Close Observation and Situated Practice:
The Dulan Art Community, Taitung
Wang Yu Wen & Lin Jui Yu
(40 minutes)
This lecture reflects on the formation of the Dulan art community in Taitung, Taiwan, through the artists’ first-hand experiences of relocation, collective living, and creative practice. Dulan, an Indigenous coastal village with a traditionally matrilocal social structure, offers an alternative social model distinct from the
patriarchal norms prevalent in other regions of Taiwan.
The lecture traces the emergence of artistic gatherings from Jinzun Beach in the early 2000s—where Indigenous returnees, new settlers, and international residents lived and created together—to the Dulan Sugar Factory as a key site of artistic convergence. It further examines how art intersects with civic action, focusing on artist-led environmental resistance against the illegal development of Shanyuan Bay (the Miramar Resort project), a movement that resulted in Taiwan’s first successful citizen lawsuit.
Through these situated narratives, the lecture positions art as a form of lived practice embedded in land, community, and collective responsibility.