"Document XIV"

BCS is like a dreamland in which art can be found anywhere. Upon entering the main gate of the studio, one may discover an installation by artist WU Yi Chien titled “Document XIV” on the ground. Phonetic symbols composed of inset terra cotta bricks in cement spell out the names of artists who had worked and shown at BCS from 1996-2000 in chronological order. The ground becomes a conceptual site for documenting history and collective memory.

For most of us who are accustomed to reading Chinese characters, deciphering the phonetic symbols resembles a game to piece together sounds, semantics, syntax, and also implies a process to compose appropriate imageries in our minds. Even if one successfully makes out the sounds of a word, he or she may not come up with the right characters for those specific sounds. This playfulness in language connects studio visitors with the artist, and gives artists from other countries an idea of what the Taiwanese language system is like.