Don't Ask Me!

Consumer Retorts: Rants and Raves on the Business of Self- and Home-Improvement

Friday, August 26, 2005

In the City of Tainan, Hai-an Road is a remarkable setting for contemporary public art installations: it started out as an attempt to create an underground shopping mall slicing down the middle of a residential neighborhood in an ancient part of the city, one of the oldest settled by the Chinese in Taiwan. But after tearing down people's houses, literally right down the middle, it turned out that the water table in Tainan is simply too high for an underground mall to remain dry. So what happens next? The displaced residents do not get their homes rebuilt. You've got these half torn down houses, some with the a sink sticking out of a wall, and a very enterprising curator Du Jhao Hsian, decides to that the ruined walls are perfect for a street gallery . And here you see one of the most famous "installations" called "Blueprint." Hoping to revitalize the neighborhood by creating an artspace out of an urban planning disaster, the city agreed and now Hai-an Road is hoping to become a bo-bo center of consumerism. Well, in these photographs, a wedding photographer and bride and groom have discovered that contemporary art can offer a beautiful backdrop to fabricate wedding memories! Residents I hear had little say in the matter. They were paid off to go live somewhere else. You can't live in art, even if it's public!

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