Becoming a Martian Anthropologist -- Breakthrough and Revelation of To Martian Anthropologists

Text / Xiao-Xiao YAN

Originally published on artouch.com, 2020/08

To Martian Anthropologists curated by Chun-Yi CHANG was inaugurated at the New Taipei City Arts Center a few days ago. This is the first time the center has organized a joint exhibition with a focus on contemporary art, and the unique curatorial style of Chun-Yi CHANG is easily distinguishable. When she explained that her original intention was to “make an exhibition that ‘seems to be no big deal’”, it was hard not to remind people of her debut curating Work-Medium in 2003: a solo exhibition of an on-site relay creation evolving along the timeline of the exhibition period, from nothing to something, then back to nothing. However, the overlap of “something/nothing” in the current exhibition is more of a question of space and site. After the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the restricted conditions for foreign artists to come to Taiwan have gradually encouraged the trend of online exhibitions. Pondering on actual contingency strategies, the curator of To Martian Anthropologists goes a step further to deal more actively with the problem of the relationship between the virtual and physical interfaces, and refuses hasty online exhibitions as a plan of convenience. The artists invited are good at handling space issues, and what they have to face is the challenge between physical space and virtual interface.     

The Martian as a Projection

Some obvious stylistic features can be observed in the past projects curated by Chun-Yi CHANG, including a. “weak in theme”: selection of the works not based on the theme; b. “strong in strategy”: collaboration between the curator and artists to provoke continuous intertextuality and cross-references; c. exploration and establishment of a mutual zone between personal creation and large-scale curatorial project--all of which grant the exhibition she curated some common characteristics. In the exhibition Daily+ she curated two years ago for the second Greater Taipei Biennial of Contemporary Art, I observed a “non-fixed” curatorial style growing more and more mature: it seems quite casual, but actually exiges much more effort.* Likewise, To Martian Anthropologists shares the same style, yet with a distinct context setting: in the face of the upcoming Martian anthropologists, how shall we showcase what we call “art”?

As early as in 2005, Chun-Yi CHANG transformed her own video works The Sound of Framing and The Gardens of Versailles into the clues of index (material traces), and in the same manner created another work, entitled To Martian Anthropologists, as a response to a condition she set for herself: “If there is no electricity, painters can still paint with a brush and sculptors can chisel stones…, and art history doesn’t seems to cease because it doesn’t evolve with the condition of electricity. But how could video artists who rely on electricity ‘continue to make’ works?”     

This setting is inherited from the book In the Name of Art. For an Archeology of Modernity, published in 1989 by the Belgian art critic,Thierry De Duve, who conceives an investigation journey of the Martian anthropologists. Coincidentally, the major exhibition Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art planned by the Barbican Centre in London in 2008 departed also from De Duve’s imaginary Martians. The exhibition adopted a fictitious anthropological perspective: the curator became a Martian anthropologist, and in an unusual way of classification and presentation, redefined, reinterpreted and even “misinterpreted” some artworks of common interpretations. Although To Martian Anthropologists also attempts to employ the Martian as an external perspective to get out of the conventional framework, it focuses on the human reflections on their own perspectives, prejudices and thinking systems. If the Barbican Center’s exhibition depends on the perspectives of viewers and interpreters, and in particular, the existing museum system as a product of Western-centrism, then To Martian Anthropologists puts more emphasis on how to unearth the creator’s reflection on his/her own subjective path of creation. In the two exhibitions playing different tunes with equal skill, the Martian as the most common other in the human imagination allows us to project our need for alternative modes of thinking.  

At the same time, the impact of the pandemic has also brought new stimuli to the To Martian Anthropologists. In addition to the fictional setting of the “Martian” hypothesis, the entire exhibition has added a new horizon of reflection. When the possibility of a large number of physical interactive activities is not yet known, such breakthrough ideas have pointed out the directions of following exhibitions: Do I have to attend personally the site to watch or experience art works? Do we have a certain established mode of thinking for what art should look like in the physical venue? Is it possible that such an established model might be destabilized in this exhibition?

Online/Offline: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Unlike many other exhibitions of the year, postponed or/and making an online version, To Martian Anthropologists does not take an online version as an alternative proposal during the pandemic, but on the contrary, it has subverted in a original way the offline/online master-slave relationship: the virtual space built on the internet as the substantial “site” of the exhibition to display the works, and what remains in the physical venue at the New Taipei City Arts Center are called “clues” or “traces”. The most intuitive experience for the viewer is that the exhibition venue deploys a virtual interface of a 720-degree panorama, allowing people to experience anytime and anywhere the situation in the physical site. Besides, every artist takes advantage of the online interface to create works that maintain a varying degree of subtle relevance with the ones displayed in the physical venue. The contents on the physical and virtual interfaces are no longer common occurrences like “representations” or “records”, but two sides of the same coin to construct together a complete site of works.    

Besides Claude CLOSKY, the other artists didn’t have any experience in creating online works before. In order to avoid a sense of disconnection, the curator’s chosen strategy is to invite them to start from the past creative context and think about the continuation of creation in a completely different relationship of interfaces. The gesture also recalls the game rule of the entire exhibition: abandonment of the given model to continue the path of creation.

