The term “Fabricating Mandarin Duck” in Chinese, originated from Wangan Island and Jiangjun Islet, Penghu, meaning "the construction of 24th Base of Shinyo Tokubetsu Kogekitai (naval suicide squad)”. This... Read More
The term “Fabricating Mandarin Duck” in Chinese, originated from Wangan Island and Jiangjun Islet, Penghu, meaning "the construction of 24th Base of Shinyo Tokubetsu Kogekitai (naval suicide squad)”.
This project is inspired by the memoire The Red Remaining in Winter by Yoshiaki Haza - a former Shinyo Tokubetsu Kogekitai soldier in Wangan Island at the very ending of Pacific War, as well as the false, absurd reconstruction of the base as a dark tourist attraction.
The artwork interweaves three timelines: the recent renovation program of the naval base, the gloomy modern history of war during the end of Japanese Colonial Period in Taiwan, and the long history of misuse and misappropriation of the famous waterfowl name “Mandarin Duck (Yuan1 Yang1)” in centuries of Chinese literature, which vaguely correspond to each other. Through various approaches of geopolitics, biology and deconstruction of literary texts, the land name of the Japanese naval base Mandarin Duck Caves (Yuanyang Cave) seems to prove itself an inevitable fate on the borderline, geographically, biologically, literarily yet politically.
This is Taiwan's Allegory of the Cave, reflecting the truth, distortion as well as our eternal blind spot in the gloomy darkness.
