Erika Wong: I actually want to speak with you because I’m a lecturer, and I teach business management students about design and innovation. I come from an art background. I make public arts. Then, I finished off my PhD in business because people in the art world don’t take you seriously if you don’t have a business degree.

Erika Wong: I have basic life. [laughs] Especially because I’m Chinese, so people…I think they get very confused. They’re like, “What do you mean you only have two art degrees?” Whereas the other degree about somehow validate to say that you want to work in the art world.

Erika Wong: I went and got that business degree as well. Out of that, I created…The whole point of why I wanted to do a business degree specifically is because I wanted to build my own platform – and I provided the charts – which helps early career artists and art students to break down that gap between getting into the market and what they teach you at art school, which is not very much…

Erika Wong: They never teach you what you need and what people want from you. Students also don’t necessarily want to hear it when they’re in school as well, because they’re just like, “Oh, I want to make because I love it,” and you’re just like, “You need to make money,” [laughs] because you need to pay for this.

Erika Wong: I was reading the “Harvard Business Review.” Your interview came up, and I was just like, “Oh, that’s so interesting.” A lot of people used to ask me, they’re like, “Oh, do you spend time in Taiwan?” Because I lived in Hong Kong for a while. I was like, “No.”

Erika Wong: They were like, “You know, the government really supports the art industry,” which is rare for Asia, of course. I was like, “No.” When I read and listen to a lot of your interviews, I was like, “It’s amazing.” I think that we need to open up the conversation, especially for students and early career artists to understand that there are resources in their communities.

Erika Wong: The art world is very small, but it’s not very small at the same time. The people, especially the community of early career artists and art students, they don’t necessarily always know that there are resources beyond what they see.

Erika Wong: This is why I wanted to speak with you because I understand that the initial step that you guys do is very much about bringing in that conversation, whether it’s inclusivity, whether it’s providing people with more resources to help artists to get opportunities, basically. That’s why I wanted to go and speak with you.

Audrey Tang: I took the quizzes, and the quizzes here said…

Erika Wong: Yeah. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: …that I’m almost ready for academia.

Audrey Tang: I should find a grant?

Erika Wong: Basically, that is what I wanted to do, just still in plug myself and in case you capture me.

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Erika Wong: Anyway, I do a couple of things of this recording, if you don’t mind. I haven’t started the recording yet. We’re transitioning to a different platform for To Practise_Practice. I would really love to speak to you about the resources and finding communities for early career artists and art students.

Erika Wong: I’ve been there so many times at this point. I know it’s so frustrating. COVID does not help. Students are like, “What do you mean? How does that impact my career?” [laughs] I was like, “How does that not impact your career?”

Erika Wong: The industries in the world are saying, “Oh, we’re going to change for you.” No one’s going to ever change for you, ever. [laughs] It’s silly if they think that they would. Being able to go and have that conversation with you in terms of the resources available, I would love that.

Audrey Tang: I really like the wording you put into those quizzes. It sounds like you’re looking for a place in the history books, whether it’s under mountains of paperwork or in the hills of a private residency. You’re looking to make an influence that can be passed down for generations to come. I mean, this is excellent assessment of where we are, and so really appreciate that.

Audrey Tang: Now, with that said, I’m not sure if whether you’re looking at Taiwan specific programs that you can then adapt to other public sector innovators around the world, which is what we are mostly doing, or are you looking for bringing awareness to the international art community what Taiwan has to offer, which is the other side?

Audrey Tang: One is outbound from my perspective, and one is inbound from my perspective or both. I just want to…

Erika Wong: Both are very curated.

Audrey Tang: OK, are very curated.

Erika Wong: They’re curated. [laughs] I would like to do both for me. It’s very much about time but in the shed together, but also at the same time pointing resources like what you guys offer to other people Sylvain.

Erika Wong: No, I think a lot of times we should be also limits in terms of like, “Oh, we can only be applying for these awards in these areas because that’s all that we know, and we don’t know what’s happening in other places in the world.”

Erika Wong: I find that…It’s not true. When there aren’t enough resources available or when you think that there are all these brick walls, it makes you feel just so limited, and the art world is already so limiting because there’s so many rules, and everyone’s seems to know them.

Erika Wong: When you’re young – when I’m saying young, you’re 20, 25 – you’re just like, “Well, I don’t understand.” It’s like these invisible walls that everybody knows. At my age now, I’m just like, “Well, yeah,” because you’re supposed to know them, but no one tells you what they are.

