Identity
Politics and Community Artivism: A Strategic Arts Project of Cultural
Landscape Conservation at Treasure Hill, Taipei |
| Artivism is a conscious combination of art and activism, and is adopted to demonstrate a more radical approach and value-loaded attitude to engage in social-spatial issues through arts projects. Artivism is also an intentional attempt to bring about the community and environmental concerns and collaborate with the participant subjects to precipitate the transformation of certain social meaning. In the case of the Treasure Hill settlement in Taipei, a series of planned community artivists projects (GAPP, Global Artivists Participation Projects) were strategically initiated to confront difficult urban planning and cultural landscape conservation issues. This paper will review the processes and outcomes of GAPP from both the project director’s insider perspective and from the community’s evaluation of how individual daily-lives in a pre-modern, pre-planned setting are inevitably influenced by waves of artivists movement. From rags to tags, from squatter movement to institutionalized artists-in-residency program, will Treasure Hill evolve into an obsolescent urban settlement of organic nature or a progressive urban planning model of creative sustainability? This paper will not only be a case study on artivism, but also an interface of more dynamic discussions on an on-going process of landscape conservation which will eventually affect the future of many residents of a marginal, heterogeneous community. |