Artistic Intervention and Social Action

Convener：Joyce C.H. Liu、Li Qi

Subproject VI Website：https://iccs.chss.nycu.edu.tw/zh/re.php?USN=13

CJD Website：https://cjdproject.web.nycu.edu.tw/

Project Directors:

      Joyce Liu (Honorary Professor and Director of the Center, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University)
      Li Qi (PhD Candidate, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University / Editor-in-Chief of CJD)

Project Researchers:

      Lou Mo (Canadian Chinese artist and curator)
      Musquiqui Chihying (Taiwanese art curator and researcher)
      Wei-I Lee (Founder and Editor-in-Chief of InMedia)
      Ting Kuan Wu (Independent researcher and cultural worker)
      Yu Chen Lan (Independent researcher and cultural worker)
      Muhammad Irfan (Journalist / Independent researcher)
      Aubrey Fanani (Journalist / Independent researcher)
      Vincent Delbos (Independent researcher and cultural worker)

CJD Editorial Team:

      Li Qi (PhD Candidate, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University)
      Pao Yi Yeh (Master’s student, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University)
      Serena Di Maria (PhD student, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University)
      Raagini Bora (Master’s student, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University)
      Fenny Yu (PhD student, National Tsing Hua University)

Objectives

      How can art confront social challenges, participate in social action, and offer artistic responses? How can flexible, improvisational, and collectively collaborative spaces of dialogue be created to reflect on issues of conflict, justice, and decolonization? These reflections and actions regard the conditions of migrant workers, refugees, stateless persons, and other marginalized and vulnerable groups as critical issues that we collectively face amid the transformations of 21st-century Asia.

      This research group asks how art can confront pressing social challenges, participate in social action, and offer creative, artistic responses. It explores how to create flexible, improvisational, and collectively collaborative spaces of dialogue in order to engage with questions of conflict, justice, and decolonisation.

      These reflections and practices approach issues such as migrant labour, refugees, stateless persons, and other marginalized and vulnerable communities as shared concerns that we must collectively confront in the context of Asia’s transformations in the 21st century.

      The research group brings together a graduate student-led online publishing collective (CJD), local NGOs, art activists, and human rights organizations. In alignment with the Center’s overarching research agenda—Conflict, Justice, and Decolonisation—the group actively engages with issues concerning the rights and conditions of migrant workers, refugees/stateless populations, and socially marginalized communities.

      We encourage members to work according to the principles of artistic intervention and social action. Activities include organizing film festivals and exhibitions; producing documentaries, photo essays, and video essays; and publishing hand-drawn zines and digital zines. Through active engagement with civil society, the group seeks to disseminate its insights and outcomes, broaden public understanding and concern for these issues, and contribute to the cultivation of a more inclusive and supportive society.

Activities Organised in 2025:

      1. Book Launch — Songs from Afar: Collecting Indonesian Migrant Workers’ Ballads and Writing Scenes
This publication features the works of thirty Indonesian migrant musicians and bands. Combining ethnographic fieldwork and critical essays, it presents the musical practices and forms of cultural resistance developed by migrant workers in Taiwan.

      2. Humanitarian Film Screening and Forum — The Ethics of Human and Artistic Resistance
This series included The Diary of Diana B., based on the true story of Austrian humanitarian Diana Budisavljević, as well as the short film The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent, adapted from real events during the Bosnian War.

      3. Film Screening on Statelessness — State of Statelessness (2024)
A screening and discussion addressing the lived conditions and political realities of stateless persons.

      4. Papuan Music Documentary Screening and Forum — Wisisi Nit Meke
Screenings and discussions were held in Taipei and Hsinchu in November. The event explored how Papuan original electronic music, “wisisi,” has emerged as a symbol of culture and identity among younger generations.

      5. Support for the NCTU Student Film Festival “Little Famine”
Inspired by Brazilian director Glauber Rocha’s concept of the “Aesthetics of Hunger,” the festival focused on how colonial histories and cultural dependency shape film production in the Third World.

Research Topics