Southern Universe: An Exposition Proposal

Wu Chi-Yu + Rikey Tenn

Southern Universe：An Exposition Proposal is a research-based participatory board game inspired by a speculative history which explores the period of Japanese colonization when Taiwan underwent a modernization of its plantations. Players will revisit “The Grand Sight of Formosa Exhibition for the Commemoration of the 40th Year of its Foundation Under Japanese Rule” and experience the historical era of the grand plantations by curating fictive hidden versions of exhibitions. The participants act as members of pro-Japanese families in Taiwan, historically known as “powerful families”(有力者家族) in Japanese, who were in preparing for the exhibition proposals depicted through the board game. This board game is therefore also considered as a participatory performative workshop.

Using the notion of “terra nullius”as a main thread of the game, the players are placed in a setting where there is an abundance of resources from the Southern islands. The key ways to gain control over the Southern area are to grow high economic value cash crops, reclamate mountainous areas and forests and process crops.

At the beginning of the game, players will start off their planting plans with a limited labour force. Some species are developed from local research on useful plants, while others are high-value cash crops introduced from elsewhere. While developing more resources, players use the bargaining chips accumulated from farming and planatation activities to experience this era as much as possible. From conflicts in the mountains, experimentation on the farms, to the experience of modern urban life, these experiences are the best inspirations for you to plan the exhibition.

This board game, hosted and guided by Wu Chi-Yu and Rikey Tenn, is based on historical research. Players employ speculative strategies to reposition history as the future, engage in an interactive way, rethink the dialectics of the coexistence between the planations and the exhibition display, seek a multiplicity of anti-imperialistic imaginaries and collectively script multi-layered pasts. We are extending our welcome to enthusiastic players who enjoy board games, science fiction and storytelling or people who are interested in history, colonial planatations, ecology, botany, or economy to participate in this special experimental performance with us.

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Time：APR 27 2024（Sat）14:00－17:00

Venue：TFAM Gallery E (B2)

Image courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum