Exhibition｜The Wandering Earth God – The Divine Topography of Beitou Social Security Palace

Animist belief is the belief that everything in the universe has spirituality. It is the oldest religion and the religion that ontologically precedes all religions. In the course of human history, different types of religions have emerged one after another, but animistic beliefs have not disappeared, but continue to exist in various forms and “squeeze” into mainstream religions. Tu Tu Gong is an example of animism. The earth god can appear among rivers, mountains and rocks, and can be transformed into stones and trees in the wilderness and jungle, maintaining a direct connection between people and the surrounding ecosystem.

At the same time, the ecological connection represented by the Land Office is the most concrete and immediate, with a narrow and daily scope. Tudigong is not the god of Gaia, and does not represent the entire earth. However, in rural areas, he can fill the entire village, and “Tudigong at the head of fields and tails of fields”, in larger towns or modern metropolises, and “Tigong at the ends of streets and alleys” male”.

The ubiquity of tugong is a paradox of modernity. Under the disenchantment imperative of enlightened modernity, Tutu Gong represents that the charm of animism will continue to exist. Perhaps, precisely because of the disenchantment, human beings need to constantly redeploy and maintain ecological connections, from land ownership to our emotional and existential connections with technological objects. We are witnessing the collapse of enlightenment scientism; also from the ecological crisis of global warming and In the aphorisms of the Anthropocene, we see the importance of animism and terrestrialism.

Tudigong is not the “God of Wealth” of capitalist money wealth, but the eco-wealth symbol of “ecological wealth” where humans and other species coexist. In the process of modernization and deenchantment, humans have gradually turned land, forests, rivers, air, and even sunlight into just “resources” waiting for industrial exploitation and profit, and converted them into “capital wealth”, thereby depriving the indigenous people of their living space. , destroying their culture, including their long-term ecological relationships.

This exhibition is based at the Baode Palace in Fanzicuo, Beitou, and explores the situation experienced by Ketagalan Beitou Society since “settler colonialism” in modern times, as well as the successive colonization of Han and Japanese people here and elsewhere. The traces and influences left behind respond to the above-mentioned concepts through the artist’s resident creations and artistic cultural production actions.