*Presented by Taipei Dangdai Art & Ideas

The sixth edition of Taipei Dangdai Art & Ideas, presented by UBS and organized by The Art Assembly, will take place at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center from 9-11 May 2025 (with a VIP Preview and Vernissage on 8 May). This year’s fair will showcase the best of global art today in the context of Taiwan’s dynamic artistic landscape, bringing together world-class galleries, collectors, art professionals, and the public. 

Extending the collaboration for a second year, Taipei Dangdai and the Ministry of Culture co-host a special exhibition of work by Taiwanese artists. Titled “Pulling the Plug,” the exhibition includes three large-scale digital installations by artists working at the cutting edge of technology and contemporary culture. Shu Lea Cheang, the legendary new media artist based in Paris, presents a digital moving image installation featuring an ever-morphing self portrait challenging AI algorithm. Su Hui-Yu works with digital collective XTRUX, combining open-source AI tools with traditional film production in a sly reinterpretation of the military propaganda that sits within media culture. Finally, Zhang Xu Zhan, who comes from a family of traditional paper artisans, works in stop motion animation to tell a story of termites that shift their dietary habits to consume artificial cables after sudden ecological changes due to climate. Taken together, these three works give a sense of the shock and urgency with which technology appears in our culture today.

Shu Lea Cheang

UTTERING, 2023

UTTERING (2023) ,which the artist describes as a self-portrait of an artificial intelligence (AI), features a human torso in programmed contortion and mutation. The features never stop changing; skin colour, eye colour, eye shape, hair colour, body shape and gender, all morphing in a continuous loop. The work explores AI alignment, which aims to guide the programmed systems towards human goals, such as preferences and ethical principles. A pacifier in the mouth of the figure in UTTERING recalls a baby being kept quiet while attempting to utter.As the pacifier transforms into a ball gag, the self is rendered into submission and forced into silence. The figure spits out the ball gag as blank keycaps cascade out from its mouth. Cheang’s work explores who decides what is programmed as ethical content in AI alignment, which notions stand out from the programmed norm, and whether AI is able to grasp the complexity and fluidity of human identities beyond reductive views such as binary genders.

Zhang Xu Zhan

Termite Feeding Show, 2024

Climate crisis, energy disasters, the fantasy of the Anthropocene, and a sci-fi fable of insect diets. Inspired by a real news story: “Termites chewing through power cables causing major blackouts in mountainous cities.”

To adapt to sudden ecological changes brought about by climate change, “termites” have shifted their dietary habits, turning their attention to artificial cables as a new food source.

In the damp, shadowy ant tunnels, insect restaurants feature musicians playing cooking melodies while butchers handle the food (meat portions), showcasing their culinary skills with cable-based dishes. This serves both as a sacrificial offering to the gods of ecology and an act of revenge against humanity.

Is this a fable of insects imagining a future diet in the face of climate disaster, or a reality show where ant-men in disguise exact revenge on humans through a feeding spectacle?

Su Hui-Yu

The Space Warriors and the Digigrave, 2023-24

From 1984 to 1987, the last decade of the cold war, one of the only three government TV channels in Taiwan, the CTS, published a very rare and weird Sci-fi series called Space Warriors. It was copied and adapted from the 1970s Japanese TV series Super Sentai. The Taiwanese copy also referenced Super Sentai’s next generation in the 1980s, the series of Gavan, and then mixed several local TV elements. CTS stopped the broadcast of this series eventually due to reasons like low ratings, unstable production qualities, bad responses from the patients, and of course, the rise of VHS and cable TV which imported the original one from Japan. The series combined fantasies and folk tales that hinted at nationalism, Confucianism, and chauvinism values, which was a very unique experience of the collective memory in the island during the martial law era.

Tickets for Taipei Dangdai are on sale now and selling fast. Advance Tickets are now available for purchase. An additional Early Riser Special ticket is also available for early visitors. Sunday 11 May 2025 is Mother’s Day, and visitors to the fair are encouraged to bring their relatives and make a Family Weekend out of it. Arrive before 1PM on Saturday or Sunday to receive two admissions for the price of one.

Buy tickets now: https://taipeidangdai.com

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