A few fragments of something found by James Thompson – 2024/25 UK-Taiwan Exchange

Jan 25 • UK-Taiwan Residency

Share this page Facebook twitter

A few fragments of something found, Treasure Hill Artist Village, 2024. 詹姆斯·湯普森 Photo courtesy Taipei|Treasure Hill Artist Village – credit HSU, PO-YEN 許博彥

In partnership with Treasure Hill Artist Village, Taipei, and East Street Arts, Leeds, we supported Leeds-based artist James Thompson to undertake a six-week residency in Taipei in 2024. Building on his ongoing research into urban spatial repositories, architecture, and time-based media, Thompson created A few fragments of something found, a site-specific installation at Treasure Hill and a new moving image work using footage of scanning the village and his site-responsive performance during the residency.

We are also presenting an extract from Thompson’s writing on travel and his impressions of arriving at Treasure Hill Village, documenting space and time as an extension of his work.

You can also read his reflections on the residency on East Street Arts’ website.

This residency was supported by Arts Council England and the Taipei City Department of Cultural Affairs.

A few fragments of something found, 2024

Media: clay, moving image, audio

Site-specific installation of sculpture, moving image and audio exhibited in The Shelter gallery, located in the subterranean bunker at Treasure Hill Artist Village, Taipei.

A few fragments of something found explored the multi-layered architectural history of Treasure Hill from its founding as a military observation post, subsequent re-purposing by local communities as domestic spaces and the later development of the Artist Village as a site of artistic production.

The work developed on residency at Treasure Hill Artist Village, was produced in a series of site-responsive recording performances in locations across the village. These performances involved the use of clay to take press moulds from architectural fragments, a deconstructed scanner to digitally record a route walked through the village at varying speeds and a hydrophone to capture underwater audio from the Xindian River, which flows through the base of the village.

A few fragments of something found, Treasure Hill Artist Village, 2024. 詹姆斯·湯普森 Photo courtesy Taipei|Treasure Hill Artist Village – credit HSU, PO-YEN 許博彥

The installation in The Shelter presented the fragments recorded as parallel experiences of the village. The work remained in movement throughout the exhibition as the unfired clay moulds appearance changed during the air-drying process and gradually disintegrated under the feet of exhibition visitors. Following the culmination of the show, the clay pieces exhibited were given to local artists to be re-constituted and re-used in the production of new art objects in multiple forms.

Extract from: Notes on travel ‘A few fragments of something found’ by James Thompson, 2024

I have never travelled so far, even further than my suitcase, which is still in Istanbul. We must’ve lost touch in my dash between terminals.

Blurry from watching the last of yesterday’s blockbusters in super-low-resolution remembered in the back of the seat head, I realise all I’ve got is what I’m wearing. What’s in my pockets? What’s in my backpack? I try to remember…

Laptop, laptop charger, laptop adaptor, house keys, phone, phone charger, phone adaptor, I do have a multi-socket plug adaptor, used train ticket, passport (relief), Wharf Chambers membership card (in case there’s one out here), bank card, used train tickets, headphones, aeroplane beauty kit, Marcovaldo, aeroplane socks and aeroplane slippers that I am increasingly thankful for… Marcovaldo! My choice of Italo Calvino’s tale of a man out of place in the city as in-flight reading seems prophetic or perhaps my first mistake. My second, possibly, to read as far as the bit where, in heavy fog, he takes a plane thinking it’s a bus. Although I did take a plane thinking it is a plane.

I found what could be the address to Treasure Hill Artist Village written in Mandarin on the print-out I was given before I began. I show it to the airport staff for my suitcase. I show it to the taxi driver for me. The suitcase will arrive on the same flight same time tomorrow, I arrive now.

At around 10pm the taxi drops me outside the temple at the foot of the village, recognised through the dark from my print-out. As I open the car door the last of the ever-decreasing pockets of cool air I had been moving through – UK, airport, aeroplane cabin, airport, aeroplane cabin, airport, taxi – departs. Leaving me face-to-face with a wall of atmosphere more edible than breathable. Like Marcovaldo’s fog it flattens space, as it enters my lungs, it fills me up, it slows me down. My eardrums are in a fight too. Hit with an endless buzzing. What I thought was the sound of the future, of super connectivity moving at light speed through the overhead pylons, was, in fact, prehistoric, the vibrating wings of insects. But I am re-energised.

Somewhere through the dark, set into this atmosphere, must be the ‘Triangle Reception’ prophesied by my print-out. As I climb into the village, I begin to feel things. A presence through the dark of the temple amongst intricately carved granite scenes, different ages of concrete marked with a score of holes and groves underfoot. I follow the cracks in walls and the repairs in render that mark the transition between new and old, revealing the history of the village. I follow the edges of broken ceramic tiles to a garden filled with all kinds of fruits. I trace undulations of corrugated aluminium that cover the fragments of buildings, inside spaces now outside, somewhere between redevelopment and ruin. A retaining wall set with stones smoothed on the shoreline, detailed drain covers towards a cast iron altarpiece. Light fills a window just up ahead. A familiar place, the ‘Triangle Reception’.

     

       

Find us on

InstagramInstagram FacebookFacebook TwitterTwitter

Get the latest from Platform Asia in your inbox. Zero spam.

Partners & supported by