There is a song I really like by a Sudanese-American. It's about his feelings of shame and regret towards the genocide in the Sudan, and his elation that eventually both sides were able to put the hate aside and make a new country. It's an incredible song that is both uplifting, but also an extremely personal story that the artist is sharing.
I remember telling a friend about this song, and before I could finish she just interrupted me and said "yuck, how can you listen to that? it can't let you feel relaxed." i've realized that especially in taiwan there seems to be this belief that something can't be relaxing if it makes you think, or if it gives you some sort of emotional reaction. that something can only be relaxing if, to quote what i have heard hundreds of people say exactly "it's relaxing if you can just turn off your brain and don't have to think."
This always makes me wonder if this then drives people in Taiwan to make light pop music and movies and tv shows, because they know that's what the audience wants. Or if the audience wants it purely because that's all that is made here in Taiwan.
I can't answer that question, but I can express my sadness that most people here don't appreciate art and expression. I recently heard a good definition of art as "anything that makes you have an emotional reaction." I like this because it defines both what is and what isn't art.
Above is a picture of some "art" at Treasure Hill. In case you don't remember, Treasure Hill was a small community built and inhabited by homeless people, but a few years ago the government booted all them out and renovated the area and now use it as space to display art.
As you can see in the picture, most of the art is pretty terrible. And if we follow that definition we can say that it's not even art because it doesn't cause an emotional reaction of any sort. Or perhaps it does....
I usually like bad art, especially those abstract sculptures that you see around the city. I enjoy them because I think they are an inadvertent satirization of bureaucracy. In that a whole bunch of committees and people had to look through tons of submissions, and because of so many people having to sign off, they could only decide on something that everybody hates the least, instead of one that is any good.
However I hate the bad art in Treasure Hill, as it seems like nothing more than a large middle finger to those people who used to live there. as if the government is saying to you "you've got to go, and in your place we are going to put up utter crap, because even crap is better than you all."
So in this sense, maybe it is art. Because seeing a piece of crap in place of what was somebody's home, sure does give me an emotional reaction!