Erika Wong: I really wanted to use all the resources that you have, whether it’s inbounding or outbounding from your perspective to talk about the conversation and open that up.

Audrey Tang: I’ve been to the biennial in Venice as a robot. With the artist, Cheang Shu Lea, my good friend for many, many years. I was part of her installation.

Audrey Tang: I appeared as a robot in what’s called 3x3x6, and that’s her installation. We also had a conversation in the contemporary art museum with Paul Preciado like querying the museum. I approached the art world from angle of connectedness.

Audrey Tang: By training, in Taiwan, we call programmers software designers, not software engineers, because engineers connect machines and designers connect people. We are the sort of people that connects people, but even the most brilliant designers usually approach a technology from a more optimistic viewpoint.

Erika Wong: [laughs]

Audrey Tang: I’m putting this mildly. [laughs] That is to say…

Erika Wong: Sure, can I just pause you for a second and then I can start the recording? Is that OK with you?

Audrey Tang: Of course, go ahead. You will have access to my recording, anyway.

Erika Wong: Do you have a recording?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, of course.

Erika Wong: Are you recording right now?

Audrey Tang: Yes. That’s what I said in the beginning, I will check with you…

Erika Wong: I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.

Audrey Tang: …so that we can co-edit the transcript.

Erika Wong: Actually, we can just do that because that’s better. Sorry though.

Audrey Tang: Sure, it’s fine. I was saying that I’m approaching technologies more from a designer’s viewpoint, and designers tend to be optimistic. On the other hand, there are, for so many emergent technologies, the downsides of technologies that may or may not be highlighted in the design.

Audrey Tang: That’s where art, to me, is the most valuable because art can and will highlight the part of the society that will get impacted by newer developments, not just technologies, really any developments and just paint it into the kind of common people’s consciousness that this sort of thing may happen to one of us.

Audrey Tang: That’s what designers cannot do. I look very optimistic because I’m trained as a designer, but I really appreciate artists [laughs] because they approach the same problem from the other direction. Now, I don’t want to make it sound like art is all dystopic, because art is also beautiful, but even in that builds it is a new perspective of looking at things.

Audrey Tang: My main approach of working with artists is precisely what you just described a few minutes ago is basically looking at art as something that provides aware about for young people like the younger people who don’t have the, for lack of a better term, legacy of their social norms and the social relationships that goes with the social institutions.

Audrey Tang: They can approach those institutions with a different vision. If you approach that vision and carry on that vision, there is a chance that history change because of your contribution, because people will see that the world can enjoy new possibilities without getting into those paints.

Audrey Tang: It’s shows not necessarily – but less than optimistic – futures. Arts is futurist is my main kind of outbound message. I wonder if that resonates with you.

Erika Wong: 100 percent. Oh, my God. It resonates with me so much especially because of COVID. A lot of people, especially in the West think that, “Oh, we can defund the art.” It’s always the first thing that gets defunded when budget comes into play.

Erika Wong: Yet, when we really look at what has happened with COVID, people having to be at home. People like wanting that connection. They always turn to the arts. It’s always somehow with culture, whether you’re doing crafts work at home with your kids like what do you think craft workers, arts and culture.

Erika Wong: My teaching is very much the first assignment is for students to go to a museum, and a lot of my students have never been sent to museum before. As the future, it’s so contradictory to hear government say, “Oh, we’re going to go and cut funding for the arts.”

Erika Wong: As a person from the arts, it hurts my feelings because I’m just like, “Whoa, because you can’t quantify it,” except you can quantify it. The qualifiers are so, I guess – what’s the word here – they’re not strict.

Erika Wong: A lot of times that governments are just like, “No,” but yet don’t use that as a messaging. It’s so contradictory. This is actually why I started my PhD is because the message is very contradicting.

Erika Wong: For me, when you’re saying that art is the future culture. It’s the future. It is absolutely the future. We can’t have that sense of community, and that sense of the connection without something about binds us together which is firstly humans. Secondly, it is the arts and culture. It is being able to go and share that with other people.

Audrey Tang: It’s right. For the record, the Phantom of the Opera runs for 22 shows in Taiwan like even now. [laughs] We do appreciate that performative arts, especially during the time of COVID. It really brings people together.

Audrey Tang: We really cherish the classical musical, especially that allowed people to feel the spontaneity of things, because for whatever videoconferencing technology that we’re using. Now, you’re actually looking quite lively depending with the situation has improved.

