“Sitting at the front of Cemeti Art House’s lobby, a scooter came with a express mail delivery, waiting to be received. Suddenly, I remember I never saw a mail box on the street. Every night, the Bali geckos sing with their bright voice, they are called ‘tokek’ in Indonesian, and ‘há jiè’ in Mandarin, these words all comes from the sound of their voice. The concept of ‘glomeration economy’ is everywhere in the city, the tyre-street, the shoe-street, the second-hand-book-street…; but what was surprising was a street full of trophy makers, do they have lots of competitions?
In the evening, a small vender serving with a small dim light sitting outside of tourist area - I find myself eating hot chicken fried rice sitting on the sidewalk. I cannot describe the visual presentation of the food, but the taste is quite good. Often I see chickens ‘wandering’ on the road. Just in front of the lobby, three white feathered chicken passing in front of me - one with purple able the neck, one with yellow, and one with green.
One day, I ate out, with a pile of white rice, a small piece of chicken wing, and a small serve of sweet tea for lunch. The locals told me it’s their KFC. One night I was searching for night supper, and had the real KFC in the busy streets, the basic meal is: a pile of white rice, a small piece of chicken wing, and a small cup of pepsi. I was convinced.
The art residency manager took out a light green egg one lunch, and peeled the shell, as expected we can see white egg-white and deep yellow egg-yolk - it’s salted egg! Even though I did not tasted it then, the magic of this scene is as if we’re looking at a piece of madeleine.”
This Sunday, Chen Chia-Jen’s sharing will not be focused on his art project during the residency. We put art aside, focus on life and experience.
OCAC is currently hosting some Indonesian artists, one of them was in residence at Cemeti during the same period as Chen. He often took Chen to travel to places where many international tourist won’t be going to. Maybe, we can share residency experience, along with an Indonesian translator; reviewing each of our understanding through photos of that time, and discuss various perspectives about our imaginations of different cultures, and fragments of everyday lives.
Speaker: CHEN Chia-Jen
Discussants: Yudha Kusuma Putera, Anang Saptoto
Date: 2016.06.12 Sunday 3pm-5pm
Venue: OCAC, No.25, Ganzhou St., Datong Dist., Taipei City, 10346, Taiwan
This Venue is sponsored by Space-Operational Funding in Visual Arts, Ministry of Culture, 2016.
