2025-2026-Art as a Method of Thinking
[Art as a Method of Thinking]
This year we take [Art as a Method of Thinking] as our central theme, developing three tracks focused on the cultivation of aesthetic literacy.
✣ Expanding Artistic Horizons — Beyond engaging with Southbound issues, this track focuses on how artistic methods can reinforce an understanding of one's own culture, while bringing in contemporary questions that belong specifically to Taiwan.
✣ The Art Industry in Practice — Established practitioners from across the field are invited to share front-line experience of working in the arts, the rewards along with the difficulties. Lifting the veil on the profession gives students a clearer sense of the paths open to them; sound prior knowledge builds a solid basis for entering the field, and the successes of those who came before help secure the foundations of Tainan's arts community.
✣ Building Foundational Literacy — This track works to establish a stable aesthetic grounding across critical reasoning, verbal expression, and visual comprehension. Drawing on perspectives from a range of disciplines, it guides audiences in developing perceptual capacity step by step, and responds to the social significance an alternative space carries beyond its own walls.
Course
2025/12/7 (Sun)
Ming Turner — Your Nation / Austronesian Sappho: Do We Still Need to Talk About Women's Art in 2025?
Explore twenty-first-century feminist thought through contemporary artworks, and shape your own thematic or curatorial response.
2026/1/3 (Sat), 1/11 (Sun), 1/31 (Sat)
Fake Fire Atelier — Curating / Curating! How Do We See It? What Do We Do? + Workshop: Exhibition to the Nth Power — Curating on Paper
Work through the full arc of curatorial practice, from fieldwork to budgeting, and pitch a complete proposal of your own.
2026/1/25 (Sun)
MT Studio — Leveling Up in the Install Studio: Tales from the Field + Workshop: Becoming an Installation Crew Chief
Follow an exhibition from planning to takedown, covering layout, lighting, fabrication, and electrical safety on site.
2026/2/8 (Sun)
Tzu-Hsien Yuan — In the Name of Drag: Sex/Gender Breakouts by Taiwan's Queer Artists
Trace drag from queer community ritual to performance art, and hear how the practice shapes an artist's own sense of agency.
2026/3/8 (Sun)
Wei-Lun Lu — Before the Girl / Monster Transforms: Feminine Moments in "Queer Austronesia" and the "Little South"
Revisit Taiwan's twin discourses of the Greater South and the Austronesian, and the unruly visions they held before the frameworks hardened.
2026/3/22 (Sun)
Ping-Ju Tsai — Notes on Arts Administration: Imagination and Practice
Consider arts administration as a distinct artistic practice, where professional craft becomes the ground for creative work.
2026/4/12 (Sun)
Yi-Hsuan Peng — "Intervener," "Space," "Participant": A Lecture on Constructing Plurality
Through three stages of writing, shape your ideal space or project, and rethink authorship as something made collectively.
2026/5/3 (Sun)
Wan-I Yang — Art Literacy: On Ways of Seeing
Examine the difference between looking and seeing, and bring a phenomenology of perception to bear on reading artworks.
2026/5/17 (Sun)
Jui-Chien Hsu — Scrap Reborn: Little Mine Shaft Incense Holder Workshop
Assemble stone offcuts, iron, and plaster into an incense holder, learning materials through touch, tooling, and joinery.
2026/6/7 (Sun)
Hao Liu — Is Expression for the Sake of Listening? From Performance Method to Psychological Dialogue + Workshop: Dialogue Practice from Performance Method to Psychology
Bring performance technique into everyday conversation, examining how performance and psychology relate and how to put that into practice.