Audrey Tang: That’s no substitute that’s going to the musical together, so I really appreciate that. Now, I told you a little bit about the outbound message. For the inbound message, we also have the Taiwan gold card. I want to highlight that, because there’s a lot of people who think Taiwan gold card as something that’s one-year to three-years stay.

Audrey Tang: Even during the COVID, you can apply it overseas and just come to Taiwan, finished the 14-day quarantine. Then, you are in the post-COVID future. You can stay. You can work or enjoyed the health insurance and bring your families and so on without needing any investment or any employer in Taiwan, so it’s a pretty good deal.

Audrey Tang: There’s more than almost 2,000 now people holding the gold card this year in Taiwan. If you go to taiwangoldcard.com, the first button is, “Do I qualify?” A lot of people are surprised when we actually put, “Are you an artist, a publisher or an arts administrator?” Next to “Do you work in science technology as an executive or general manager?” and so on.

Audrey Tang: We want to send a message that for the Taiwan gold card who diversify Taiwan’s culture because we call ourselves or at least I call ourselves a transcultural republic of citizens. The more coaches, the better.

Audrey Tang: If you are artists, especially with more than five-years work experience, or if you worked in an international NGO, both accounts, then you actually qualify for the Taiwan gold card with some credentials, of course. We want more artists here. Our ministry of culture could validate your skills as a artist and engage with the global arts community.

Audrey Tang: According to the gold cards culture and arts regulation, there’s five different ways including film broadcasts pop music, handicraft, culture administration, publishing and media, the visual arts and the performing arts. If there’s something missing let me know. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: We welcome artists of at least those sorts to Taiwan and spend time with us. Especially if you are working in a more performing arts fashion, Taiwan is probably the stage for you right now.

Erika Wong: That’s amazing. The list is very encompassing. That’s really nice. Sometimes, again, you feel like it’s so segregated. That’s so limiting. You’re like, “Oh, I don’t fit into the silo,” or “This isn’t the criteria you’re looking for, which is what I found quite often when I’m trying to apply for funding or for grants or for residency.”

Erika Wong: It’s like, “Oh, you don’t necessarily cater for public art, or you’re not interested in culture, or you’re not interested in communities.” This quite a while ago when I was applying more for public art-related things. That really has shifted in the last 10 years as well.

Erika Wong: I suppose, with this gold card that you have now mentioned, are there benefits? If artists were to go and apply for this or…? For instance, I am just about to graduate from art school, and it would be a good opportunity to move to Taiwan to go and further my studio practice. However, because I’m very fresh, I’m just getting out of university, are there any resources that are available that will help me?

Audrey Tang: There’s a support group at taiwangoldcard.com. Actually, that website is not a government website. It started by a bunch of gold card holders, because they want to spread the message. They mentioned the very affordable like totally socialist health insurance [laughs] is the main benefit because you don’t have to worry about your health anymore if you join a health insurance.

Audrey Tang: Also, if you’re self-employed like what you just mentioned, if you just freshly graduated, maybe you are self-employed, that is not a problem. You don’t have to set up a company in Taiwan, and you don’t have to work for an employer, so that is fine.

Audrey Tang: The light in Taiwan part, for example, about the taxation. There’s even taxation workshops and things like that. Because the gold card is also a work permit, so you are then automatically eligible to not only grants, but also work as well.

Audrey Tang: Then, of course, the usual business rules apply, which your website covers brilliantly, so I would not advise this activity, [laughs] because that will be missing the point. I want to highlight, it is both a work certificate as well as essentially a resident certificate with health benefits.

Erika Wong: Wow, that’s amazing. In terms being kind of “break into the art world,” so I’ve now applied for this gold card. I’ve been accepted. I’m going to transition and move halfway around the world and eat amazing Taiwanese food, which is one of my favorite cuisines and goes to the night market and see all the amazing things.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, we should add it to the art part, but it’s an economy part. Sorry, I mean cooking. [laughs]

Erika Wong: The night market.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, the culinary arts. [laughs]

Erika Wong: Definitely. Taiwanese food is amazing. How would I be able to go “break into the industry?” Because standard practice is you may look for representation. You may be applying for grants. You may be applying for residency. You are looking for other people to go and do group shows.

