Hsu Chia Wei

Hsu Chia-Wei currently works and lives in Taipei. He graduated from Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains, France in 2016. Hsu stresses specifically on the actionability underneath image creation when it comes to the practice of art, while linking up the relationships of humans, materials, and places omitted in the narrative of the conventional history through establishing the incidents beyond camera. In Black and White - Giant Panda, a panda is used as the entry point and acts as a connection between politics, history, animals, people and non-humans to tell the history of panda diplomacy. Pandas can only be found in the mountains of Sichuan in China. In other words, all pandas in the zoos in other countries are from China. Pandas even became an essential diplomatic tool in the 20th century. China’s panda diplomacy goes back thousands of years to as early as 685 AD when Empress Wu Ze-Tian sent a pair of white bears and seventy furs of the white bear (white bear here refers to giant pandas) to the Japanese emperor. Pandas were smuggled or traded from China at the beginning of the 20th century. Panda fever started when they appeared in the United States and Europe. They played an important diplomatic role in World War II, the Cold War, and even till today, connecting China with the United States, Europe, Russia, Japan, Taiwan in an intricate web of relationships. The lecture performance, commissioned by the Arts Commons Tokyo in March 2018, was performed at the Taiwan Culture Center of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Japan. As a result of cooperation with the Japanese Manzaishis, panda’s lovely image is used as a material for comedy performance; meanwhile, the historical and political issues of panda diplomacy are described amusingly. In Black and White - Giant Panda, performance, historical materials, and the screen window viewing experience reflect and complement each other.