NPM Southern Branch launches trial operations

The golden screen of “Tibetan Dragon Sutra” is showcased for the first time as one of the highlights in the opening exhibitions of National Palace Museum Southern Branch Dec. 28 in Chiayi County. (Courtesy of NPMSB)

Taiwan Today
Publication Date: December 29, 2015

National Palace Museum Southern Branch began its trial period Dec. 28 in Chiayi County, marking a significant development in the government’s efforts to enhance art facilities in southern Taiwan.

During the ceremony, President Ma Ying-jeou praised the contributions made by all project participants, particularly the devotion of the construction workers who built the facility with speed and precision.

“This is the best gift for the NPM’s 90th anniversary,” Ma said. “The complex also enriches the local art scene while laying the foundation for the area’s cultural infrastructure in the future.”

Initiated 15 years ago, the 70-hectare museum is designed by acclaimed Taiwan architect Kris Yao, recipient of the 2014 Honorary Fellowship of the American Institute of Architects. The NT$10.93 billion (US$331 million) project comprises a main exhibition hall, an artificial lake and a landscape park.

In addition, a 141.74-meter-long bridge designed to resemble a rainbow provides the only access to the glass-and-steel building, which is equipped with the latest technology to protect the facility from droughts, earthquakes and floods.

Free Buddhist music during funerals in Taiwan could be a thing of the past

Want China Times
Chang Chi-Fang and Staff Reporter

The family of the deceased might have to pay an extra fee of NT$ 2,000 (US$ 67) for each Buddhist song played during a Taiwanese funeral.

A Kaohsiung-based Buddhist music company, which claims to own the copyright to 90%, or over 5,000, of the sacred religious songs on the market, held a press conference on Tuesday requesting funeral service providers pay for the right to air their music.

A representative of the music company Lin Wei-Bin said the funeral service providers across the island have been utilizing the record company’s music free of charge, which has amounted to massive losses for the company over the last decade.

The religious songs that are usually played during funeral services are under copyright protection. However, all of the funeral service business owners refused to pay when the recording company requested payment. Some of the funeral service providers even threatened, or pushed away the recording personnel who tried to collect evidence of the copyright violation, said Lin.

95-year-old comes back to life after Buddhist music played

Focus Taiwan
2014/11/23 10:58:14

from chinatimes.com
Taipei, Nov. 23 (CNA) A 95-year-old woman in Taiwan’s southern county of Yunlin came back from the dead last week after her family played her recitations of a Buddhist sutra, the China Times reported Friday.

Yang Chang Yueh-yun was pronounced dead from multiple organ failure on Nov. 14 after being hospitalized for over 10 days, her son, Yang Shun-wen, told the local daily.

The 95-year-old was then taken home, in which the funeral parlor had made ready for a service. Recitations of a Buddhist sutra was played, in keeping with Taiwanese Buddhist tradition.

The next day, a miracle happened after Yang’s cousin decided to put earphones around her aunt and played her a different sutra, according to her family.

Yang Chang surprised her family when she started clapping and reciting the sutra about five minutes after a recording of the sutra was played.

Director hopes to inspire European audiences with new play

Focus Taiwan
2014/04/22

Director Tsai Ming-liang (left)

Taipei, April 22 (CNA) Director Tsai Ming-liang’s new stage play, about a Buddhist monk from China, is to be performed in Europe, with the aim of inspiring audiences to “rethink life.”

“The Monk from the Tang Dynasty” features actor Lee Kang-sheng, Tsai’s long-term collaborator, as the renowned Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang, who traveled from China to India in the 7th century.

In the play, Lee either lies down or walks at an extremely slow pace on a large white paper on the stage, while painter Kao Jun-honn produces charcoal drawings on the paper.

With no dialogue or storyline, the production is Tsai’s attempt to capture the spirit of Xuanzang, who embarked on his ambitious pilgrimage to India, crossing the Gobi Desert on his way, to bring Buddhist teachings back to China.

The “slowness” of Xuanzang is what is lacking in today’s world, the Taiwan-based Malaysian film director said Tuesday.

Dance: Peacefulness comes at a price

Montreal Gazette
VICTOR SWOBODA
14 March 2014

Dancers sift through three tonnes of rice in Songs of the Wanderers, much like each of us sifts through the changing patterns that make up our own lives. (Photo: Yu Hui-hung)

MONTREAL — Any Montreal appearance by the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre is a noteworthy event. Company founder Lin Hwai-min is in the highest rank of world choreographers, and his works seen here in the past several years — Moon Water and Wild Cursive — were transcendental visions of great visual and emotional power. Thanks again to the Danse Danse series, Cloud Gate invites audiences to go on another voyage of personal discovery at Place des Arts this month, in a work appropriately titled Songs of the Wanderers.

As interpreted by the 24 dancers, the wanderers of the title symbolize humanity throughout history, which includes you and me. Our passage in time and space is dramatized by a visual device that is simple yet extraordinarily powerful. It involves rice — three tonnes of it — cascading onto the stage like sand falling inside some fantastic hourglass. Dancers dressed in monk-like robes move about this universe, sifting through the rice as each of us sifts through the changing patterns that make up our own lives.

Golden visions from Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan | Dance review

Seattle Times
Michael Upchurch
07 March 2014

Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan is performing for the first time in Seattle, bringing its signature “Songs of the Wanderers.”

In its Seattle debut, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan presents its visionary signature piece, “Songs of the Wanderers,” inspired by the choreographer’s visit to the village in India where Buddha attained enlightenment. Through March 8, 2014.

You hear the rice before you see it.

As the curtain rises in the darkened theater, a spotlight illuminates a short, narrow vertical shaft of something shimmering. Phase by phase, the strangely fluid shaft grows longer until you register what it is: a steady stream of golden rice rattling down on the head of a Buddhist monk (Wang Rong-yu).