Erika Wong: How would I be able to go and do that, once I’ve now get myself over to Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: This is a great question. Now, there is a new institution in Taiwan, the kind of counterpart to the National Design for designers. Then the artists is like, “OK, so what about artists?” [laughs]

Audrey Tang: There’s now the Taiwan Creative Content Agency or TAICCA. They even include video games. That’s even broader than what I just quoted, the traditional Minister of Culture definition. Because the video game designer, it’s a form of art. For some games, it actually is.

Audrey Tang: Taiwan Creative Content Agency, TAICCA, is the people you want to talk to you. It covers all the different parts and also covers fashion design, which is where arts and design meet, but mostly the art part.

Erika Wong: Amazing. Basically, I’m fairly covered. Then, does the community on the gold card also…Can I be friends with people? Would I be able to go out and find a group of people like minded people as well?

Audrey Tang: Of course. There’s also a forum called Forumosa like forum and Forumosa, [laughs] at forumosa.com, I believe, and I’m also there. You can just add me any time. [laughs] It has a very open forum, very supportive as well. It’s not just about the event of expats but also cuisine, and also very creational legal issues and things like that.

Audrey Tang: There’s a pretty vibrant community. The latest posts are one minute and one minute, eight minutes and nine minutes ago, respectively, so it’s very vibrant.

Erika Wong: Again, sometimes, it just feels like you’re so lonely because you’re just like this especially when you go to art school. They teach you to be this lone genius and that you have to create everything on your own except when you leave art school and realize that what you need are your community and the people around you because you need to be able to talk to people for their expertise and to share what other peoples are thinking.

Erika Wong: That’s where it becomes really tricky because you can only sit in the corner of your room for so long, which I feel like we all know at this point with COVID. I’ve sat in the corner of this room for nine months, basically. That sense of the connection, it’s so important.

Erika Wong: I find that, when I was doing research, there’s so many resources available in Taiwan in terms of supporting artists on a government level, which I haven’t seen before and especially with your position. It’s also something that I’ve never seen before. I just thought it would be so useful for early career artists and students to know that and be able to engage with that.

Audrey Tang: Definitely. Taiwanese is known for the national healthcare and poverty. What’s less known [laughs] is that there’s constitutionally mandated system to support basic education, where learning at all levels, science and then culture and including the arts.

Audrey Tang: Basically, I call this the socialist core is like a GPU, and the other stuff are the catalyst core, there’s this CPU, so the left wing and the right wing of the Republic, but art in culture is definitely on the socialist wing, which is very different from many other jurisdictions.

Erika Wong: No, it’s very, very different. Even living in Europe and having a government and support to artists, it’s quite different because Taiwan is so much smaller. That sense of the handicraft and having the museums and all that, it’s the preservation from what I have seen. It’s very different like psych out.

Erika Wong: I love Taiwanese like [Mandarin] . I love them. I think it’s because I grew up with them. I grew up in Vancouver. At the time in the ‘90s, basically, though the immigrants were Taiwanese and people from Hong Kong.

Erika Wong: I basically grew up with a lot of Taiwanese kids, where we all sang all the Jay Chou songs. We went all to karaoke. [laughs] We all have the [Mandarin] and we have the [Mandarin] and all that.

Erika Wong: That was literally my teenage years.

Audrey Tang: Cool. Because Gold card is up to three years but unlike the Singapore one, you can reapply. You can just go on being a gold card holder. On your 15 years, you can also choose to naturalize without giving up your passport. Becoming “also Taiwanese,” that is also something that some people did.

Audrey Tang: I’m just saying that we have a very non-traditional view on sovereignty [laughs] and on citizenship. That is actually the artists’ benefit.

Erika Wong: No, absolutely. It’s really important to be able to go be part of a community. However, I do have a question. A friend of mine, she’s a magazine editor. She was in Taiwan a few years ago. She said to me, “You know, they only speak English,” and I was like, “Oh, OK…”

Audrey Tang: I speak mostly JavaScript. [laughs]

Erika Wong: Sorry?

Audrey Tang: I speak mostly JavaScript. [laughs] English is my first language. [laughs]

Erika Wong: Well, she was just saying she had a hard time navigating just because she was so surprised that most of the people, they don’t speak English. Do you think that that’s still true just because if there are artists wanting to go on moved, there needs to be a language?

Audrey Tang: Which city were your friend in?

Erika Wong: Maybe, she wasn’t in Taipei. She was put maybe potentially in Kaohsiung. I don’t know, actually.

