Location: Art Talk Area
Language: English
Guest speakers:
Betty Apple (Avant-garde artist, Taipei)
Amy Cheng (Art Critic, Independent Curator, Founder and Artistic Director of TheCube Project Space, Taipei)
About
In this talk, Betty Apple will introduce the journey and core concepts of her live art, performance, and sound creation, as well as how she uses both the body and sound as new mediums to reconstruct the narrative strategies of body politics.
On the other hand, Amy Cheng will approach it from a historical perspective, discussing Taiwan's noise, rave, and performance movement (the body as a battlefield) that emerged after the lifting of Martial Law in 1987.This discussion will lead up to the curatorial concept of "Sonic Shaman─TheCube Forum Music Festival," organized by TheCube Project Space in late 2022. She will also delve into Betty Apple's unique position in Taiwan, where she breaks boundaries between sound, language, and bodily performance.
Betty Apple (born in 1986, lives in Taipei) is a Taiwanese avant-garde artist. She graduated from the Taipei National University of the Arts Department of Theatre Arts and the Graduate School of New Media Art. Betty Apple skilfully intertwines art and music in her work, with a strong focus on body politics and performance, all framed by her experiences as a millennial navigating post-colonial Taiwan. Her art transforms symbols of popular culture and consumerism into sound elements, often incorporating mass-produced erotic or entertainment items like vibrators, underwear, or sex dolls in a provocative manner, all concealed within her body. Betty Apple has participated in numerous art events and exhibitions including FdS – Festival artistique des affects, des genres et des sexualités (2023, Lausanne, Switzerland), Pleasure & Protest (2022, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, Australia), Melbourne Fringe (2022, Melbourne, Australia), Santarcangelo Festival 2050: FUTURO FANTASTICO (II movimento) (2021, Santarcangelo di Romagna, Italy) , CQ 5 CTM x Club Qu x Resident Advisor Online Festival (2021) and Mona Foma (2021, Tasmania, Australia).
Amy Cheng is an independent curator who lives and works in Taipei. She is the co-founder of TheCube Project Space. Her curatorial practice centres on the historical and geopolitical relations between Asia and the world in the contemporary scene. With the aim of delving into local culture and establishing long-term relationships with artists and cultural practitioners, she explores the possibility of “expanding curating”. Since 2010, she has been promoting the studies on Taiwan’s modern sound cultures and extended this endeavour to multiple cultural forms such as exhibitions, publications, online databases, and internet radio. Exhibitions curated by Amy Cheng include: Madeleine Moment: The Technology of Memory and Sentiment (2023, Taipei and Taichung), Liquid Love (2020, Taipei), Towards Mysterious Realities (2016–2018, Taipei, Seoul and Kuala Lumpur), Re-envisioning Society (2011–2013, Taipei), The Heard and the Unheard－Soundscape Taiwan (Taiwan Pavilion, 2011, Venice Biennale). Cheng had been appointed jury member of the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award (2015) and the 57th Venice Biennale (2017).
