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.