Suppose we imagine every fibre creation of each person as part of the world fibre creation, and every action taken by each person is good intention for the future. It's as if the yarn has been spun while you were fast asleep at night, waiting for you to wake up and weave on in the morning.
This is why the exhibition is named: Having Friends in the Future. However, the "future" means so much more.
In the history of fibre creation, fibre materials used have continued to expand without rest. Including conductive material, flexible electronics, and biological textile in fibre creation, venturing from fibre creation to technological domain, layering new language on the foundation of natural fibre is an ongoing progress in fibre creation, and an important direction for the future.
However, is materialistic material the only creative material for creators? Are there more dimensions to the meaning of "future"?
When we look into the detailed composition of a work, in addition to "materialistic" material, there may also be the "spiritual" element which is invisible yet always contagious. Take "information", "concept", and "knowledge" for example, and the "people" carrying the cultural and historical context, overlapping and expanding, taking a momentary pause in the "completeness" of the work before dispersing in all directions. All of which are sources of nutrient for the creator, inspiring the completion of the next work, and all part of the creator's "material pool".
Therefore, with the works displayed here as foundation, to convey the curative concept, we take apart their creative elements and create a "material pool" for contemporary fibre creation at the entrance. The "3rd nature" is borrowed from Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, a concept proposed in the book"Mushroom at the End of the World". Possibilities outside the normal production system after man has experienced the "1st nature" of relationship with the primitive natural ecology, and the "2nd nature" in which the environment changes due to capitalism. The following may be considered the declaration for setting up this material pool:
"This installation of material pool could be imagined as a forest, in which various material, ideas, species, and even awareness encompassed provide diversity to the entire environment, and such diversity is mutually contagious and inclusive, with a shared vision. Diversity is essential to a sustainable cycle. Just as all species are collaborative and symbiotic in the forest, the material pool itself can be considered a form of organism, encompassing various future possibilities. The stories behind these materials depict our futures, which is open and predictive. These futures are overlapping and entangled, without definition. Our futures are decided by what we do, instead of a linear search for an existing goal, we should be more focused on how to design the openness of the process rather focused on the result."
Our goal is not to build a "comprehensive" material pool, but a material pool expressing "openness", "collaborative and symbiotic", "diverse", "predictive" and "futuristic", with the essential spirit to open up the boundaries.
Therefore, the output of the "material pool" is not "static". In addition to inviting participating artists from home and abroad to join its expansion, we also established a mechanism for interaction with the audience: adding a QR Code next to material pools with special significance. When the audience scans the QR Code, they can immediately see the questions proposed to them by the domestic or foreign artist, and they leave messages and converse accordingly, a new "material" growing in the form of the internet. This is a response to the "openness", "collaborative and symbiotic", and "contagious and interactive" spirit of the material pool.
2020 is the year the Research, Development and Creation of Conductive Material and Natural Fibre Composite Project began, which is also the year the world was hit by the pandemic. The pandemic has forced people and countries to take distance and "closed up" the lives of people, but the "swatchbook" produced by online interactions between creators from many countries have opened up the boundary of creation. Other than exchanges on local materials, skills, and alternative fibres, there is expansion on the cognitive boundary. For example, blue-dye for artists in Taiwan have always been about the reconstructing of traditional crafts and root-seeking, whereas for western creators, it is a symbol of colonialism. The swatchbooks created in abundant forms come with issues regarding energy, identity, civic science, social justice, and even stories originating from the artists. This part of the exhibition is on the first floor, the Swatchbook Area behind the material pool installation.
The opening of boundaries for creation is fully expressed in B1. Including creator collaboration, workshop, field collection, and online international exchange adopted by the works in this project, the attempted collaborative pattern of international artist established is the reference and response to methods and works.
Comprehensively speaking, between the continued expanding (material pool) and collapsing (works) of the materials, what the audience experience from the exhibition is the inside out and outside in, local and global, material and spirit, and tradition and technology of the work/material, and hence a new understanding of creative "material".
Therefore, when we speak of the future, what comes at us will be more than a linear time and landscape but an assemblage. The spirit of its diversity replaces the homogeneity of community, with the aim to explore various possibilities. It hints at the imminent future, an open ending in uncertainty and of joint creation.'
This exhibition is based on the results of the 2020 "Having Freinds in the Future", and uses a fictionary fiber material library installation to express the spirit of continuous expansion of the boundaries of fiber craftsmanship. In the perpetual cycle of fiber creation, various materials, concepts, species, and even consciousness...infect each other, cooperate and co-exist. And portray our future in this open and diverse spirit. The exhibition areas include the fiber material library device designed by the curatorial team on the first floor, and the sample book document exhibition that was spawned by the online exchange event last year. In the basement, there are subsidized works derived from last year's online exchange activities and video recordings of exchange artist interviews, as well as workshops in cooperation between the Craft Center and the Hualien Guangzhiwu-Bart.
Exhibition Duration： 2021.07.13-2021.10.17
Opening hours: Tuesdays to Sundays (Including national holidays): 09:00-17:00
Venue：Craft Design Hall, NTCRI. No.573, Zhongzheng Rd., Caotun Township, Nantou County 542, Taiwan (R.O.C.)