Audrey Tang: OK. The different parts of Taiwan is different. The eastern part is more Austronesian. Indigenous language is quite big there. If you want to work with indigenous artists, it’s almost a given that you have to probably learn some Bunun or Amis. These are the indigenous language. We have 20 national languages.

Audrey Tang: The western side is more westernized [laughs] from Taipei to the New Taipei City to Taiwan City and Hsinchu and so on. They speak pretty good English because they’re the westernized, anyway. It’s all depends on which part of Taiwan they are in.

Erika Wong: I was surprised that she said that. I was like, “Oh.” She’s like, “Well, nobody really matters to you, because you speak Chinese,” and I was like, “Yeah,” but it’s not something I had really thought about. I was like, “The Taipei is so international.”

Audrey Tang: The Taipei, it’s basically very cosmopolitan. You do get people…I mean, I think in English even though I write JavaScript. [laughs] It means that people tend to cluster.

Audrey Tang: If you are into, for example, Taiwanese Holo which is called Tâi-gí or Taiwanese Hakka, they also do own clusters and maybe your friend in Kaohsiung will meet people who speak Tâi-gí or Hakka. If you are looking to English speakers, they are also a cluster. Actually, the Forumosa forum talks endlessly about this, so you can find that information there too.

Erika Wong: That’s amazing. We talked a lot about inbounding, so people come in to Taiwan. I also want to have the conversation the other way around in terms of what you’re bringing from Taiwan out to a more global international context as well for the arts and for artists.

Audrey Tang: There’s many ideas that, for example, in the film industry. Of course, there’s waves of Taiwanese directors like video games. There’s also quite a successful like the red console team and so on. In the popular culture, there’s the idle films, [laughs] TV shows, and pop music [laughs] that you just mentioned.

Audrey Tang: The main idea of the Taiwan Creative Content Agency, the TAICCA, is that is at arm’s length to the Ministry of Culture, because the Ministry of Culture is in the socialist art. It can only do so much, but the TAICCA is its extension to the international and therefore also capitalist art.

Audrey Tang: What they are doing is quite different from what the ministry is doing. I would encourage you to check out the Taiwan Creative Content Fest. There’s online version of that. What they do is basically making sure that’s what Taiwan has to offer from a kind of outbound perspective.

Audrey Tang: It’s there for everyone to discover. If you search for T-A-I-C-C-A.tw and then click the globe icon, you can see all the English introduction about it. If you have any question and so on, they’re all very eager to answer because they need to be self-funding. They are a development agency, modeled after the Korean equivalent in charge of the K-pop and so on.

Erika Wong: [laughs]

Audrey Tang: They will be much more eager to answer your questions than your average ministry of people.

Erika Wong: That’s so funny. I think it’s a good resource. You’re also super-fast in responding. [laughs] I was like, “I’m going to email you. I hope you respond,” but I don’t know because usually people, they’re busy. You’ve responded so quickly. I was like, “Oh, my God.” Thank you so much.

Audrey Tang: That’s right, because this is a something that’s dear to my heart. My office right now in a Social Innovation Lab is in a Contemporary Culture Lab, the C-LAB. A C-LAB is in the heart of Taipei like the most expensive acres of land, but it’s dedicated to contemporary culture especially the intersection between social innovation and art.

Audrey Tang: This is a topic that’s so important that we even tore down the walls because here used to be an Air Force at water, and we literally took it over from the military to promote art. That’s the sort of dedication to also check out the C-LAB.

Erika Wong: That’s amazing. If we ever can get on an airplane ever again and see the world, I would love to see that. Can you tell me a little bit more about social innovation and the cross section between that and art?

Audrey Tang: Yes, certainly. What we are doing in the Social Innovation Lab is to make ideas worth spreading and spread those ideas. For example, – this is also art – like beautiful mask, that people would actively want to put on. I guess, it’s more like design, but [laughs] it started with artistic elements.

Audrey Tang: When people have a kind of imagination like when we legalized same sex marriage – we’re the first in Asia to do so – and that prompted a lot of international artists’ imagination to rethink Taiwan’s image in the light of the rainbow, and that became our new identity.

Audrey Tang: Of course, we had not just one but two physical pride this year to celebrate this new identity as a nation. This is a lot of the work by the artists, but then, on the social innovation side, we make sure that those artists divisions get into a form that could be remixed.

Audrey Tang: There is a bridge here called memory.culture.tw. It’s a website. I just uploaded some old photos there.

