Taipei Artist Village Writer's Experience
Dutch poet and writer Erik Lindner went twice to Taipei Artist Village in Taiwan
I’ve stayed at the Taipei Artist Village (TAV) on two occasions, in September 2001 when it opened and in January 2007. It is a lively and professional place to be. The studios are spacious, modern, and the building has many functions.
The first time I was there, the Jan Campert Foundation had chosen me as a poet born in The Hague, Holland, to take part in an exchange with the Taipei City Administration. The other half of that exchange was Michael Lin, a Taiwanese artist, who created a gigantic colourful Tulip floor in the immaculately white City Hall in The Hague, which had been built by Richard Meijer. After the building had been in use for five years, the contract with the architect that obliged the city to maintain its complete whiteness elapsed. The colourful floor, painted by students from the Royal Art Academy in The Hague, lent a glow to the whole building. It was not difficult to see why The Hague would shortly become a twin city with Taipei.
My trip to Taipei was my first visit to Asia. The TAV had been the former building of the construction workers of the Taipei Metro. Stories suggested that the building was haunted. It is in the middle of the city centre, next to the train station. The City Administration first placed me at a hotel. What happened that month is difficult to relate in a few lines. I was invited to the first Taipei International Poetry Festival. I watched TV on September 11 with Alisa Olmert, artist and wife of the then mayor of Jerusalem and my girlfriend. My girlfriend thought the planes that flew into the WTC towers were American schoolboys playing internet games, logged on to the pentagon. Alisa Olmert thought they were the Palestinians. I remember standing on the roof of the TAV and watching the streets around empty in this huge city.
Over the next few days other Asian poets for the festival were flown in and became neighbours in the TAV. A few days later, Taipei City was flooded by typhoon Nari, a small tsunami. A hundred people died in Taipei. We were evacuated to a hotel, where the other western poets were staying. The ones who did not come from places that were twinned with Taipei, as Western countries usually avoided this for fear of provoking Mainland China. We were evacuated in a van. I remember the motorcycles floating alongside the TAV. An old couple crossing the road nicely at the traffic lights, holding hands, the water reaching up to their knees.
In the hotel there were guests like Jaan Kaaplinsky, the Estonian poet, and members of the Swedish Academy, like Gyoran Malmqvist. Not much of the festival took place because of the floods. Derek Walcott couldn’t come because of 9-11. I remember the walks from the hotel after the water had subsided, my surprise at how quickly and bravely the shops reopened, people cleaning their ground floors. Nobody was in mourning, at least as far as I could see. Everybody got back to their lives as quickly as possible.
Taipei fascinated me. There is no tourist infrastructure. But it is a highly mixed multicultural town. Asians of all origins live there. There are a few old houses up the river, known as Green Grass Alley, where a daily herb market is held. I liked walking through Taipei. People leave you alone; they don’t seem to be bothered by you.
Because I lost my notebook and the experiences were so bewildering and far removed from other travels and residencies, I wanted to go back to Taipei. In 2006 I made another application. Because of the disaster in 2001, the deputy of culture Sebastian Liao invited me to come again January 2007. I arrived just before the New Year. I witnessed everybody taking pictures of themselves in front of the 101, the highest building in the world, and nobody kissing each other. The TAV had turned into an arts place. I met a fine Japanese artist, Tetsushi Hogasino, a sculptor from Barbados, William Attaway, and Megan Keating, a visual artist from Tasmania. The TAV was less formal than in 2001, but I liked it. That month in Taipei I wrote a weekly text for Dutch radio. They called me at 4 o’clock in the morning to read it live over the telephone. Every day I walked for some 5 or 6 hours through the town and made notes. The TAV wants everybody to give a press conference immediately they arrive, including the poets. In the end, they asked me to do one performance. Megan helped to translate my radio texts into English, and read them.
The TAV was hectic; the artists were giving workshops and preparing exhibitions, and curators came by to talk to them. But I found that stimulating, also for my writing. I didn’t feel excluded; moreover the girl who took care of the non-visual artists, Chin Mu, was extremely friendly and professional.
I met Shan Ch’in, a great Taiwanese poet of over 70 years of age, three times during this visit. In 2002 he was a guest at the Rotterdam Poetry International festival. He is a great poet of prose poems, which have been translated into English by Steve Bradbury as Feelings Above Sea Level (Zephyr Press, 2006). Taiwan always remains in my mind, and sometimes when I am somewhere I don’t want to be, I don’t miss home but I realise I miss Taiwan. It is a strange culture that is partly old-fashioned Buddhist, but it is also ahead of its time. On the few opportunities that I had to leave town and see some of the mountains in northern Taiwan, I was very touched. It is an unusual place.
Erik Lindner
www.eriklindner.nl