Familiar Strangeness

Everything in Taiwan changes so fast. People in this island keep migrating, and the cityscapes and landscapes never stop modifying. Old buildings are replaced by new buildings, and new buildings gradually wear out. "Passage" is to contemplate upon the ever changing phenomena in Taiwan.

An experience of returning home inspired me to create this project. I was born in Taiwan, and after graduate school, I worked in the US for thirteen years. When I came back Taipei, many buildings had been demolished or remodeled, and the streetscapes I had remembered so well in my childhood were gone. Walking in Taipei, I felt I was a stranger. Fortunately, when I turned into small alleys and corners, some childhood memories emerged. Suddenly I was embraced by an ambiance of intimacy again.

Eradicated Memory

Entering the shops I have known since I was a little boy, childhood memories jumped out in my head, like a fishing rod fishing out the long forgotten things from the deep place of my consciousness. Had this rod never turned up, my lost memories would never surface.

The advanced technology of building makes rewriting cityscapes so easy. Steel reinforced concrete structures were once thought lasting forever so we could rely on them to store our past. The truth is, they are as temporary as TV shows, and our past has no place to secure. The ideas about "home" are destroyed.

"Passage" attempts to break the connections between people and places. The presence of the visitors will activate a program to rebuild a rundown apartment whose appearance will change as the visitors move. When the visitors leave, the apartment collapses. The environment we remember according to our own experience became so unstable, we no longer can rely on it to be the container of our memory, and thus the visitors should always bring their memories with them all the time.