Cultural Sensitivity: Chen Chieh-jen, AIT & Yu Cheng-ta, Taipei Biennial 2008

Lately Taiwanese artist Chen Chieh-jen has been making local headlines due to his recent protest against AIT (American Institute Taiwan), the defacto embassy, whose official insulted Chen as he applied for a visa to attend the New Orleans Biennial in November as participating artist.
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After the incident, he decided to not follow through and get a visa, but rather make an artwork to protest the shabby treatment Taiwanese often receive at AIT.
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Here is Chen Chieh-jen’s blog in Chinese:
http://ccjonstrike.blogspot.com/
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Chen’s complaint is about the lack of cultural sensitivity of a US official towards a Taiwanese citizen.
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Now let’s switch to the north part of the city at the current Taipei Biennial 2008.
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Young Taiwanese artist Yu Cheng-ta is showing a series of several videos titled “Ventriloquist” in which he asks Europeans, North Americans, Filipinas, and Japanese to repeat what he says in Chinese.
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Since Chinese has 4 tones it is often impossible for the novice learner to speak them correctly. So in these videos, the foreigners are mispronouncing the Chinese words, thus creating different meanings. This is extremely hilarious for the Taiwanese audience, and completely meaningless for the non-Chinese audience.
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Personally, the piece offends me. Probably, because that’s my daily experience, getting laughed and mocked constantly (not only from children) when I say my elementary-level Mandarin which prompts me to quickly switch to English.
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Perhaps I am missing the meaning of Yu’s work and would welcome comments explaining it.
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Otherwise, I ‘read’ it as showing a complete lack of cultural sensitivity, something that Chen Chieh-jen is protesting.
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More details here:

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2008/10/01/2003424720

http://english.rti.org.tw/content/fwFContent.aspx?id=news&RealPath=http%3A%2F%2Fenglish.rti.org.tw%2FContent%2FGetSingleNews.aspx%3FContentID%3D65774%26BlockID%3D31