Audrey Tang: What the memory.culture.tw does is that it makes sure that artists, when they are creating new work, there’s this copyright free or at least copyright cleared Creative Commons material that they can do, because a lot of the work that artists do especially on the more modern interactive form of art is getting license, getting permissions to the elements that they want to make the art from.

Audrey Tang: We want to simplify that process, so both on the memory.culture.tw and also the Taiwan Digital Asset Library, which we provide these 3D models of all the important historical buildings and cultural buildings. You can just put them into your art without asking for permission, because we’ve cleared those.

Erika Wong: That’s amazing.

Audrey Tang: That’s the intersection between social innovation, which is idea was spreading an art, which is taking those ideas and then create something new.

Erika Wong: Would you say that your social innovation is more on the digital aspect or the physical aspect, or is it both?

Audrey Tang: It’s both. I mean, this is a pretty physical thing. There’s no digital mask last I checked. [laughs] Maybe, antiviruses and so forth.

Erika Wong: Maybe.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, maybe. The art part or the design parts in mask use is core in Taiwan’s counter pandemic strategy like the pink masks, rainbow masks, the glowing-in-the-night masks and also the message that says, “You wear a mask to protect yourself against your own and wash hands.”

Audrey Tang: That’s pretty awful. It’s even poetic, because it appeals to people’s self-interest instead of protecting the elderly or things like that. There’s a lot of very thoughtful creation went into the social innovation message, which is, of course, digital also, but it didn’t start digital.

Erika Wong: No, absolutely. However, I suppose, because of COVID, we do need to be able to go and maximize digital in all aspects, because how else are we able to go and see things?

Erika Wong: One of the conversations that I have a lot on my podcast with Alexis is we say online viewing rooms. There’s a huge debate about how the art world has now rebranded these websites and call them online viewing rooms except the user experience is not great.

Audrey Tang: No, it’s not.

Erika Wong: It’s not very smooth [laughs] usually.

Audrey Tang: I’ve used quite a few.

Erika Wong: …thing.

Audrey Tang: There are experiences in virtual reality. I work with the new museum in New York. We did a piece together in what we call…Actually, it’s called XRspace, which I don’t know stands for what, but anyway, extended reality space, maybe.

Audrey Tang: What we did is that, with the curator, we flew over in virtual reality here in Taipei, maybe in Taiwan, the Matterhorn mountain in Switzerland. That was quite breathtaking. The perspective created a new venues for people to meet.

Audrey Tang: Because it’s new to both of us and given our previous mountaineering experience which is close to zero, there’s no chance for us to meet at the peak of the [laughs] Matterhorn mountain. [laughs] That’s really something.

Audrey Tang: What I’m trying to get at is that’s experienced as part of the co-creation – I think it’s called 7x7 – enabled me to then work with a sculpture artist to make, essentially, my conversations and transcripts that we’re going to make into a lottery poetry experience where the lottery poetry sticks are not wooden sticks, but actually fish.

Audrey Tang: You’re in the storm of fish swimming with the fish. Randomly, a fish will, like a fortune cookie, show you a message pertaining to the conversation, but it’s all from the real conversation like between you and me, and so two fish will start speaking your wood and my wood [laughs] and things like that.

Audrey Tang: There was a lot of fun. A lot of the messages, the artists that I pair with in the Poland, is enabling the new experiences using technology, but not dictated by technology, just to open up new visions by the artists in the creation process. A lot of this viewing room is already on the very end of the journey. This is more about assessing the value.

Erika Wong: …art world, right?

Audrey Tang: Right. The creation part, that’s where we, as designers and technologists, are more aligned with artists because we can offer new tools like tilt brush that lets you sculpt in 3D and things like that.

Erika Wong: No, that sounds amazing. It’s so funny because this online viewing room, as of the art world things, it’s like the pinnacle of innovation. We have this conversation, it’s a website.

Audrey Tang: [laughs]

Erika Wong: It’s a poorly design website that doesn’t even let you check out.

Audrey Tang: Ouch. [laughs]

Erika Wong: I was like, “What is wrong with you?”

Audrey Tang: [laughs]

Erika Wong: The entire art world is like, “Oh, we all need to go on to the OVR,” and people are like, “OVR? What are you talking about?” Because we’re recording this towards the end of the year – it’s literally December 30, 2020 – in December, there were so many emails from Basel.

