HATCH Series, as an experimental curatorial/artist collective, is interested in exploring a few difficult yet significant subjects: particularly, modernity and its relationship to urbanism.

 

“Modernity” as it exists in modern civilization posits a loaded connotation. Ontologically speaking, the concept is mixed with the critique of rationalism. As an economic term, its development is inseparable with industrialization and its consequences. From a political standpoint, modernity naturally evokes a dialectic discourse surrounding neo-liberalism and how the 'third world' confronts Western hegemony in a colonial context.

 

For the purposes of this exhibition, we ask the following. What is the perspective of the artists when dealing with this monstrous blanket term? How do their subjective experiences sit with modernity? What kind of conflicts arise when individual complexity and tension meet such a loaded subject? As a natural inheritance of all artistic productions in a contemporary context, how does an individual negotiate the presence or absence of modernity?

 

Capsule of Modernity: Cities as Representations

Artists and artistic production seems to become a footnote in relation to ‘modernity.’ For the convenience of observation, we propose to look at the ‘city’ as a unit, to better disentangle and reassemble the divergent creative and personal narratives involved.

 

The correlation between the city and modernity is not hard to pinpoint: the political system of democracy, individual agency as eco-political citizen, the monolithic appearance of modern architecture, and a ready-made object of identification beyond a nation-state can all be effortlessly spotted in the distinctive features embodied in Taiwan’s varied urban landscapes.

 

Omnipresent Influence: The Inescapable Presence

Those residing in the city, regardless of their familiarity with the discourse of modernity, inevitably engage in a (sub)conscious responses to the omnipresent subject. Perceptive and sensitized as artists are, their creative output also belongs to this very epitome in HATCH Series TPE No. 1.

 

Since the artistic responses are subjective, personal, and at some level unconscious, the creative reaction towards what ‘city’ and its philosophical entanglement with modernity represents, might be less than precise or scientific.

 

Oxymoronic Duality: Presence through Absence

Curious as it might be, the presence of the city seems to disappear in these artistic productions, despite urban experience/reaction is the focal point. All signs of modernity seem to take the form of a paradoxical absence in the art works presented.

 

But if we look hard enough, there are still clues for some relevance with modern symptoms – for instance, how the pieces illustrate an experience that is rooted in a romantic odyssey away from the city, and how an exotic urban eye renders the images of the semi-rural areas an ambiguous and opaque ‘countryside.’

 

City then transforms into a form of ‘original sin’ – frustrating yet inspiring. Artists cannot help but want to purge the unavoidable influence the city imposes; at the same time, struggling to challenge this inevitable impact and assert some personal agency. Or perhaps, as the physical presence of the artist’s body moves across the city, their works naturally present the anxiety of self-alienation, originating from a constant background unstable dynamic - a constant self-searching - a perpetual mental and social wandering.

 

A Mixed Existence: Contemporary Estrangement as the Twin

The work presented in HATCH Series TPE No. 1 reflects similar characteristics captured along the sprawling city spaces. These urban iconographies not only exemplify convenient landmarks of cultural ‘difference,’ but also simultaneously mirror a paradoxical foreign presence of alienation and estrangement.

 

With this contradictory personal attachment based on the changes of meanings associated with urban iconographies, the forgotten corners of the city are transformed from an ideal medium for liberal photographers to depict a touch of humanity, into a squalid puddle of neat stagnation – and nothing else. Without a noble quest for meaning in a contemporary context, the drive to explore similar forgotten and neglected subjects in a city, in turn, witnesses an artistic journey to comprehend an utter absence of meaning.

 

Modernity as Confining Frames: The (Im)possibility of Agency

Another metaphor we found present in the feature artwork in HATCH Series TPE No. 1 is ‘frameworks.’ The medium of the presented art works involved such as photography, sculpture, and theater are all formulated by components of a ‘frame,’ all taking place in a scenario with existing constructs. On the most superficial level, how windows, stage, or gallery space are a manifestation of existing boundaries of frames and were appropriated as an extended metaphor for the confining everyday situation artists perceived themselves to be in. The square piece of work, in a square exhibition space, with a square cityscape, what on earth, we ask, is our real agency?

 

The struggle toward the looming presence of modernity that all of the artists inherit comes in the form of the intense doubts artists have toward urbanity, the constant metacognitive transitioning between state of minds, and the uncertainty toward alienation and their self-identity. This tension to a great extent manifests the unique transition contemporary Taiwan is held captivity, where the critique and learning of modernity takes place simultaneously.

 

To have some breathing room, one can only pretend the presence of the city has disappeared, along with its associated problems and connotations, so that we can better act with less awkwardness and anxiety to talk freely about the unspeakable plight and dilemma we are in.

 

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