Immemory

The exhibition Immemory focuses on the “historical turn” of Taiwan’s contemporary art over the past two decades, with geopolitical reference to Keelung, a harbor city closely tied to the fate of Taiwan. Keelung was the arrival and departure point for colonizers, the site of the Sino-French War, where photography first arrived in 1858, the location where the volcanoes of Datun Mountain extend to, and the setting where the Hollywood movie Sand Pebbles was shot as Shanghai in 1965, among other historical events. The exhibition aims to capture these moments as witnesses to the storied traces of people, events, plants, animals, and objects, enabling us to traverse the stream of consciousness across different temporalities, akin to Foucauldian “historical a priori,” a self-reflexive historiography.

The neologism “immemory” carries three distinct connotations through its prefix “im-.” Firstly, it embodies the negativity of memory, highlighting the dialectical relationship between remembering and forgetting in subjective experiences. It represents the uncanny scene of unhomeliness in psychoanalytical terms, arising from repression and amnesia, while operating at both collective and individual levels. Secondly, immemory indicates an “external” relation and explores the exosomatic memory developed through writings, media, images, and technological devices, extending from human bodies. It involves the translation and substitution of mediated experiences, where representations and simulations can have their own logic. Moreover, immemory signifies a memorandum for the future rather than a nostalgic gaze on the past, as art encompasses both past retention and future pretension, aligning with Bernard Stiegler’s concept of “tertiary retention,” which produces poetic experience.

Furthermore, “immemory” is also a wordplay for “I’m memory,” signifying the discourse of subjectivity that fabricates the Self, thus manifesting the politics of memory in the coexistence of otherness. The participating artists collectively present various mise en scène of exhibitionary narratives to reveal the pluralistic perspectives of memory and forgetting, bordering on the feverish desire of archival writings, yet-to-come memorandums for the future.

Curator: Hongjohn Lin. Participating artists: Anchi Ring, Chao-Liang Shen, Cheng-Te Chin & Chia-Chen You, Chia-Yun Wu, Chin-Yun Kuo, Ching-Tai Ho, Chris Marker, Engineering of Volcano Detonating,  Fei-Hao Chen, Guo-Jie Cai, Hung-Chih Peng, Musquiqui Chihying, Nai-Ren Chang, Po-Chun Liu, Shang-Hsi Cheng, Tien-Chang Wu, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Wu-Han Chou, Yen-Yen Ho, Yi-Chi Lin, Yi-Chun Lin, Yu-Sun Wang.

Dates and times: April 12–June 30, 9am–5pm, 2024 (Closed on Monday) / Venue: Keelung Museum of Art / Address: No. 181, Xin 1st Rd, Zhongzheng District, Keelung City 202099, Taiwan / Organizers: Keelung City Cultural Affairs Bureau, Waley Art / Sponsors: National Culture and Arts Foundation, RSI Group, Lion Pencil CO.