This is a project made for my final year assessment in Fine Arts department of Taipei National University of Arts. After spending 3 years working on wood carving I started to think more about the relationship I had with the wood I used for carving purposes. What did it signify, that this majestic tree had grown on Taiwanese soil and was now being carved by me, a foreigner.
Later I saw an online article with the title “The Malaysian forest disappears. Are Taiwanese accomplices?”(馬來西亞森林消失中台灣人是幫兇？) The essence of the article was the realisation that the same people who protected forests in Taiwan, were being destroying rainforests in Malaysia. That is when I stopped purchasing wood from the sawmill and decided to collect driftwood. In winter 2016 I drove a truck around the riverside from north Taiwan to south Taiwan for a week to collect driftwood from riverbanks, canyons and dams that I passed by.
I wasn’t sure what to do with the collected wood, but I was sure I wanted to use the driftwood to combine it with other materials and make a new object of some kind. The idea to combine different pieces of driftwood with glue and tie them together by rubber band rose from the practice of compressing wood into composite wood for industrial purposes.
On the trip
Documentation during the trip collecting drift wood.
BFA graduation exhibition in Underground Art Museum, Taipei National University of Arts, Taipei, Taiwan.
計時炸彈
這是我在國立台北藝術大學美術系的畢業製作。學習木雕的三年後，我開始考慮更過關於自身與用作雕刻木材的關係。它們是雄偉在台灣的土地上生長的樹，被一個身為我外國人去雕刻。隨後在網路閱讀了一篇標題為《馬來西亞森林消失中台灣人是幫兇？》，文章的馬來西亞環保運動者對台灣的犀利批評指出台灣保護自己的森林，卻去破壞馬來西亞雨林。於是我停止從鋸木廠購買木材並決定收集浮木的時候， 2016年冬天，我從台灣北部到台灣南部的河邊開了一輛卡車一星期，從我經過的河岸，峽谷和水壩收集漂流木。
我並不知道如何處理收集的漂流木，但嘗試將不同類型漂流木分解再結合起來，製作出某種新的物體。使用橡皮筋將它們系在一起，模仿木材壓縮成工業用途的複合木材的概念。
