What did this make you consider? What problems did you discover? How will you solve these problems?

I became interested in the history of this area: How was it like before the infrastructures were built? Who lived here? How was the life like? How was the environment? I did a few researches online about histories here, and was surprised to know that this place used to belong to a group of Aborigines known as the Kulon. It was sad a thing to discover that their lands have been kind of legally ‘scammed’ and sold to the Chinese traders. And since the Kulon surrendered after active resistance to the Japanese government when Taiwan was in control by the Japanese, most of them were naturalized. The culture and language of the Kulon are already lost by now. I made up my mind to draw down their story because of the sense of melancholy from a historical record written by Ino Kanori, a Japanese Anthropologists who devoted his life studying the Taiwanese Aborigines. He went on a field investigation to the Kulon settlement and wrote down the following lines: “The Kulon settlement has been divided into upper and lower parts. The surrounding territories has been fully occupied by the Hans (aka Chinese). (The record I found was most likely translated from Japanese into Chinese, I tried my best to translate it. :D)

The place I’ve moved to known for having the most amount of Tu Ti Kung (Earth God Temples) in Taiwan. Interestingly, each group of wild animals here I’ve met seems to all have their own territories. Inspired by the name of this area (Gui-Shan District: the area on the mountains of a tortoise), I decided to connect the ideas of Earth God and wild animals together, and pictured that the wild animals are here to protect the communities. (A little insight on the temple culture in Taiwan: https://taiwantoday.tw/news.php?unit=20,29,35,45&post=26189) I also wanted to address the nature in my exercises because of the natural habitats around our community. I might try to expand this idea as well.

Also, after noticing the amount of litters and lack of bins around the constructing sites, I feel like there is a need to promote the importance of keeping the area clean for a better living environment. I proceeded to examine some reasons for causing this situation, and brainstormed about possible solutions to the problem that could be promoted.

I happened to have returned to Taiwan during the period of time when it just went into 3^rd level alert for the first time. People were urged to stay indoors and work from home. At the very start of I regularly sees people posting how bored they have become after being forced to stay home. This reminded me of how my friends reacted during London’s lockdown. I realized how weak people could be when there’s no place for them to socialize, and was inspired to base part of my works on this phenomenon. One possible way of expansion I’ve thought of is to quickly sketch down faces of people I’ve met during this period of time with simple lines.
I was going through stuffs I’ve kept as I was cleaning my room and found this mailbox coin bank. I thought it might fit with the previous idea about focusing on non physical connections between people so I might try using it to create a small installation. I also found a bag of cotton and dried flowers...

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Summer Project