Each artist has deployed different forms of association between the two interfaces and the corresponding coordinates can be generally identified along an axis of “meticulous structures, loose echoes.” Take for example Wan-Jen CHEN, Yu-Cheng HSIEH and Dorian Gaudin. They install online/offline two indispensable parts of the same work to create a classic paradigm of complementation. Chien CHI, Joyce HO, Jun-Qiang NIU and Eric WATIER demonstrate a physical model for the concept of “traces”. Jui-Chien HSU x Yannick Dauby, Yung-Chun SHIH, Ya-Hui WANG, Chih-Sheng LAI and Craig QUINTERO x Riverbed Theatre create a state of intertextuality not so necessarily intuitive between the online/offline interfaces. Finally, James Ming-Hsueh LEE and Claude Closky showcase the different styles of the two interfaces that echo each other visually and logically. Such a rough classification is difficult to totally unfold each and every subtle diversity of the works. In the current exhibition with Martian anthropologists as an imaginary object, although the participating artists all have extremely rich experiences in international contemporary art exhibitions, a non-standardized, “hand-made” aura of curating can be felt all over the space. 

Among the artists, Yu-Cheng HSIEH and James Ming-Hsueh LEE apparently push the concept of interaction to a new breakthrough which connects the physical and virtual spaces: the former designs a lighting system in the physical exhibition venue that requires the audience to control online, i.e. bodily presence and internet operation are indispensable (Calibrate: Blue Screen / Blue Screen); simultaneously in the online/offline versions, the latter fully interprets the philosophical thought: “only when the other exists/is online can you ‘see’” (Distant Hollow). Such a number of interactive operations that affect the viewer’s mobility have become one of the few disturbing factors that the audience can directly experience after entering the physical exhibition space. In addition, what remains in the physical exhibition venue are mostly the “clues” and “traces” of the works. Even so, a visual art exhibition’s fundamental requirements for aesthetic presentation have not yet been obliterated. The New Taipei City Arts Center mostly exhibited traditional art such as painting and sculpture in the past. To Martian Anthropologists foregrounds the original appearance of the Center as a white box, and how to incorporate the space itself into the exhibition structure has become a non-negligible part of the curating. The works of Joyce HO, Chih-Sheng LAI, Jui-Chien HSU, and Yung-Chun SHIH respectively become visual clues which act as a go-between in the two long narrow spaces. Interestingly, with the help of the 720-degree panoramic interface, the curator has noticed the ceiling area and invites Jui-Chien HSU to create with it. The experience from the virtual interface flows into the physical one and becomes a force for discovery and change.

How could it be possible to “continue to make a work” ?

The audience of To Martian Anthropologists might feel some sort of “emptiness” when they find themselves in the physical venue in the traditional sense. On the one hand, the spatial aura comes from a certain low limit shared by many of the participating artists. On the other hand, the exhibition preparation is full of unknown factors whether the physical presentation of the exhibition could be realized. When the subjectivity of the virtual interface becomes more and more dominant, the physical presentation we get used to becomes more and more “loose” which results in the reversal of the online/offline relationship. This is not only a product under the sky of the pandemic, but also where a curatorial momentum that takes the initiative lies. Just as mentioned above, Chun-Yi CHANG returns to the interrogation she asked in her personal creation To Martian Anthropologists in 2005: under a certain extreme situation, how could an artist continue to create and exhibit works?  

15 years later, when the pandemic has suspended many activities of art and culture, the floating clue shows itself: a repeated art experiment that has extended from the inquiry of a creative individual to the curating as a strategy. It’s also not difficult to find that the curator Chun-Yi CHANG always seems to have a “big list of artists for collaboration”, but after figuring out the working strategy, we might be able to understand the spirit of “joint creation, joint action and joint experiment”, which counts more than the common power relationship between curator and artist nowadays. The works conceived grow slowly in the strategic process of “digging in, sprouting out”.   

The French artist Dorian Gaudin, who employs engineered mechanical installations as his creative technique, was unable to come to Taiwan this time due to travel restrictions. In the long-distance preparation and cooperation with him, the floating identity of the curator is quite obvious: under the instruction of Dorian Gaudin, Chun-Yi CHANG went to Yingge to purchase ceramics of different shapes and colors. During the exhibition period, according to the audience’s online vote, the curator would break the “ugliest ceramic” (Pharmakos) of the week at the physical exhibition venue every week. It is unusual that the curator acts as the executor of the work, which delineates once again the symbiotic and collaborative relationship between curator and artist. In the context of this exhibition, the relationship has further become a reflective mechanism of art as one of the “elephants in the room”.

As the first special exhibition of contemporary art under the guideline--“software infrastructure precedes”, To Martian Anthropologists, before the official opening of the New Taipei City Museum of Art, has disturbd the perception of “contemporary art” of the cultural performance venue and its surrounding communities and perhaps, vice versa. The curator’s creation-like curatorial strategy has to some extent conveniently contributed to the evolution of the exhibition that has undergone a great many of uncertainties. The style does not necessarily propose more possibilities to “continue to make works” until the dialectics between the virtual and physical spaces as a new organic paradigm is explored. A website that remains in cyberspace will also destabilize the exhibition mechanism of contemporary art and render To Martian Anthropologists a permanent exhibition. Maybe, in some less optimistic future where might not be too far from our current situation, we might well be aware of the fact that it is no longer possible to live and produce exactly like the past. If the reflective force sensitive to various prejudices is sustainable, then we ourselves might be that Martian anthropologist “without any prejudices”.

note: see ‘Daily+: Evolution of an Undefined Aesthetics of Curation--the Second Greater Taipei Biennial of Contemporary Art,’  artouch.com 2019/01, pp. 156-161.

Xiao-Xiao YAN

Executive editor of Artco Monthly & Investment. She was senior interview editor of ARTouch and senior editor (Chinese website) of Blouin Artinfo.