Monsoon Northwards

2023/02/15 點閱數：216

By ｜Chang Chih Chung

Written at the beginning of this article: Please treat this article as an introduction to a writing proposal and my preliminary explorations on the next stage of my writing method. These writings will be about monsoons and my writing experiment, which I attempt to construct through bodily experience as a knowledge construct. Project location: Taiwan, the Netherlands, the Scandinavia region.

‘Monsoon’ originates in the Arabic ‘mawsim’, meaning ‘time of year’ or ‘appropriate season’, transitioning into English via Portuguese and Dutch.

A ‘trade wind’ was originally unconnected with the use of ‘trade’ with reference to commerce, instead coming from a German word for ‘path’ or ‘track’.

~ Lisa Lim, SCMP

The extent and environmental characteristics of Asian monsoon
Imgagin source：https://www.thinglink.com/scene/926826363392884739

Ⅰ.Monsoon

Monsoon/monção/موسم is the world’s largest climatic zone created by the planetary wind system and the distribution of land and sea; it has shaped and deeply impacted the civilizations between continents (Asian and the Indian Subcontinent) and oceans (the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean). From the origin of the word “monsoon,” we gain an understanding of how humans have depended on this cycle of intense environmental change and how they have developed the dynamic processes for survival, development, migration, and adaptation.

From the benchmarks of the Earth, monsoon climates are created by the interpenetration and cycle of the hydrosphere, atmosphere, and geosphere under the planetary system. Its severe disturbance created the fertile lands of East-South Asia, leading to highly dense settlement scenes, ensuing disasters and risks, as well as societies known for their resilience and awareness toward risk: the annual cycle of life and death. The somatosensory in monsoon climates is moist, which echoes the experience of the water cycle in the organic human body; sweating, exhaustion, and water intake, metabolizing into an inner sensory climate.

From the perspective of Taiwan, with its ambiguous international image and positioning, and by looking back on how the art/cultural image of contemporary Asia has been treated as the other by the West through spatialization/localization/ethnicization, here, the concept of “monsoon” attempts to propose a new possibility: when concepts of Asia/Oriental/South are eliminated, perhaps our identity can take a more seamless, de-bordered, worldly/ planetary angle when reimagining the self or our positioning? Furthermore, can the concept of “learning from monsoon” as a practice be possible? Can the sensory experience of the monsoon serve as imagination as we attempt a more progressive approach toward a contemporary-near future life, its crevasse, fluctuations, metabolism, and the adaptations that are hiddenly manifested?

Key visual《Monsoon Northwards》

Ⅱ.Northward

“Northward” of the monsoon seems to contradict the de-orientation mentioned in the last section. In truth, I view monsoons as an internalized cultural element, a re-presenting process that manifests the organic and attributes of metabolism as a subjectivity through writing and under personal experiences of climates. This also allows the individual to move between the inner and outer dimensions of climates and further create a dynamic process of relearning, adapting, and expressing a somewhat tamed “monsoon body.”

My previous talk “The Scene from the Cold Shore: The Art and Cultural Institutions in Scandinavia and their Displays and Public Roles” at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts was a preliminary organizing of this writing practice. I based the structure of my argument on my residence displays, institution events, daily social encounters, and cultural observations at locations including Scandinavia, the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, and the Arctic Ocean from 2017 to the present day to gaze outside the rigid framework of the “Global South/North,” the extensions of the polarizing mainstream systems of Eurasia, the similar but vastly-different Taiwan and Northern Europe, which is also attached to the border of land and sea, and contemplated how to tacitly engage in a marginal mindset of “south of the south, north of the north” while considering topics including collectivistic-individualistic social standards, the flattening of international images, the decentralized and fluid ocean system, indigenous and autonomy/colonial issues, the merge and tug between natural resources and industrial development, as well as the risks and challenges shared by the highly transparent digital democratic society.

My Chinese name comes from Confucius’s vision in Doctrine of the Mean: “Let the states of equilibrium and harmony exist in perfection, and a happy order will prevail throughout heaven and earth, and all things will be nourished and flourish.” I discovered a common Swedish saying that seems to be the counterpart to the concept: “Lagom är bäst (everything in moderation).” In addition, further inspections reveal how the interesting “Law of Jante,” which, like East Asian societies, upholds the suppression of individuality, is manifested in contemporary contexts in distinctively different systems. In The Other Face of the Moon (L’Autre Face de la lune: Ecrits sur le Japon), a collection of short articles, the structuralist and anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss used the mirror as a metaphor for the obscure but deep-seated spiritual connection between French Culture, to which he belongs, and Japanese civilization. Therefore, I attempt to fathom an alternative tilted axis across contemporary Eurasia, reflecting new consensus and understandings in the west, north, east, and south of the margins of this continent.

Photographed in Svalbard, Norway, the author (the character in the photo) visited the Global Seed Vault near Svalbard Airport. Facing the climate change crisis, the coal-mine- transformed-archipelago and the seed vault that emited huge mechanical noises in the silence seems to reflect the reality of humanity on the entire planet.

In the crevices between the adjacent geographic systems of Chinese/Austronesian regions and the mistranslations from the mainstream, dominant languages of Europe and the US, I attempt to summon and imagine resonance from the opposite shore that is further away but equally saturated by the sea and wind. Also, under the subjective identity of “Taiwan” and amid the constant dialectical progress of the island, the sea, and cultural networks, I attempt to pave an alternative planetary path that is like the Polar Route, filled with variables, unknowns, and possibilities.

Monsoon Northwards

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