Wayward Economy

Place Main Trend Gallery
Address No.209-1, Sec. 3, Cheng-der Road, Taipei
Telphone +886-2-2587-3412
Date 2005.01.21 -- 02.26
Opening party 2005.01.22, 19:00
[email protected]
http://www.ncaf.org.tw/waywardeconomy.html (2005.01.20)

Artists: Big Hope (Miklos Erhardt, Dominic Hislop, Elske Rosenfeld), Channel A (Guo-ming Lee, Hongjohn Lin, Ella Raidel, David Sun & AAKZB), Shu-lea Cheang, COSWAS (Collective Of Sex Workers And Supporters, Taiwan), Shilpa Gupta, Karl-Heinz Klopf, RE-CODE.COM, Oliver Ressler, and EXTRA
Curators: Manray Hsu, Maren Richter

Opening Events:

01.21 (Fri) 14:00 ? 16:00 Press conference (AAKZB, & Big Hope)
01.22 (Sat) 19:00 ? 21:00 Opening party: Channel A presents AAKZB "Send Love To Africa" Performance
22:00 Special event Shulea Cheang ¨BURNOUT A Soundjam Raid
(FiFi Lounge, 3F, No.15, Sec 4, Jen-Ai Road, Taipei, 2779-0528)

International Conference on Wayward Economy
2005.01.22 - 01.23

01.22 (Sat), Informal and/or Illegal
11.00 12:00 COSWAS
12:00 13:30 lunch break
13:30 14:30 Channel A
14:30 15:30 Karl-Heinz Klopf (with Chi Tie-nan)
15:30 18:30: Bin-lang-city tour with Karl-Heinz Klopf

01.23 (Sun), Alternatives and utopias

11:00 12:00 Shu-lea Cheang (with Ilya Lee)
12:00 13:30 lunch break
13:30 14:30 Oliver Ressler (with Wu Chyuan-yuan)
14:30 15:30 Big Hope
15:30 18:00 Video screenings: Mia Chen; Margareth Otti; Wang Jian-wei; Oliver Ressler

The exhibition

WAYWARD ECONOMY takes a hard look at contemporary art's engagement in social reality, with a focus on economic affairs and their impact on culture and life. Eight projects are brought together to explore issues ranging from informal economies such as sex work, betel nut shops in Taiwan, dabbawallas in Mumbai, to exploitation of the other's cultures and counter-exploitation of the net activism, to alternatives and utopias in the age of globalization.
As an extension of public sphere, the exhibition attempts to reveal how the artists, activists, architects, and netivists reflect, intervene, resist, subvert or investigate the economic structures and the society we live in. The idea of wayward economy is to demonstrate that against the dominant rules of game in global economy, there are those behaviors and lives that are hard to control or predict, that are resistant and exist on the realm of parasite or survival, and hence wayward.

The projects

As an actual intervention into the market, RE-CODE.COM uses a website and data base that allows the visitors to search for products with reasonable prices, and print their barcode labels which they can stick over barcode of brand-name products with higher prices. In contrast to RE-CODE.COM's strategy of disturbance that turns the exploited consumer into an activist.

Channel A analyzes the exploitative contexts of selling African cultural differences in Taiwan, under the pretext of cultural exchange, and reflects on issues such as cultural differences, exoticism, and post-colonial politics. The question of intellectual property in the age of information, is stressed by Shulea Cheang, who sets up a website and workshop to explore the free sharing of digital content - often condemned as piracy - as the net's ultimate art form.

Shilpa Gupta and Karl-Heinz Klopf approach the development of informal economic sector as an important local job and living resource under globalization. Whereas Gupta creates an ironic computer game trailer to simulate a lunch box delivery system (Dabbawallas) in Mumbai's chaotic urban situation, highlighting the precision and competitiveness of this social class-based business.

Karl-Heinz Klopf's documentary of betel nut (bin-lang) shops in Taiwan scrutinizes the phenomenon of this unique local culture from the perspectives of gender, urbanism, social transformation, and rapid economic development. Taiwanese activist group COSWAS (Collective Of Sex Workers And Supporters) has been fighting against stigmatization and illegality of the particular labor by using various artistic strategies to initiate public discussions on sex-work related issues. The sisters of the collective developed a Chinese herbal vinegar as an alternative for their job, and also as a gesture against the grand system.

Both Oliver Ressler and Big Hope take on the alternatives to the capitalist system ? as a radical gesture and realistic imaginary long after different experimental models failed and global capitalism prevails. Ressler presents his on-going project of interviewing thinkers and activists on alternative structures of economy and society. Big Hope works with local Taiwanese to build a game board named Commonopoly (based on Monopoly) and invites participants to explore the logic of constructive sharing.

Apart from and supplementing the main exhibition, the Extra section features the equally important projects, presented in video and website, by The Yes Men, Yomango, Wang Jian-wei, Mia Chen, Margareth Otti, Peng Hung-chih, Michael Mandiberg, and more.


The project is funded by The National Culture And Arts Foundation (Taiwan) Production Grants to Independent Curators in Visual Arts.
Supported by Taipei Artist Village
Sponsored by Acer, Optoma
Also sponsored by Lao Tsu Say Enterprise Ltd.