The monk will stand motionless under that shower for almost the entire 90 minutes of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan’s “Songs of the Wanderers.” But the stage world surrounding him will go through struggles, convulsions and precarious balancing acts, before exploding into ecstasy.

Golden visions from Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan | Dance review

Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan performing Lin Hwai-min’s “Songs of the Wanderers.”

In its Seattle debut, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan presents its visionary signature piece, “Songs of the Wanderers,” inspired by the choreographer’s visit to the village in India where Buddha attained enlightenment. Through March 8, 2014.

By Michael Upchurch
Seattle Times arts writer

You hear the rice before you see it.

As the curtain rises in the darkened theater, a spotlight illuminates a short, narrow vertical shaft of something shimmering. Phase by phase, the strangely fluid shaft grows longer until you register what it is: a steady stream of golden rice rattling down on the head of a Buddhist monk (Wang Rong-yu).

The monk will stand motionless under that shower for almost the entire 90 minutes of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan’s “Songs of the Wanderers.” But the stage world surrounding him will go through struggles, convulsions and precarious balancing acts, before exploding into ecstasy.

Cloud Gate Dance Theatre was founded in Taiwan in 1973, and “Songs of the Wanderers,” from 1994, is one of its signature pieces. Cloud Gate’s founder/director, choreographer Lin Hwai-min, describes it as “a work about practicing asceticism … and the quest for quietude.” It was inspired by a trip he made to the village in India where Buddha achieved enlightenment.

Down to earth

Photo: Noah Buchan, Taipei Times

Taipei Times
Sun, Jan 19, 2014 – Page 12　News List

By Noah Buchan / Staff reporter
While apprenticing in the studio of master sculptor Hsieh Tung-liang (謝棟樑), a Buddhist approached Li Chen (李真) and requested him to make a small statue for his shrine. Though trained by Hsieh in the Western tradition of figurative sculpture, Li, having had a life-long fascination with and belief in Buddhism, accepted the commission. Five years later, having taught himself the finer aspects of Buddhist statuary, its iconography and symbolism, he completed his first icon, Water-Moon Avalokitesvara. Rapidly developing a reputation as a master craftsman capable of forging many styles — one art critic later wrote that he could have made a lucrative career making Buddhist statues for temples — Li made a creative leap, evolving a style that combined the spirit of Buddhism with sculptural elements culled from European classicism and prehistoric Oceanic forms. As the current exhibition at the Asia Art Center II reveals, Li has recently made another creative leap, evolving a style out of materials that are more prosaic. And it works.

Chineseness — A documentary exhibition on Li Chen (華人藝術紀 — 李真文獻展) provides clues to the early shift from a crafter of religious iconography to a highly unique artist employing a sculptural language very much his own. The retrospective features recent clay, wood, stainless steel and bronze sculptures in dialogue with studies, notebooks and other ephemera dating back to the mid-1990s, when his career as an artist began in earnest. The gallery, in collaboration with the artist, has done a fine job of describing this evolution from the spiritually transcendent to the earthly mundane.

The objects under glass to the left of the gallery’s entrance are an ideal place to begin as they articulate Li’s working method. One case shows the tools of his craft; another displays figurative drawings of humans and deities that clearly show him to be a capable draughtsman. Sketches in another part serve as templates for large-scale sculptures, which are shown in both a documentary video and photos hanging throughout the gallery space. A third vitrine shows stone Buddha heads rendered in Li’s unique fulsome style. They remind the viewer that there was a huge leap from Buddhist-inspired imagery to the later works displayed throughout the gallery’s first and second-floor space.

Buddha in glass

Buddha-inspired glass art by Liuligongfang, a glass art workshop founded by Loretta Yang and Chang Yi.Dec 01, 2013
FULL STORY
Photo courtesy of liuligongfang

Taipei Times

In Liuligongfang’s annual exhibition, nothing is contemporary and everything is spiritual

By Enru Lin / Staff reporter

Loretta Yang, left, and Chang Yi.
Photo courtesy of liuligongfang

Chang Yi (張毅), creative director of glass art workshop Liuligongfang (琉璃工房), isn’t a populist.

“The problem is that the more you educate yourself, the farther away you will be from the audience,” said Chang, who in 1986 abruptly left his career as a film director to focus instead on glass art.

True to its founder, Liuligongfang has just launched a major art exhibition that is uninterested in courting a mainstream audience. No subject is contemporary; everything is spiritual.

Only With Compassion (唯有慈悲) is divided into two parts, both tied to the Buddhist faith. One section takes flowers as its theme, a symbol of purity and life.
The other is based purely on Buddha. Created mostly by Yang Hui-shan (楊惠珊), they are serene sculptures with a melancholy undercurrent.

Formless, But Not Without Form (無相無無相, 1998) is a series of clear, ice-like blocks. Trapped inside are sculptures of Buddha, frozen and preserved in time like a woolly mammoth.

130 Buddhist artworks to be exhibited in Taiwan [14 Sept – 08 Dec 2013]

CCTV
09-05-2013

130 Buddhist artworks are about to embark on a journey to the other side of  the Strait, to Kaohsiung in north Taiwan.

130 Buddhst artworks are about to embark on a journey to the other side of the Strait, to Kaohsiung in north Taiwan. From mid-September people there will be able to appreciate a selection of antiques discovered in recent years along the Silk Road.

From both the space and time frame, the exhibition will trace the journey of Buddhism from west to east. One of the pieces is this bronze gilded Buddha sculpture.

Wu Xinhua, Researcher, China Academy of Social Sciences, said, “Here we have the typical lotus, but it’s not exactly the same as what we see in traditional Buddhist artworks. It’s one of the most representative pieces of how Buddhism has evolved in China.”