Book Bike X LITTLE TALKS
Co-produced by Two-Day Studio & Book Bike

In the specific time and context of 2018, how were the contemporary, culture, and art being interpreted? Here, I tentatively divide “interpretation” into a binary structure: “self-interpretation” and “being interpreted.” Self-interpretation points toward an internal analysis within the system of artistic and knowledge production—institutions, creators, art criticism, academies, and other components of the art system. Within this structure, the relationships of production, use, and reproduction have become relatively stable, and the boundaries of the system have become increasingly clear.

The writing of a contemporary condition depends on the construction of a system that moves toward a certain sense of wholeness. This logic is not difficult to understand. However, the existing ecology outside the boundary of “being interpreted” remains unclear. This system outside the production of artistic knowledge undoubtedly exists and is already complete, yet when reflected back within the boundary of the art system, it appears as a fragmented and scattered image. What the Book Truck × Little Talks Project seeks to reopen is precisely this condition: when it comes to the contemporary, culture, and art, who has the right to speak, and on what grounds?

The Little Talks Project was initiated as an attempt to disturb the boundary between the internal system and the external system through direct regional intervention. It asks whether a randomly encountered group can be reconfigured through an external force, and whether artistic narratives might be loosened through grassroots, guerrilla-like action. As the bicycle slowly enters the site, we create a discontinuous field of illusion within the crowd, using an abstract field to redefine existing networked relationships, including the communicative pathways of “knowledge” itself.

If the reinterpretation of contemporary, cultural, and artistic archives no longer takes the consciousness of those within the art production system as its sufficient condition, might the organic mass of contemporary culture and art generate new fissures, and through them discover more active possibilities for expansion? At the same time, through guerrilla-like events, the project seeks to remeasure the distance and position of the art production system in relation to everyday life.

This action can also be understood as an inversion of existing routes of knowledge production. The guerrilla range of the project extends from the Tamsui River toward the Gongguan area along Xindian Creek. Moving from downstream to upstream, the action becomes a concrete practice of repairing knowledge.

Like the hoarse loudspeakers that once moved through the streets and alleys of childhood:

“Any broken windows or glass to repair?”

“Any scrap metal or empty bottles to sell?”

The 2019 edition of the project continues the 2018 project by moving further upstream along the Tamsui River basin. At the same time, it incorporates new texts produced during the previous year’s actions into the existing framework of discussion. On the one hand, the project pushes the discussion forward; on the other, it uses these reproduced texts to look back at earlier discussions and conditions, attempting to more precisely capture how a particular interval of time understands and rewrites its present condition.

During the implementation of last year’s project, Taiwan experienced a historic election. Leaving political positions aside, it was undoubtedly an important election. From certain perspectives, it served as a signal for us, marking the emergence of certain conditions into the field of vision of particular groups of discourse production. It was an alarm bell of rupture for society. Regardless of right or wrong, better or worse, the gap was real; the failure to grasp certain existing conditions was also real.

Perhaps, however, we can look at the current social condition from another angle: as a turning point, or as the beginning of a reorganization of social networks and relationships. This was the conclusion I arrived at during the final event of 2018. The time had come. The present condition seemed like an excessively long train: the front of the train moved forward with confidence and momentum, while the distant rear had, at some unknown point, already shifted its state and direction—unnoticed, until the point of rupture arrived.

Should we be pessimistic? I do not think so. Not at all. Because this rupture marks an origin from which we may begin to understand the present social condition anew. The result described above is not the birth of an “emerging” condition, but its appearance.