Out of Place-A Trilogy on Kaohsiung Military DependentVillages:Lulu Shur-tzy Hou Solo Exhibition

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Out of Place-A Trilogy on Kaohsiung Military DependentVillages:Lulu Shur-tzy Hou Solo Exhibition

2017.07.01 - 2017.09.17 KMFA Galleries 401-403 and Multi-Purpose Room

Out of Place — A Trilogy on Kaohsiung Military Dependents’ Villages: Lulu Shur-tzy Hou Solo Exhibition
Exhibition Dates: July 1 to September 17, 2017

Curator: Huang Sun Quan
Artist: Lulu Shur-tzy Hou

Executive producers:Peggy Huang and Li,Hsueh-chia

Display designer:Chen,Chih-chien(LuxuryLogi.co)

Installatiion and lighting implemented by:Art War Company

Supported by: Bureau of Cultural Affairs, Kaohsiung City Government
Organized by: Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts

About the Exhibition

Huang Sun Quan, Curator

In February 2009, artist Lulu Shur-tzy Hou visited military dependents’ villages in Kaohsiung as part of a survey research on the city’s Zuoying Military Dependents’ Villages, which brought her into contact with the lives of military dependents’ village residents. Throughout more than eight years, she has been driven by a deep sense of mission to involve herself in the effort to preserve the culture of military dependents’ villages, and as a result has personally shared the trials and tribulations experienced by village residents. In Kaohsiung’s military dependents’ villages, Hou’s encounters with local spaces and her life interwoven with different courses of life have inspired her to develop a style of multi-domain art encompassing and transcending documentary photography, field narratives, and social practice.

This exhibition represents a further collaborative effort involving curator Huang Sun Quan and the artist in the wake of the “Look toward the Other Side: Song of Asian Foreign Brides in Taiwan,” which was held in 2010 under the auspices of Forum for Creativity in Art at Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts. A Trilogy on Kaohsiung Military Dependents’ Villages summarizes the artist’s creative work involving Kaohsiung’s Zuoying and Fengshan military dependents’ villages over the course of many years. Employing the juxtaposition of positive and negative image pairs — which is termed a “Double-gaze” style by the curator, the artist superimposes subjective and objective viewpoints. Her work displays the dispersion and disruption of the military dependents’ villages, the turmoil and transience of the village residents’ lives as well as their appeals for “going back home” due to the improper execution of “Act for Rebuilding Old Quarters for Military Dependents,” and creates a contemporary epic of local history interwoven with the artist’s narratives and her dialogue with the residents.

The trilogy, which consists of the “Here is where we meet” series published in 2013, the “Remains of the Day” series published in 2015 and the recently-completed “Out of Place” series, reflects different fates of military dependents’ villages: people and houses all gone, houses still present but no people living in them, and still-thriving communities. The artist relies on her photographic record, interviews, and active intervention to produce art in social spaces. In the field, the artist has deep empathy with the residents. Going together, they create a public history and start a conversation with Taiwan’s societies.

The artist’s photographs are not a representation of military dependents’ villages, but rather the creation of a shared feeling among all of us, not just the military dependents’ villages. These works are sketches of an after-war migration history, which reveal the traumatic experiences related to local feelings and living histories due to urban development, and represent a collective movement of the residents of military dependents’ villages to “havea Home.” Having long striven to write and create art from a female perspective, the artist lets us hear the voices of women of the military dependents’ villages; in her art, we see these women’s complicated love/hate relationships with their country, their homeland, and their men. At the same time, her art makes us conscious of the fact that the military dependents’ villages do not represent nostalgia. In fact, the disappearing course of military dependents’ villages across Taiwan are equivalent to the history of the privatization of public housing in Taiwan, as well as the cruel historical process in which some major social communities in Taiwan lost all their common property (home, memories, communal life.)

As such, this exhibition is able to help us proceed from having a sensation of “there that I should like to live” — which French philosopher Roland Barthes considers the best quality of photography — to thinking about a question that not only the residents of military dependents’ villages but also each and every person in Taiwan should be forced to answer: If “such then would be the essence of the landscape: heimlich (meaning home and clandestine in German),” where then is our home?

【Artist's Statement】

Lulu Shur-tzy Hou

A Trilogy on Kaohsiung Military Dependents’ Villages attempts to represent the last appearances of the military dependents’ villages in Zuoying and Fengshan, where the new immigrants after the Chinese Civil War had settled in for more than 60 years. Generally speaking, the works of this trilogy express feelings of sadness and sorrow for the lost good days in the villages.

EPISODE I Here is Where We Meet

Here Is Where We Meet features the theme of my encounter with four military dependents’ villages (Lizhi New Village, Chongshi New Village, Zizhu New Village and Fuxing New Village) in the Zuoying District, Kaohsiung, after the “Act for Rebuilding Old Quarters for Military Dependents” (afterwards referred to as the “Act”) was passed to tear down the villages. The images in the project depict the lives of the last military dependent generation and serve as a testimony to the shifts in the cultural landscape before and after the demolition.

