Moon Salt

Moon Salt is an ongoing collaborative time machine that borrows lunar orbits to arrive in the current epoch, the Chthulucene (1). Moon Salt welcomes the speculative future of sympoiesis or “making with” and the collective thought process that is woven through the project aims to compose new mythologies to tell the stories of holobionts and disrupted boundaries between living entities, ultimately re-imagining kin-making beyond the entanglement of matter and organisms. What will the new order for worlding and evolution be when the ethics that govern species, reproduction, family and society are archaic and displaced, and God is no longer a capitalist? Moon Salt may respond to these questions while proposing what Lunarpunk (2) could be. 

Moon Salt is a long-term collective research project. The first edition was presented as a sci-fi writing workshop in the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in 2021, and the writing collection was later published in the catalog of the 2020 Taipei Biennial. This exhibition was conceived from a three-day workshop with themes ranging from micropia and cryptobiosis, yesterdays and tomorrows, and new senses and consciousness at the edge of the Anthropocene. 

1) The terms Chthulucene, sympoiesis and kin-making are sourced from Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (2016) by Donna J. Haraway.

2) Lunarpunk is an invented term used in this workshop as a suggestive open framework for collective imagination in a sci-fi world where steampunk, cyberpunk, and solarpunk are histories. 

Curated by Esther Lu and led by contributing artists Hou I-Ting, lololol, Tan Zi Hao, and Tzu-An Wu. The collective process is jointly developed by the participants: Colectivo amasijo, Ashley Michelle Casillas, Darinko Chimal, Lucía Hinojosa Gaxiola, Carla Lamoyi, Panósmico, Frank Steinhofer, Charlie Godet Thomas and many other creative souls. 

Organized by: Moss Piglets

Co-organized by: Vernacular Institute 

Coordination: Cristina Medellín

Assistance: Fernanda Barreto

Edit and translation: Carla Lamoyi, Michael Mariaud Garcia

Production: Lauri Abad, Ollin Miranda, Todo Woooow

Documentation: Cristina Medellín, Ollin Miranda

Supported by: the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan

Artist Biographies

Tzu-An Wu 

Tzu-An Wu makes experimental films. He likes to manipulate heterogeneous images, sounds, and texts to question the construction of the narrative and the selfhood. In recent years he has mainly worked with Super 8 and 16 mm film techniques. He is also interested in the intersection of analog and digital techniques of visual reproduction. 

Wu holds an MA in Media Studies from The New School, New York, and a BA in Gender and Cultural Studies from National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. His works have been shown internationally, at the BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, CROSSROADS (San Francisco), MixNYC (New York), and EXiS (Seoul). He was awarded the jury prize at the Festival of Different and Experimental Cinema (Paris). His work has been exhibited at the Taiwan Biennial, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, and the Taipei Artist Village. He is a member of The Other Cinema, a collective focused on programming, promoting, and discussing experimental cinema and artists’ moving images.

tzuanwu.net 

Hou I-Ting

Hou I-Ting's art practice mainly focuses on long-term project-based creations that employ digital media installation, site-specific performance and participatory projects. In her work, she rearranges economic production modes in different social sites while exploring other methods beyond these modes. Hou uses these spaces to question body politics, gender education, penitentiaries, and incarceration spaces in our post-modern society. She is especially interested in the socioeconomic systems and conditions around female labor, both in the past and today. Her practice pivots around the changing relationship between the body and imagery over the course of time. In particular, she transforms her on-site sewing performances into cultural critiques of labor processes within a capitalist society.

Hou has exhibited internationally, in We Now Stand — In Order to Map the Future at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (2019); Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific: A Selection of Works From QAGOMA’s Asia Pacific Triennial at Centro Cultural La Moneda, Santiago, Chile (2019); Tejiendo identidades (Weaving Identities): Hou I-Ting Solo Exhibition at PHotoEspaña, Centro de Historias, Zaragoza, Spain (2019); Cold Chain: Hou I-Ting Solo Exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan (2019); 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2018）

Tan Zi Hao

Tan Zi Hao is an artist, writer, and researcher whose ideas have taken shape across a diverse range of topics involving soil ecology, language politics, interpretive etymology, mythical chimeras, and organic assemblages. Informed by the political contestation of identity vis-à-vis the nation-state, his works are conceived with an intention to challenge cultural essentialism and sovereignty by privileging the assemblage. 

Tan completed his PhD in Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore, undertaking fieldwork research on animal imagery in the Islamic art of Cirebon, West Java. His recent exhibitions include Back to Art at A+ Works of Art, Kuala Lumpur (2020); The Horizon is Just an Illusion: New Thoughts on Landscape at OUR ArtProjects, Kuala Lumpur, (2018); ILHAM Contemporary Forum (Malaysia 2009–2017), at ILHAM Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, (2017); Singapore Biennale: An Atlas of Mirrors at the Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, (2016–2017). 

https://www.tanzihao.net 

lololol 

lololol is boundless laughter, an endless extension of lol (laugh out loud), an acronym that appears to be constructed by the building blocks of I-Ching and/or computer code. Founded by Xia Lin and Sheryl Cheung in 2013, the artist collective focuses on how emotions and body politics are informed by diverse technology cultures, with a special interest in martial arts and Tao-informed philosophies. Their technological interests range from medicine to ancient knowledge of martial arts, to all kinds of contemporary inventions. Future Tao is the group’s ongoing initiative to engage with Taoist mind and body practices as an alternative approach to technological exploration. 

lololol.net