Rikey Tenn Bun-ki: Nanyang Radio Station

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4 episodes in total. (Duration: 20 minutes per episode)

This radio program is stemmed from the “Nanyang Radio Station: An Audio Guide for 228 Peace Memorial Park” during Petamu Project, co-organized by Nusantara Archive and Open-Contemporary Art Center in 2018. The 228 Peace Memorial Park was formerly known as Taipei New Park, the second exhibition venue of Taiwan Expo in 1935. The original project was presented in two ways – a radio-based installation and an audio-guided tour. As the tour reached its end, all of the participants followed the voice guidance, heading towards Taiwan Radiobroadcasting Booth situated in the center of the park. Despite the fact that the booth is no longer in use, still it is imaginable that the civilians had gathered here and been stunned by the broadcast of Gyokuon-hōsō (“The Imperial Rescript on Surrender”) – announcing the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan to the Allies in Taiwan, which was served as the industrial base modernized along with Japan’s Southern expansion, while immersing in the sense of “being united” created by the radio wave. All of a sudden, the Taiwanese general public had no choice but to change their identification since the broadcast was an official announcement of the unclaimed future existing way before the change which people might wish to happen.

Through the broadcasting of radio, “Nanyang Radio Station” tries to connect two different space-time points. One is the Taiwan Expo, which took places in Taipei New Park, Taihoku City Public Auditorium (Zhongshan Hall), and Taping Public School to celebrate the colonist government’s achievement. The other is 15th August 1945, when the people first heard the Japanese Emperor Hirohito’s voice in the radio in his colonies and other countries, however, announcing the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan – the dream of Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere vanished. In the later part of this radio program, we would like to introduce the report “電波は躍進する (放送今昔物語)” in Taiwan Association for Communications Magazine (臺灣遞信協會雜誌) No.3 in 1940, written by Susumu Shima, with the trace map of the radiofrequency travelled from Taiwan to Nanyang and South China, served to symbolize the political doctrine of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. In the same time, two special guests – the historian Terrence Lai Ying-tai (also the translator ‘s Shima’s report) and the independent curator Takamori Nobuo – would be invited to comment on the Japanese radio broadcasting, the history of the colonization, and the community; be it the imagined, or the mediated. (Special thanks to Syafiatudina who wrote the first edition of the scripts for her residency in 2017, and OCAC to materialized the guided tour in 2018.)

Ep1: An Audio Guide for Taipei New Park (228 Peace Memorial Park) (Mandarin)
Ep2: An Audio Guide for Taipei New Park (228 Peace Memorial Park) (English)
Ep3: The Great Leap of the Radio Wave: The Radio Industry in Colonial Taiwan
EP4: The Great Leap of the Radio Wave: The Radio Broadcasting from Taiwan towards the South

Audio Guide: (EP.1&EP.2):

Sima Wu Ting-kuen, Linda Linarta, Au Sow-Yee

Special Guests (EP.3&EP4):

Terrence Lai Ying-tai is now PhD. Student in Graduate Institute of Taiwan History, National Chengchi University, Taiwan. Former consultant of curatorial team Outsiders Factory. He is also an artist, works including: Guangneng Journal (2013); Chifeng Magazine (2015), Exhibited in “Street Fun, Fun Street- MOCA X Community Art Festival”, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei. His Master’s thesis researched how Taiwanese movies represented unique identity of the island nation, as he won the fifth Zhuang Wanshou Taiwan Humanities Research Award of it. His research interest includes the history of cultural exchanges in Taiwan, the relation between local community and art, historical and art exchanges between Taiwan and Southeast Asia. He is the author of few articles such as “How the Historical and Social Background Shape the Perspectives of Post-Martial Law Generation in Taiwan: An Observation on Contemporary Art Curation toward South-East Asia”, “History and Cultural Flows of Chifeng Community in Taipei City”.

Nobuo Takamori is an independent curator; director of “Outsiders Factory”, a curators collective; selected important exhibition curatorial works include Post-Actitud (2011, Ex Teresa Arte Actual, Mexico DF), South country, South of Country (2012, Zero Station, Ho Chi Minh City & Howl Space, Tainan), The Lost Garden (2014, Eslite Gallery, Taipei), Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition 2014 The Return of Ghosts (Hong Gah Museum, Taipei), I Don’t Belong (2015, Galleria H., Taipei), Wild Legend (2015, Jumin Museum, Jinshan) , Blue Bird in the Labyrinth: A Walk from Japanese Modern Art to Asia Contemporary Art Scene (2016, Galerie Nichido Taipei), Tabaco, Carpet, Lunch Box, Textile Machinery and Cave Men: the narratives of craftsmanship and technologies in contemporary art (2017, Hong Gah Museum, Taipei), Is/In-Land: Mongolian Taiwanese Contemporary Art Exchange Project (2018, 976 Art Gallery, Ulaanbaatar, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei), The Middleman, the Backpacker, the Alien Species and the Time Traveler (2019, TKG+, Taipei).

Producer:

Rikey Tenn Bun-ki
Based in Taipei, Rikey Tēnn (Bun-ki) is the founder and editor of an online art platform – No Man’s Land at Digital Art Foundation, Taipei. He initiated the NML Residency & Nusantara Archive Project (since 2017) as a collaborative platform for artists concerning the shared history and its process of decolonization. He is the nominator for the Taishin Arts Award (2018~2019). His art-related writing can be found on Cobo Social and ARTCO magazine. He was one of the speakers for “2019 Spring Dialogue” (2019/5/4~5, Spring Foundation) and Taipei Contemporary Art Center’s “Open Curatorial School” (2015, W4). He is the co-curator of Open Contemporary Art Center’s Petamu Project (2019).