VOP Issue 26 : 末日棲居 Dwelling in the Apocalypse

In the face of unpredictable days ahead, have we drifted even further away from the “poetic dwelling” the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin so poignantly described? Disasters and wars, lies and scheming – the ambitions and desires that plague the human world never cease to expand, making it harder to imbue the presence of humans with a sense of poetry. As the threat of conflict in global politics rises to its highest level since the Cold War in 1953, where the “doomsday clock” stays at two minutes to midnight, we are closer than ever to the end since World War II. How do we possibly survive on this land as the apocalypse closes in?

Shiga Lieko’s dream-like imagery creations reflect her perception of life and death after living through the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. In her latest work, Human Spring, Shiga attempts to recover the sense of nature and self that lies within all humans but has since been forgotten and buried. She does so through the use of imagery that flows like a stream of consciousness, presenting a picture of meditation on human nature and survival itself. Lin Yu-Chih’s Asongcalledformosa is a private songbook he created on a long travel home, filled with songs like that of his hometown and its people, the industrial area and the desolate coast, and memories of his father being recruited by the Japanese army to serve in Southeast Asia. These images taken over the course of decades are published for the first time, singing the love and sorrowful songs of this island that the traveler hums along to as he set out on his journey. Yuan Goang-Ming has been working with video installation since the 1980s, and his work illustrates a sense of uneasiness towards daily life. From About Millet’s The Angelus and Out of Position created at the end of last century, to more recent works such as City Disqualified, Landscape of Energy, Dwelling and Everyday Maneuver, a sense of our past and last days permeates his creations, the message of which is drifting afloat in the modern social space that has been dehumanized, until the world can finally take no more.