The gift exercise / Invitation 4.1 : Skadang/Datong

Being hosted by a family of the Indigenous Truku (or Taroko), Willimann/Arai found themselves confronted with the violent and complex colonial history of Taiwan through an Aboriginal perspective.
Despite the historical connections between the Truku and Europe/Japan through colonialism, there is no common language between the artists and their hosts. Therefore, together with their host family Willimann/Arai developed a communication technique which is based on sketches in a notebook, including drawings, Chinese characters and some Japanese and English words. These sketches were assembled to a map, testifying the conversations, experiences and trace the common past and present through the subjective perspectives of the guests and their hosts.

As a final presentation, the residency program organized a hiking-tour to the mountain village Skadang. In the frame of this event, which was mainly visited by an urban Han-Chinese Art-audience unfamiliar with Indigenous societies, the map was distributed as a tour-guide.