Erika Wong: It was like, “Thank you for coming to the OVR.” Like, “Oh, we are this. Oh, we are this,” and I was like, “Oh, my God.” Firstly, I’m confused by this idea of this online viewing room.

Erika Wong: In the world of COVID where we’re very limited in terms of being able to go and see physical exhibitions, it’s important to have a place to go and show your work on a bigger level. However, the user interface like that is really important, which I think that’s something that you definitely touched on.

Erika Wong: If things are well-defined, it doesn’t make you want to explore. It doesn’t make you want to discover, and it definitely doesn’t make you want to connect. As I’m trying to navigate these online viewing rooms, I give up. I’m just like, “I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

Erika Wong: There’s just so much…It’s like every gallery they’re showing at least five artists, and you’re just like, “I don’t know what to look for. I don’t know what I’m looking for. I don’t know what to click.” It’s just like the paradox of choice.

Erika Wong: It becomes paralyzing because it’s not something like what you’ve just talked about in the new museum, having this experience where you can virtually go into the Matterhorn and create something. You’re literally going into the centralized, “fair” to go and discover artists to go on by their art except that journey is in…

Erika Wong: For me, as somebody who’s in her 30s, I’m just like, “ [cringes] ,” I said behind the screen a lot. I can’t do more of this unless this is physically my job.

Erika Wong: Having these social innovations and using digital to a larger extent to be able to go and bring people together, that, for me, is very exciting especially as we’re trying to go have a larger conversation. Then, let other people know the types of work that you’re doing.

Erika Wong: It’s super useful to know that we don’t always have to just wait for the online viewing rooms. There’s so many other opportunities that are available to connect, to go and build your own community, to go and explore, to go out and find new things. I just don’t think that this is what people want to be saying to say that they’re doing something new.

Erika Wong: However, when you can hear what people are saying, it’s rarely that it’s even. I ever hear someone’s like, “Oh, we’re flying over to the Matterhorn again, build this like online thing,” and it’s just like, “Oh, wow, that’s so exciting.” Most of the time, we’re just like, “Oh, look at this exhibition. We’re going to have another fair.”

Audrey Tang: [laughs]

Erika Wong: We’re all waiting for the next fair in 2021, which I’m just like, “God, really?” I feel like I’m more exhausted with these OVR than in real life when I used to have to get on an airplane and like see things. Now, it’s like, “Oh, no.”

Erika Wong: Now, I can see 50 things at once, and I’m just like, “Oh, my God. I’m so tired.” I just want to see one thing that’s super cool or super good, so I can’t just either invest my time, but just have that engagement, and maximize what digital opportunities are available and having that innovation and design.

Erika Wong: Because that, I find to be more rewarding or resonates with me a little bit more than just clicking onto another OVR that doesn’t tell you very much about anything, or almost the foundation of what the art world was going to be like until we are able to get out of our homes and see the world again.

Erika Wong: I’m so hopeful after hearing all the different projects that you’ve been working on. What are you working on for 2021?

Audrey Tang: For 2021, like literally tomorrow, I’m going to work on the national action plan of open government. This is very interesting because a lot of social innovations started prototyping for the social sector, obviously.

Audrey Tang: What we are learning is that there’s also ways for the government itself to work more voluntary sectors. That is to say to allow more expands, to innovate more internally, to connect the career public service which is very innovative, is just they’re trapped in silos and hierarchies.

Audrey Tang: We’re opening up maybe 17 different topics ranging from, for example, more participation by new immigrants, because they don’t have a right to vote, but it doesn’t mean that the policy doesn’t impact them. Of course, we’re young people, that’s another group.

Audrey Tang: If we build a public park or something, then people could, through VR or augmented reality, look at the park from the five-year-old’s perspective. That’s going to change how people design parks. That’s also very important.

Audrey Tang: Also, on the spiritual realm in Thailand, there’s a lot of institutions dedicated for spirituality, but how to make that participatory. Now, that’s an art, [laughs] because it’s like communicating with things outside of the secular world. That’s also where art can help, because art can bring those spiritual ideas into day-to-day reality for the nonbelievers.

Audrey Tang: Actually, a lot of European art starts from that tradition. We rely on art and design a lot when we talk about, for example, how to modernize their traditional spiritual offering the competition of well-fed pigs, and that’s now considered cruel by animal welfare standards.

Audrey Tang: It’s important for the divinity. [laughs] How to reconcile the two requires artistic intervention, and so for many other things, environmental manifestation as well. If trees or rivers can speak through art to you, then climate change are felt in a much more real way.

