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Jeffrey HOU & Dorothy TANG
Plant’s-Eye Views of Taipei, 2018

If plants have vision, how would they view the city?

Like animate beings, each plant has an independent life story, and Hou and Tang’s work questions how plants would view the city. Some plantssuch as the trees that line residential streetsare invited into urban spaces to fulfil the desires of human inhabitants, contributing to the aesthetics and economies of the city. Others, like weeds, persist in inhospitable environments and are often at war with the communities that consider them a nuisance. Though often unnoticed, plants and their urban ecologies actively utilize, adapt, and alter urban environments.

 

Plant’s-Eye Views of Taipei is the result of a workshop that took place at the Treasure Hill International Arts Village in Taipei in summer 2018. Under the direction of the artists, and working in collaboration with ecologists and videographers, a group of university students from several countries in the Asia-Pacific region each imagined themselves as a plant species. The students began by examining the plants of the local region to better understand their physiological characteristics and life histories, as well as their adaptive features and ecosystemic behaviours. In viewing themselves as plants, the students were able to see Taipei in a new light as a place co-produced by the city’s urban flora and human communities. Materials from the workshops detailing the exploration by the students are exhibited alongside designs for reinterpreting urban structures in Taipei as envisioned and built from a less anthropocentric perspective.

 

Workshop co-instructors: Chi-Tung Huang, Harley S. Pan 

Workshop participants: Xiaomeng An, Baiyu Chen, Hsin Cheng Chien, Juliana Hom, Chun Sing Hui, Pui Ling Ip, Michelle Lam, Eva Lin, Sam Lin, Sharon Lin, Sammy Sin, I Hsiang Wang, Carmen Yuen, Shi Yue Zhang, Jingyi Zhou

Workshop commentators: Huasun Chang, Chingwen Cheng, Serena Chou, Che. Lin, Zo Lin

 

 

Lecture & Panel Discussion

Plant's-Eye Views of Taipei

Speakers: Jeffrey Hou, Dorothy Tang

Date: 2018/12/22

Time: 14:00

Venue: Ecolab Basement

 

 

Jeffrey Hou, born 1967 in Taiwan, lives and works in Seattle.

Dorothy Tang, born 1981 in the USA, lives and works in Hong Kong and Cambridge, MA.

 

 

 

 

Spying: Ipomoea cairica. Jeffrey Hou & Dorothy Tang, Plant’s-Eye View of Taipei (video still), 2018, video installation, mixed media, dimensions variable. Video: Sammy Sin, editing: Harley Pan
Spying: Ipomoea cairica. Jeffrey Hou & Dorothy Tang, Plant’s-Eye View of Taipei (video still), 2018, video installation, mixed media, dimensions variable. Video: Sammy Sin, editing: Harley Pan
Ignoring: Roystonea regia. Jeffrey Hou & Dorothy Tang, Plant’s-Eye View of Taipei (video still), 2018, video installation, mixed media, dimensions variable. Video: Hsin Cheng Chien, editing: Harley Pan
Ignoring: Roystonea regia. Jeffrey Hou & Dorothy Tang, Plant’s-Eye View of Taipei (video still), 2018, video installation, mixed media, dimensions variable. Video: Hsin Cheng Chien, editing: Harley Pan
Confronting: Hibiscus rosa-sinensis. Jeffrey Hou & Dorothy Tang, Plant’s-Eye View of Taipei (video still), 2018, video installation, mixed media, dimensions variable. Video: Carmen Yuen, editing: Harley Pan
Confronting: Hibiscus rosa-sinensis. Jeffrey Hou & Dorothy Tang, Plant’s-Eye View of Taipei (video still), 2018, video installation, mixed media, dimensions variable. Video: Carmen Yuen, editing: Harley Pan
Jeffrey HOU & Dorothy TANG, Plant’s-Eye View of Taipei, 2018, video installation, mixed media, dimensions variable
Jeffrey HOU & Dorothy TANG, Plant’s-Eye View of Taipei, 2018, video installation, mixed media, dimensions variable
Jeffrey HOU & Dorothy TANG, Plant’s-Eye View of Taipei, 2018, video installation, mixed media, dimensions variable
Jeffrey HOU & Dorothy TANG, Plant’s-Eye View of Taipei, 2018, video installation, mixed media, dimensions variable
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