the curatorial discourse: the robust and free-spirited characteristics of the Bromeliaceae plant. This plant can both climb and live independently, thriving with or without soil, showcasing an extremely tenacious and adaptable life stance. Chun Yi Chang uses this imagery to delineate a free artistic subject and an active multidirectional connection capability. Through this, the curator envisions that creators in visual and performance arts can form an energized collaborative platform within the framework of the exhibition.

II
Kao Chien-Hui praises the curatorial mechanism of "Air Plant" for embodying a profound spirit of playfulness. Through the "symbiotic activities between subjects," it reintroduces purposeless artistic games – modes of production, allowing the exhibition itself to coalesce into a cohesive entity. On the other hand, due to adopting the independent growth pattern of air plant, artistic creation is not confined to a specific political, religious, economic, or cultural context. This independence enables it to differentiate itself from the contemporary mainstream "new historicist" narrative aesthetics, forming another kind of "post-naturalistic" aesthetic of things.

While I agree with Koko Takahashi's interpretation of the cultural leisurely attitude in "Air Plant," what intrigues me more is the curatorial discourse's deployment of this botanical imagery in a theoretical dialogue with Nicolas Bourriaud's concept of "radicant" and Gilles Deleuze's "rhizome." Although "Air Plant" currently requires more expansion of its discursive content, not yet reaching the depth established by the two theorists in entire book works, the curatorial ambition I observe is an attempt to portray a "contemporary art form that constantly proliferates and undergoes continuous change." The curatorial discourse does not directly appropriate Bourriaud and Deleuze's concepts but strives to conceive a discourse foundation closer to the local creative context beyond existing external theoretical frameworks. In other words, "Air Plant," besides depicting the originally envisioned free creative subject, also, in my view, harbors an opportunity for the development of a certain "native art theory."

III
During the exhibition symposium, I chose to respond to the core theme of the symposium with an inquiry into the concept of "indigenousness." Although I am aware that, in the context of contemporary art discussions in Taiwan, the idea of "indigenous art theory" is currently considered a rather ambitious goal. After all, many times, even when not specifically addressing theoretical production, general art discussions and interpretations can find various widely adopted external theoretical concepts and terms in the current "academic discourse market." If the globally circulated art theories formed by following the international academic discourse mechanism (as well as exhibition mechanisms, such as the biennial framework) can be likened to "dominant international currency," deliberately forsaking these international currencies and contemplating the emergence of "indigenous art theory" is indeed a challenging task with only partial success. On the other hand, the contemporary art community often places greater emphasis on the potential external connections of artworks or exhibitions, whether these "connections" refer to the ability to be featured on a certain international exhibition platform, engage in active dialogue with artistic expressions from different cultural regions, or the capacity of the artwork's content itself to cross-reference with different artistic genres and texts. In summary, the value of contemporary creative exhibitions should not and cannot be limited to narrow and deep meanings; any theory capable of opening up interpretation spaces and reading perspectives for artworks holds its own value.

Therefore, when contemplating the possibilities of "indigenous art theory," it naturally does not imply a form of cultural protectionism or nationalist thinking. Of course, it does not demand that discussions about artworks should not involve any external theoretical frameworks or contextual references. Such interpretations would be a serious misunderstanding. In its fundamental spirit, the meaning of "indigenousness" mainly lies in the exploration of whether there exists a distinctly different path of theoretical production, directly nurtured and developed from the fertile soil of local creative and curatorial practices. Moreover, can this theory further circulate within the international art exhibition network, such as the biennial platforms in Asia, in the future?

IV
In her essay, Chen Kuan-Yi criticized Nicolas Bourriaud, a powerful Western super-curator with significant theoretical production capabilities. Despite his prowess, when curating the Taipei Biennial in 2014, Bourriaud's theoretical framework still lacked the ability to consider the diverse artistic expressions from Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Thailand, and other Asian regions, along with a nuanced understanding of the underlying cultural differences. The works of the ten Taiwanese artists in that edition were somewhat disconnected from the curatorial theme, bordering on irrelevant. [2] One can speculate that if the theoretical production of biennial curators closely follows artistic practices, deriving from the context of the artworks' generation, super-curators like Bourriaud may encounter difficulties in cultivating a more profound collaborative working model with local artists. (In the 2016 edition, curator Corinne Diserens chose to organize the exhibition content through external solicitations and more visits to artists' studios, which might be seen as a correction to the past "superficial" curatorial methods of Western super-curators.)