Website：https://hff2020.xyz/
This is why the exhibition is named: Having Friends in the Future. However, the "future" means so much more.
In the history of fibre creation, fibre materials used have continued to expand without rest. Including conductive material, flexible electronics, and biological textile in fibre creation, venturing from fibre creation to technological domain, layering new language on the foundation of natural fibre is an ongoing progress in fibre creation, and an important direction for the future.
However, is materialistic material the only creative material for creators? Are there more dimensions to the meaning of "future"?
When we look into the detailed composition of a work, in addition to "materialistic" material, there may also be the "spiritual" element which is invisible yet always contagious. Take "information", "concept", and "knowledge" for example, and the "people" carrying the cultural and historical context, overlapping and expanding, taking a momentary pause in the "completeness" of the work before dispersing in all directions. All of which are sources of nutrient for the creator, inspiring the completion of the next work, and all part of the creator's "material pool".
Therefore, with the works displayed here as foundation, to convey the curative concept, we take apart their creative elements and create a "material pool" for contemporary fibre creation at the entrance. The "3rd nature" is borrowed from Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, a concept proposed in the book"Mushroom at the End of the World". Possibilities outside the normal production system after man has experienced the "1st nature" of relationship with the primitive natural ecology, and the "2nd nature" in which the environment changes due to capitalism. The following may be considered the declaration for setting up this material pool:
"This installation of material pool could be imagined as a forest, in which various material, ideas, species, and even awareness encompassed provide diversity to the entire environment, and such diversity is mutually contagious and inclusive, with a shared vision. Diversity is essential to a sustainable cycle. Just as all species are collaborative and symbiotic in the forest, the material pool itself can be considered a form of organism, encompassing various future possibilities. The stories behind these materials depict our futures, which is open and predictive. These futures are overlapping and entangled, without definition. Our futures are decided by what we do, instead of a linear search for an existing goal, we should be more focused on how to design the openness of the process rather focused on the result."
Our goal is not to build a "comprehensive" material pool, but a material pool expressing "openness", "collaborative and symbiotic", "diverse", "predictive" and "futuristic", with the essential spirit to open up the boundaries.
Therefore, the output of the "material pool" is not "static". In addition to inviting participating artists from home and abroad to join its expansion, we also established a mechanism for interaction with the audience: adding a QR Code next to material pools with special significance. When the audience scans the QR Code, they can immediately see the questions proposed to them by the domestic or foreign artist, and they leave messages and converse accordingly, a new "material" growing in the form of the internet. This is a response to the "openness", "collaborative and symbiotic", and "contagious and interactive" spirit of the material pool.
2020 is the year the Research, Development and Creation of Conductive Material and Natural Fibre Composite Project began, which is also the year the world was hit by the pandemic. The pandemic has forced people and countries to take distance and "closed up" the lives of people, but the "swatchbook" produced by online interactions between creators from many countries have opened up the boundary of creation. Other than exchanges on local materials, skills, and alternative fibres, there is expansion on the cognitive boundary. For example, blue-dye for artists in Taiwan have always been about the reconstructing of traditional crafts and root-seeking, whereas for western creators, it is a symbol of colonialism. The swatchbooks created in abundant forms come with issues regarding energy, identity, civic science, social justice, and even stories originating from the artists. This part of the exhibition is on the first floor, the Swatchbook Area behind the material pool installation.
The opening of boundaries for creation is fully expressed in B1. Including creator collaboration, workshop, field collection, and online international exchange adopted by the works in this project, the attempted collaborative pattern of international artist established is the reference and response to methods and works.
Comprehensively speaking, between the continued expanding (material pool) and collapsing (works) of the materials, what the audience experience from the exhibition is the inside out and outside in, local and global, material and spirit, and tradition and technology of the work/material, and hence a new understanding of creative "material".
Therefore, when we speak of the future, what comes at us will be more than a linear time and landscape but an assemblage. The spirit of its diversity replaces the homogeneity of community, with the aim to explore various possibilities. It hints at the imminent future, an open ending in uncertainty and of joint creation.'
This exhibition is based on the results of the 2020 "Having Freinds in the Future", and uses a fictionary fiber material library installation to express the spirit of continuous expansion of the boundaries of fiber craftsmanship. In the perpetual cycle of fiber creation, various materials, concepts, species, and even consciousness...infect each other, cooperate and co-exist. And portray our future in this open and diverse spirit. The exhibition areas include the fiber material library device designed by the curatorial team on the first floor, and the sample book document exhibition that was spawned by the online exchange event last year. In the basement, there are subsidized works derived from last year's online exchange activities and video recordings of exchange artist interviews, as well as workshops in cooperation between the Craft Center and the Hualien Guangzhiwu-Bart.
Exhibition Duration： 2021.07.13-2021.10.17
Opening hours: Tuesdays to Sundays (Including national holidays): 09:00-17:00
Venue：Craft Design Hall, NTCRI. No.573, Zhongzheng Rd., Caotun Township, Nantou County 542, Taiwan (R.O.C.)
Website：https://hff2020.xyz/