Medium: Video Installation
Sound／Mute：Mute
Year：2012
The Chinese word for confinement, “囿”used to refer to gardens enclosed by walls, but it perfectly describes the living style in Taiwan. The external appearance of the buildings in Taiwan is mostly constituted by barred windows as if it is a collective phenomenon. Such an iron structure not only symbolizes the protection which keeps inhabitants from the external danger or invasion, but also traps them inside the building. From this perspective, what a barred window suggests is more like a prison cell rather than a protection.
People imprison their own “existence” inside a square space – as the Chinese character ”囗” implies-, and it is the situation “囿” is referring to. Either voluntarily or unconsciously, we keep putting ourselves in a prison-like space – a dwelling place as how we call it. The meaning of dwelling is no longer the residence of stability and safely but the confinement which forces us to live within.
In the project dwelling, the artist continues to explore the concept of time, which he has been working on in the previous project ”Ark.”Choosing to living in a square space because of its solid and stable structure through which the meaning of existence and the span of life are allowed to be expanded. However, such a structure is more like prison cell rather than a dwelling place, a dwelling place, especially under the influence of capitalism, has been regarded as a commodity pursued by the opportunists as well as an “object” people have to try everything they can to have it. After making a different sacrifice to own one’s dwelling place, we become the prisoners of it.