However, regardless of this critique, the central theoretical framework for an exhibition created by a Western super-curator is handed over to the museum (as a backup institution for curators) to mobilize through various discursive interfaces, such as museum publications, lectures, forums, inviting numerous domestic scholars, experts, and critics to engage in topic-driven responses and introductions. While this dialogue mode injects heterogeneity into the local art community through diverse "external perspectives," it has been an overly familiar theoretical production model for an extended period. Its most criticized aspect lies in tacitly endorsing a "globalized outsourcing model" for art theory, unquestionably treating the writings of Taiwanese theorists as a "discourse adhesive" between external theoretical frameworks and the context of local creative practices. In recent years, criticisms within the art community regarding large biennials have mostly focused on curator selection systems, curatorial models, and methods. Perhaps now is the time to reevaluate the model of local art theory production.

V
If curatorial practice is the most direct interface for the production and presentation of contemporary art theory, then, in addition to pre-exhibition research and fieldwork, collaborative work with artists, and specific spatial implementations, one of the most critical battlegrounds for a curatorial team is the generation of innovative concepts. This includes supplementing, critiquing, and advancing existing theoretical knowledge contexts (including the curatorial consciousness left behind by the past). In recent years, some curatorial teams in Taiwan, while organizing exhibitions, have shown a strong intention to fill historical contextual gaps, as seen in the team behind the award-winning "Sounding Ground" project in the 13th Taishin Arts Award. But now, we need to further contemplate: besides meticulous historical research and archival actions, is it possible for contemporary curatorial practices to establish (rather than borrow) entirely new theoretical keywords, injecting more inspiring aesthetic frameworks into local art discussions?

For instance, in the recently launched "Intimate Strangers: Future Unfolding," the curatorial team not only conducted a detailed review of Taiwan's photographic history and folk art context during the preliminary research phase but also presented the invaluable concept of "交陪∕交陪境" ("Kau-Puê/Kau-Puê Realm" – Intimate Strangers/Intimate Strangerhood). As the most crucial theoretical keyword for this exhibition, it is undoubtedly an indigenous concept unearthed from Taiwan's own historical and cultural context. Its advantage lies in bypassing the entanglement during the translation of theoretical concepts (especially when faced with the untranslatability of language) and eliminating the risk of misplacement that may occur when transplanting Western theories. From the perspective of highlighting the spontaneous spirit of mutual interaction, defense, and assistance in folk society, "Intimate Strangerhood" not only brings out a unique reflection on "relationship production" in the local context but also holds the potential to respond to Western art theories. As Gong Zhuojun puts it, in recent years, "aesthetics of relations" or "participatory art" are familiar concepts in Taiwan's contemporary art community, but we fail to delve deeper into thinking about "how to express it in our own words." [3] Here, the theoretical production thinking is not narrow cultural essentialism; it is not the slogan-like thinking of "singing our own songs" from the 1970s folk song movement. Instead, it is a more proactive awareness of knowledge production; it is an exploration of whether we can develop a unique local discursive structure for a parallel theoretical dialogue with "aesthetics of relations," rather than unreflectively considering the latter as a globalized art theory without historical foundations or specific production contexts. (Or at the very least, we should not forget that the original proposal of "aesthetics of relations" is closely related to Bourriaud's own curatorial practice, with a set of artists explicitly corresponding to his discourse.)

In conclusion, the promotion of "indigenous art theory" relies on the conscious intellectual relay of Taiwanese theorists. This involves how we initiate our own exhibition history/curatorial history writing project, refining and deepening the achievements left by our predecessors through curatorial practice. Is it an elusive and unattainable goal? I don't think so. I believe that, in the competitive arena of contemporary art exhibitions in Asia, it is a fundamental cornerstone for grasping our own cultural and artistic discourse rights.

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[1] Kao Chien-Hui, "The Artistic Expression of Minimalist Post-Nature: The Playful Spirit of the 'Air Plant' Exhibition." The News Lens. URL: https://www.thenewslens.com/article/84854 (Accessed: 2017.12.25)
[2] Chen Kuan-Yi, "Theoretical Production in Curating Biennials." Modern Art, Issue 175 (December 2014), pp. 6-15.
[3] Gong Zhuo-Jun, "From Issues in Art Criticism to Cultural Production: Interview with Gong Zhuojun." URL: http://static.yidianzixun.tw/article/0GBQMY2c (Accessed: 2017.12.25)