For the first short-term research, CHANG CHIH CHUNG came to Hamburg to experience the connectivity of the Hamburg harbor and the neighborhood of the river island Veddel and Whilhelmsburg as an ongoing interaction of culture, traffic, and trade. Veddel is hi frequently framed by the highway from the west and the main rail tracks from the east, north, and south by the streams of the Elbe river. CHANG CHIH CHUNG was introduced to HyCP at the Prortjourney Anual Meeting 2019 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
For 2023 we will set up a frame about activism in urban spatialities facing the climate change in harbor cities. This program will be linked to the various organizations and players around the Veddel island. We were glad to have our first conversations with the new school, Campus HafenCity, and Hafen Museum Hamburg in our direct neighborhood. Thanks to Ursula Richenberger and Gottfried Eich of Hafen Museum.
Chang regards the ocean as a worldview diverse from the current terrestrial civilization of Anthropocene and interprets various issues and phenomena in the contemporary context as a complex macro-system in the forms of interconnected waters, currents, and tides. Besides, he regards water as the medium penetrating everything from the inner to the outer worlds to embody the unstable state of transition, flow, and anti-subjectivity corresponding to his homeland Taiwan under subtropical monsoon climate. His art practices deal with those rapid-changing environments like ships, islands, water as well as a port, and through textural and spatial processes of investigation, collection, interweave, and reconstruction, in which he tries to unveil the universal experiences, tension, and grey area between human, civilization, and nature constantly shaping each other.
His artworks are usually realized based on a core narrative text or by means of storytelling and integrate with keen craftsmanship multiple forms and media, including video, installation, photography, painting, documents as well as site-specific projects and workshops, etc. Chang states art as an initiative to promote the maritime culture in public education and knowledge systems worldwide, and he was the co-founder of alternative art space Waley Art in western Taipei.