Kaohsiung International Container Arts Festival, 12.10.2011-1.31.2012

James and I went to Kaohsiung to take part in a container arts festival in November. It is the only such festival in Taiwan or the world for that matter.   Containers are common as dirt in Taiwan and especially Kaohsiung. They are used as economical homes, business, exhibition space, hotels, storage, everything. For something so big and square and rusting it is odd how they blend into the landscape.  As a festival it is more partial to the process of people working together in a place, inspired by the bonds created by the exchange of language, culture and thoughts.  We have been discussing our needs with the museum staff for the past month in Tulsa and will meet with the organizers in the morning to arrange for finances, and visit the place that we will be working from for the next three weeks. It is exciting to think that we will be working beside artists from Taiwan, Europe, and USA. There is a staff of translators from a nearby college and museum assistants to help production in a strange place for people given to all in one shopping found at Home Depot.

The group of artists invited to create art out of retired shipping containers is at the museum as guests to view the opening of modern art from Korea. Afterwards we talked with the curator from S Korea about the amazing show, and finally introduced to the director of the Kaohsiung Fine Arts Museum, Beatrice Shih.  Artists from France and Spain have filmed and collected material from a distribution center for recycled household goods.  Could you imagine having these artists turning up soil in Tulsa? Two Italian artists have knit and to coordinate an effort to make a pure feminine environment inside a shipping container. A young German artist is smiling at the opportunity she has to create with plenty of skilled help to create a psychological box within a shipping container. An Artist from New York wraps a shipping container in a history of its 13 years on the ocean, again coordinated with huge support from the museum staff and volunteers.  A protest group of indigenous people is free to recreate a structure they had built on the beach in a rural part of the island to fight development of the ocean front and the storing of spent nuclear fuel on a pristine island, just off the coast.

We appreciate the financial support from the Department of State along with support from Tulsa This Land Press to make our own installation come true and were able to represent one of Kaohsiung’s sister cities by working hard for three weeks with local labor, an elementary school,  and a university, as well as the Museum to create the most involved work we have yet created.