Audrey Tang: You can imagine empty acre of land, if planted with trees, how would you take care of those trees using imagination? Now, that’s actually art because it’s not design. It’s not like we’re going to plant those trees [laughs] and so on.

Audrey Tang: These are the open government’s national action plan commitments. We’re going to deliberate tomorrow, and it will be good for the next three years.

Erika Wong: Oh, wow, OK. Amazing. Your project, that sounds so exciting. [laughs] It sounds a little bit more exciting than listening in the corner of aiming them helping for the best.

Audrey Tang: You’ll get the vaccines before I do.

Erika Wong: Apparently, but you guys are also…You didn’t have any outbreak until recently, you only have…

Erika Wong: …cases.

Audrey Tang: I know. We’ve got a physical vaccine. [laughs]

Erika Wong: I know. I was actually just on the news this next morning. They were like, “Oh, the new Oxford vaccines has now been approved. It’s going to make millions,” and I was like, “OK.”

Erika Wong: I guess, we’re all going to have to see what’s going to happen. I hope that I get to see some your project more in 2021. That would be so much fun and also just broadening that conversation. Like I’ve said many times, in this conversation, it’s so often talking about the arts and talking about culture. It seems like it’s just in this one silo.

Erika Wong: Truthfully, the ecosystem is huge. The ecosystem when you look at look at it on a very large context globally, it’s massive. There’s so many people doing so many different things that crop up the system.

Erika Wong: To think that when you’re leaving art school and you’re early career artist that you don’t have those resources and you don’t have those opportunities, I hope that this conversation allows for whoever is watching and listening to know that, actually, if you just pick through a little bit more, there are opportunities literally everywhere.

Erika Wong: First off, is to know whether you qualify and where you stands. That something that To Practise_Practice talks about. It’s where do you fit in the system. The system is huge, but it might be tricky if you don’t know where you fit.

Erika Wong: That something that art school doesn’t necessarily teach it because they can’t tell you where you fit into the world. You need to go find out for yourself. Beyond that, is knowing that when you have some sort of idea that there is a direction that you can go towards and that there are opportunities. If not, then it feels so limiting, isn’t it?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. As we say Taiwan can help is the hashtag. We’re happy to be the underscore that underscores your practices. [laughs]

Erika Wong: Wow. That’s a good wordplay.

Erika Wong: That’s amazing. Thank you so much. This has been such a wonderful conversation. I will end the recoding on my end…

Audrey Tang: I’ll send my complete recording as a voice file to you.

Erika Wong: When do you think you’re able to go and send that over?

Audrey Tang: The recording like right now, the transcript likely in a day or two.

Erika Wong: Oh, wonderful. My next question isn’t quite big. I was saying before in our recording is that I do a podcast with Alexis. Alexa is an art dealer curator from LA. We would love to have you on our podcast as well. We talk about random topics. We have people who basically…

Erika Wong: You’re going to be on the fourth season, which is going to be talking about community. Resources, where do you find them? Are they available for you as artist? Would you have time? Maybe…

Audrey Tang: I probably wouldn’t, but I have good friends in TAICCA who would probably have time.

Erika Wong: Oh, OK.

Audrey Tang: I think she may be more qualified than I do because I read about those things, but she works with those grants and investments like actual frontline experience. I can make an introduction to my friend. Maybe, you can send me a kind of one pager of the podcast and the importance of Vanessa Wong, and I will just forward it to my Thai girlfriend.

Erika Wong: Thank you so much for your time. This has been wonderful. You make me really hope that we can do things in the future as I continue on with Practice_Practice. I really hope that people know Taiwan so special to me, just because I grew up with so many Taiwanese kids.

Erika Wong: For me, it’s so special to me even though I’ve never been to Taiwan, which makes no sense to me. I really hope that I get to actually see some of these projects in real life.

Audrey Tang: Definitely, so see you in 2021.

Erika Wong: I hope so.

Audrey Tang: Fingers crossed. Bye for now.

Erika Wong: Thank you so much. Please, would you send the video to me…

Erika Wong: …on my email?

Audrey Tang: I don’t have a video, I say audio. I said in the beginning I have the audio recording. Yes, I’ll send you the audio by email and then the transcript shortly afterwards.

Erika Wong: OK, cool.

Audrey Tang: Live long and prosper.

Erika Wong: Thank you.

Audrey Tang: Bye.

Erika Wong: Bye.