CHANG YUNG-TA

In 2020, Chang is participating in the Taipei Biennial with installations scape.unseen_meta-T, scape.unseen_model-T, scape.unseen_sample-T (all 2020), which emerged from his residency in the Taroko Gorge, Taiwan, and Germany.

As it would not be possible to study the whole Critical Zone, scientists gather sets of instruments at specific observatories, such as Taiwan’s Taroko Gorge, which was chosen because of the geographic dynamics such as earthquake, landslide, erosion, and weathering. Once these processes are measured, the collected data are analysed in labs off site such as the GFZ in Potsdam.

Chang’s installations, spread over two floors (the entrance corridor and the basement courtyard) of Taipei Fine Arts Museum, remind us that the Critical Zone is above our heads and under our feet. The works in the corridor showcase data, sensors and such, as well as a very sensitive seismometer which captures any movement on the ground—from the steps of the visitors to the planes passing above the museum.

In the basement courtyard are nine tubes, which act like a ‘mini-landscape’ factory. Indeed, landscapes are produced in part by erosion: water flow or wind removes parts of the earth crust, such as rock and soil, and transports it somewhere else, creating a relief.

The instrument displayed recreates these phenomena on a smaller scale thanks to a system that reproduces the turbulence of the water current of the Li-Wu river in the Taroko Gorge. This agitates the small bits of rock and sand, which hit the surface of the disk and carve them. By the end of the show, the rock disks will no longer be flat; they will be modulated, like a tiny riverbed.

Ocula 2020