Articles

Social Dissonance is a handbook published by the artist, performer and theorist Mattin which contextualizes his composition "Social Dissonance'', performed at documenta 14 in 2017. The score dispenses with conventional musical instruments and instead instructs the performer to make the audience their instrument. Music cataloger Colin Morgan reviews Social Dissonance and considers how he would catalogue Mattin's disruptive medium.

In this series of wide-angle polaroids, Yao Jui-Chung photographs Madou Temple's animatronic religious display and other similar depictions of hell from throughout Taiwan and Singapore.

Betty Apple is a musician and performance artist based in Taipei. Apple engages in what she terms "live art", intensely physical performances that deconstruct tightly composed constructions of corporeal and aural space. Advancing concepts of the feminine, Apple reworks the leftover rickety architecture of Taiwan's former military state while exploring new postcolonial subjectivities in its present reality, democracy saturated in hypercapitalism. Kyra Kordoski wrote about Apple's work for White Fungus.

Wang Fujui is one of the pioneers of Taiwanese noise music and sound art. Wang emerged in the 1990s during the explosion of Taiwanese experimental music following the lifting of martial law. In 1993, he founded NOISE, Taiwan's first zine and record label dedicated to experimental music. Wang's own work ranges from ecstatic extreme noise to sublime sound and light installations. Alistair Noble wrote about Wang's unique body of work for White Fungus.

Do animals create and enjoy music on a similar level to humans? Or are their magnificent displays of sound merely functional? Tobias Fischer, co-editor of the book Animal Music, lays out the arguments for and against, drawing upon a trove of research and creative works by artists and scientists alike.

David Frazier charts the growth of inter-Asian dialogue and networks in the art world amidst the fissures of globalization and a still-dominant Western paradigm for viewing art.