Zuoying once housed 23 military dependents’ villages. It was the largest naval community in Taiwan. The serviceman and their families established their new homes in the area when the Nationalist Government of the Republic of China (ROC) relocated to Taiwan. The “Act” was announced in 1996. It forever changed the fate of the total 897 military dependents’ communities in Taiwan. I visited the Zuoying military dependents’ villages for the first time in February, 2009, where I met with the military dependent households and connected with the landscapes in the condemned villages. Through conducting interviews, taking photographs, making text recordings, and generating dialogues with the local residents, I attempted to preserve the cultural, physical, and rhetorical memories of these military dependents’ communities, and I wrote reviews to challenge the unjust policies behind the destruction of military dependents’ villages.

Fuxing New Village was demolished in March, 2013, followed by Zizhu New Village. Chongshi New Village officially disappeared from Zuoying’s map in the August of 2013. The four series of Here Is Where We Meet form an elegy for the vanished military communities under the absurd policy related to Rebuilding Old Quarters for Military Dependents’ Villages, and become a symbol of the commemorative yellow ribbons tied around the lost Military Dependents’ Villages.

EPISODE II Remains of the Day

A number of military dependents’ villages in Fengshan District, Kaohsiung have been torn down successively since the implementation of the “Act.” Huangpu New Village, based on the military facilities and infrastructure established in Fengshan area during the Japanese colonial period, is a rare survival under this act. In October 1947, General Sun Li-jen chose Fengshan as the military training base for the New 1st Army, redeploying over one hundred subordinates of the New 1st Army from mainland China to Taiwan and arranging them in the fourth officer training class. These subordinates and their families settled down in Cheng-zheng New Village (later renamed as Huangpu New Village) which is the first military dependents’ village in Taiwan. In May 1955, the village received the whole country’s attention for the espionage case of Guo Ting-liang (or the military mutiny case of Sun Li-jen).

Grandma Liu, the protagonist of the works displayed in Remains of the Day, settled down in Fengshan with her fiancé. When the artist visited this village in July 2008, grandma Liu was one of the few residents who still live there. She refused to leave the house where she spent a lifetime until the authority cut off the water and electricity supply. Her life experience vividly reflects the story of military dependents. They were not only forced to migrate to Taiwan with the Nationalist Government and become strangers in a foreign land (i.e. mainlanders), but also confronted with dramatic change of their cherished home in Taiwan at their twilight years. The story revolves around grandma Liu’s attachments to the village where she has lived in for over six decades, and her deep reluctance to be forced to move out. The turmoil of war severed their connections with relatives and families in mainland China. These military dependents had no choice but to build new homes in Taiwan and to lead their lives by living as collectives. Thus, these villages supposed to be temporary dwellings turned out to be their spiritual and emotional hometowns that replaced their real origins in mainland China.

EPISODE III Out of Place

This series of works portrays the bleak fate of Mingde New Village and Jianye New Village in Zuoying during the late stage of implementation of the “Act.”
These two villages located near Zuoying naval base contain military dependents’ quarters remaining from the Japanese colonial period. In the early days, they served as a refuge in the wake of war and chaos for the families of naval officers protecting the nation. The first-generation residents of military dependents’ villages gave their allegiance to the nation, so they could only gaze at their old homes in mainland China from a far distance, and ultimately were buried in Taiwan. The members of the second generation, who came to Taiwan while very young, are now elderly persons. They have always considered the military dependents’ villages to be their homes, and put down roots and raised families in the villages.

In 2003, the Ministry of National Defense conduct an investigation in these two villages to verify how many residents would agree to the rebuilding of their villages. Some residents opted to continue to live in the villages, but found that their resident status had been revoked. As a result, they initiated lawsuits against the Ministry of National Defense, which lasted long years. In 2010, Kaohsiung City Government registered the two villages as cultural heritage sites eligible for preservation. Furthermore, Mingde New Village was included as one of the 13 nationwide military dependents’ village cultural preservation areas. However, due to the Ministry of National Defense’s many underhanded methods of forcing residents out, residents have gradually bid farewell to their home, and lost their homeland in Taiwan.

The works in this series focus on the true situations of those residents who still remain in the two villages during the late stage of implementation of the “Act” as they insist on guarding their homes and waiting for justice.

-Works-

回首 01，2012 (首部曲我們在此相遇)

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呼求 02，2015 (二部曲長日將盡)

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王姜宜鳳 01，2010 & 2017 (三部曲鄉關何處)

-Views of the Exhibition-

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3. 侯淑姿鏡頭下左營眷村的最後身影（2017/8/12中國時報，許文貞報導）：https://reurl.cc/RaoeG
4. 非池中新聞網：https://reurl.cc/KVode
5. 文茜的異想世界│2017/09/04 中廣流行網：https://reurl.cc/YZoYO
6. 公視藝術很有事／第三集：藝術家侯淑姿的眷村三部曲│2017/8/23：https://reurl.cc/NzoYm
7. ＂鄉關何處：高雄眷村三部曲–侯淑姿個展＂獲藝術家雜誌票選2017公辦十大好展第六名：https://reurl.cc/rNVYE

-Album-
博客來：https://reurl.cc/25Ola

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Exhibition

Out of Place-A Trilogy on Kaohsiung Military DependentVillages:Lulu Shur-tzy Hou Solo Exhibition

Mirror of the World-Gifts to KMFA 2021-2023

Upcoming│Run! Be Happy-Solo Exhibition of CHUANG Ming-Chi

Upcoming│CAPTURING THE MOMENT