Check it out here! The new plan for 2020 is now open for submissions!
The word "Hornsun" (放送, hòng-sàng) comes from the Japanese language and means broadcasting in Minnan. This year, we have created the "Hornsun Head," which is intended as a broadcasting station or a loudspeaker. We hope that through calling for art criticism submissions and through cultivation programs, we could provide a platform and rewards for young critics who wish to "sharpen their pens," resonating with artistic creations.
During the Japanese colonial period, the Taiwan Broadcasting Association (Taiwan Hōsō Kyōkai, THK) set up five radio stations and six broadcasting bureaus throughout Taiwan. Among them, the Tainan Broadcasting Bureau, established in 1932, was the southernmost broadcasting point in Taiwan at that time, with the broadcasting area mainly in Tainan and Kaohsiung. As an art space in southern Taiwan, we’re bound to face the hard reality that criticisms focus more on the north. Continuing the self-initiated-media-reform spirit of “saving our own news on our own,” we hope to sound a clarion call for “writing our own criticisms on our own.” Just like what the self-created word “hornsun” implies, we take the meaning of the word “horn” and the enthusiasm of the word “sun.” We actively respond to such a difficult environment and the increasingly diversified approaches of art practice. We produce our own southern archives and art criticism perspectives.
In 2020, the project will first open up the writing threshold to the public and focus the writing target inward, inviting everyone to throw down the gauntlet in the seven exhibitions to be held at Absolute Space for the Arts this year. We will select two winning reviews for each exhibition and offer a prize of NT$5,000 each and a platform to publish. At the end of the year, we will also hold an all-star competition to select three MVPs, one of which will be the "Jiunshyan Lee Hornsun Prize" sponsored by the family of Jiunshyan Lee, with a prize of NT$15,000, and two of which will be the "Hornsun Special Prize," with a prize of NT$5,000 each.
The term "Hornsun Head" also refers to a person who loves to make trouble and has a big mouth. In the contemporary art scene in today’s Taiwan, we perhaps need more critical voices of such to some extent. “Absolute Space for the Arts Hornsun" invites you to speak out, whether it’s to praise or to criticize. We will also hold criticism workshops to engage each other and create more dialogues to achieve the maximum effect of "Hornsun."