From 14 to 30 November, artist Jorge Gonzales (Puerto Rico) and I were invited by Professor WU Pei-shan (Fibert Arts/International Affairs) to the Tainan National University of the Arts (TNNUA) a gorgeous campus in the mountains between Chiayi and Tainan City.
We will give lectures, meet with students and professors from different departments (Applied Arts, Visual Arts, Architecture, New Media & Film, Music), and give workshops. This is part of the 27th Anniversary of the school the theme is I AM AI and our contribution is to talk about the connection of traditional (manual) art and technology (A.I. etc.).
Everything is entangled and informs each other, it all ties together in dialogue with each other and has and will (have to) live together, inspire each other, and exist in harmony together respecting the differences as we need to be in symbioses we need each other. In connecting the Caribbean to the Netherlands to Taiwan literally on the other side of the Caribbean we want to get to know each other share knowledge and learn in a decolonial non-transnational capitalist way. At this moment Art and its community, more than ever, have to be aware of its important role in being the consciousness of the world/geopolitics: reflecting, wondering, sparking conversations and dialogue, and imagining future paths everybody can take in the evolution of humanity, equal, respectful, free, where differences are being celebrated as the wealth of the world, and no human is better or has more rights than another, without allowing any space for oppression and colonialism. All this with the awareness humans are just one small part of the larger network and entanglement of the ecology of the earth.
We are all in this together, we have to show up and have to commit to keeping trying everywhere, everyone, in different ways, on different levels, in large groups and small groups to achieve living together safely and humane, in all our differences in ways of living, traditions, levels of education and work ‘ranges’, languages, religions, cultures, in relative harmony.
The lectures are open to everybody on campus, some of them are online and will continue to be available on the internet.
The workshops are open to all students from different departments as well but they are also open to the general public until the maximum number of participants is reached.
I like to acknowledge that like the Cuban-Taiwan exchange in September / November, this program too could happen because of and as a follow-up of NEXUS in MoCA Taipei, in May-July this year.
