Text by Jay Chun-Chieh LAI

If the writing of history is to be comprehended as simply a linear progression (of events), one might find “war” one of the most prominent and direct factors that affect the development of human history. Wars that were provoked by human occurrences like revolutions, border conflicts, and military coups. In more recent times, historical writing has adopted a new approach. It underscores a historical discourse that centers on locality wherein varieties and multiplicity are highlighted. It also focuses on distinctive culture, habitus as well as ethnic consciousness, and its legacy. Yet, “war” has never ended. It conceals itself and dives even deeper, disguising itself into different forms and shapes the way history is written.

Because of its remarkable liquidity, mobility, and ability to differentiate specific groups of audiences (in art, experimental cinema, documentary, photojournalism, and entertainment), image becomes one of the best tools to expand battlefields. However, the collaboration between image and history is liable to collapse because of their deceptive and devious nature. Image with its illusory power fundamentally contradicts with the logical reasoning in writing. Their mutual exclusiveness dooms their destiny to be the shadow of each other. Yet it also entices constant attempts of the two parties to escape from their fate, hoping to replace their adversary. Such a notion permeates the artistic approach of the three participating artists whose works endeavour to probe into the so-called “escape” and “replacement” and bring forth possibilities.

Afterlife is a series of 17 pieces of transparent glass boards created by the artist duo Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin. The work was adapted from a series of photos taken on the 27th August 1979 by journalist Jahangir Razmi during the war of Iran. The original photos captured the scene of an execution and won the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in 1982. The identity of the photographer was only revealed later in 2006, making the 1982 prize the only time that has an anonymous winner. The group created the artworks by making individual characters (both the executed and the executioners) into collages and titled it Afterlife with an ironic undertone. When the horrifying narrative is taken out from the war images, these collages emerge as a series of light-hearted dance moves, performing the very act of death. It was the portraits, not the background, that was removed. The empty background occupied by the images of the people has indeed manifested the essence of historical background. Its voidness and transparent nature speak no less than the historical documents and the media archives.

Similar to Adam and Oliver, the artist Lan Chung-Hsuan​’s God, Goddess, and Trinity is anti-image or more precisely, iconoclastic. The celebrity Teresa Teng (1953-1995) is portrayed in his work as the goddess, and the way it was articulated (clearly as a sort of apparatus for propaganda) becomes the targeted opponent which the artist Lan provokes to fight against. The goddess is not beautiful anymore, and the appearances of heroes become unrecognisable. The Begonia leaves with the shape of China is the metaphor of the place that is unable to return. Teresa Teng’s face is covered by a Latin alphabet θ which means “death” in Ancient Greece and Rome. The alphabet assembled by red stamps imbued the image with an apparent ominous connotation. The “death” presented in the work, however, is somehow a stage in a cycle that revolves and ultimately reaches “birth”. The cycle is a typical representation of the trinity of Party/Government/Religion that serves as a national belief. In this sense, “death“ has become “immortality”.

Wu Ding’s artistic approach revolves around the writing of history and time as well as their counter-relationship to image even though he never employs the idea of war as the theme of his practices. Wu’s works are relatively abstract and cold, and he is convinced that things happen and go with the flow of development and its chronological route. The only thing that we, as humans, can do is to try to co-exist with it. History, on the other side, always pushes us to move forward. He is not trying to destroy the image/icon using external strength, but the works occupy themselves within the fissure of image and text. They represent the interdependent but conflicting relationship between words and images, which is located in the “vacuum zone” wherein words and images lost their functions by the différance of the unspeakable and the unimaginable. With his calm tone, as usual, Wu’s works distort the route on which history proceeds towards the magnificent future. They pierce through the other participating artists’ works, drawing us back to the abyss composed of nothing but the repeated cycle, and urge us to re-anchor ourselves back into the coordination of rules and norms.

This exhibition aims not to discern and explore any specific (history of) war by these three groups of artists, nor is it trying to touch upon issues concerning the “image of war and its horror”. The title, however, reveals the potential subject of knowledge which is historical writing and image-making, their various contradictory relationships with ideologies, and how it can be seen as an expansion of the word/image problem. The artists share common interests and intentions in historical writing with a versatile display of forms, methods, and routes. The exhibition begins with the artist duo presenting to us the absence (death) of the written and the ones with the power of writing history. It then introduced to us Lan’s works that delineate the immortal historical cycle through the concept of trinity.  The audience would then find themselves being brought to the sensational space set up by the artist Wu Ding where ideologies of three groups of artists are enclosed within. The exhibition tries to dissolve and transform the birth and death of history, which is perfectly articulated in Wu’s video Meditation by the turbid gas floating between the images and words. To discuss world war and human history undoubtedly requires more than three groups of artists and works, yet the exhibition draws a topological map by which the audiences can get a glimpse of what Taiwan faces now, in face of the current situation between the U.S and China in the post-Cold War era.