Art Meets Rural Life: Nanjing University of the Arts Anniversary Art Season Kicks Off in Lively Style

The "Community Building Group" at the Graduate Institute of Architecture and Art at Tainan National University of the Arts has been established for seven years now. Over these years, its main work has been to accompany students into rural communities and elementary and secondary school campuses. Regardless of the setting, the goal is always to mobilize residents to collectively create their own living environment, in the hope that people will thereby grow closer to one another and feel a stronger sense of identity with their community (or school).

After many years in Tugou, the earlier students have already graduated and completed their military service, returning to work in Tugou as new residents. Therefore, since last year, our new students no longer use Tugou as their base, leaving it to the new-resident seniors to develop on their own; we have returned to our own campus, managing the nearby Daqi community on the one hand, and on the other hand using the school anniversary celebrations to promote community-building work within the school. Over the past three years, each year's different anniversary celebration has in fact first energized the campus atmosphere before gradually extending outward, with the theme slowly shifting from art toward agricultural issues.

Our vision is to jointly develop TNNUA and the surrounding communities into a veritable art village. Therefore, looking ahead to the coming years, guiding the school to interact with the community is necessary, guiding the community's conventional agriculture to transform is necessary, guiding teachers and students to move into the community is necessary... all kinds of things await development, so let us start with the joyful things first!

TNNUA, a different kind of school anniversary celebration

It is recently the season for university anniversary celebrations, with each school celebrating its birthday in different ways.

For example, the anniversary celebration of National Taiwan University made the news a few days ago because students protested at the ceremony against the school's rough-handed approach to reclaiming campus land; National Cheng Kung University held an alumni summit for its anniversary celebration, where the president remarked that NTU people have their eyes on top of their heads and run the risk of walking into a utility pole. Tainan National University of the Arts is, after all, an art school, and holds its anniversary celebration in a different way each year, always with something special.

Two years ago, under the theme "Southern Wind Blows," teachers and students on campus held a lively and eye-catching "Art Market" and "Art Street Parade," and the campus instantly transformed into "TNNUA Palace," bustling with excitement; last year, under the theme "Southern Wind Blows Again," an attempt was made to step off campus and co-host "Daqi People, Art Matters" with Daqi Village, composed of multiple exhibitions and performances, the most unforgettable of which was a concert in a mountain gully with a temporary stage built from 2500 beer crates, dancing with the moon under the night sky, with even the violinist president taking the stage to perform.

This year the southern wind blows again, but what it blows is a new breath -- when art falls in love with the countryside, we want to see what kind of sparks are ignited when art meets farming. This is how it was conceived:

• Land is the foundation of life; cultivating and planting on the land is humanity's most basic form of livelihood, so farming is fundamental, and the countryside is humanity's shared homeland.
• After farming, humanity developed craft, and even elevated it to art. But unfortunately, industrialization struck at craft, and urbanization also distorted art.
• Thus today, art has left the land, and people have forgotten the countryside. But the countryside is still the countryside; the countryside does not die, it merely withers.

Among the three art universities in the country, TNNUA is the only one located in the countryside. Over the past five years, the school has actively interacted with the surrounding rural areas and has indeed accumulated quite rich results.

In addition to the earliest documentary "No Rice for Joy" filmed by students of the Graduate Institute of Sound and Image Studies, which created a wave, in recent years students of the Community Building Group entered Tugou Village, where only one water buffalo remained, to carry out artistic community building and also created a new rural landscape; teachers and students of the School of Visual Arts transformed an old rice mill in Daqi community into the MIGA art space, which also drew attention from the art world.

Therefore, art should go a step further and fall in love with the countryside, learn from the countryside, and put effort into helping the withering countryside. Thus various artistic actions related to land, history and life unfold in the most comfortable season of late autumn, as celebration, sharing and also confession...

We have arranged diverse activities, and all units across the school are busily preparing. There are an agri-art market, exhibitions, film festival, concerts, and even arrangements for the public to go to Daqi's orange groves to experience fruit picking. 11/26-27, everyone is welcome to join!

For details, please visit: www.tnnua.edu.tw
Inquiry phone: International Exchange Center, Ms. Tu 06-6930100#1901

◆ Agri-Art Market (11/26-27 10:00-16:00)
In addition to displays and sales of teachers' and students' artworks, the market specially invites fifteen organic farms to set up stalls at the school, allowing teachers, students and visitors to gain a deeper understanding of organic agriculture. To let visitors gain a deeper understanding of organic agriculture, besides browsing the stalls on site, elements that move people are also to be provided. Therefore, third-year students of the Department of Material Arts and Design were specially organized into groups to gain an in-depth understanding of each organic farm, finding moving clues from the farm owners' arduous journeys in farming, the hard-won nature of their products, and the farmers' deep affection for the land, and then transforming these into artistic and design concepts. This process is a great learning experience for the young students; they generally felt the alternative value of organic farmers respecting the land and living sincerely and simply, and many of them were approaching soil that can grow crops this closely for the first time!

In addition, the market also invites groups such as the Homemakers United Foundation, Leezen, and Cixin to introduce non-toxic products; and invites groups such as Fair Trade Coffee and Hongya Study to share new ideas. Beside the market, a small lecture area is also set up, where stall owners and various groups casually share experiences with visitors.

◆ Exhibitions (11/25-12/15)
Two exhibitions related to Taiwanese farmers and agronomy are arranged this time:
"Jian Ji and the Taiwanese Peasant Movement Special Exhibition" introduces the life of Jian Ji (1903-1951), a peasant movement activist active in the 1930s and 1940s, and the peasant movement during the Japanese colonial period that he led. In conjunction with the exhibition, Dr. Jian Mingren, son of Jian Ji, is invited to give a special lecture (11/26 morning 9:30-11:30)
"Borrowing Force -- Tooling: Objects Special Exhibition" is jointly presented by 18 teachers, students and alumni of the school's Graduate Institute of Applied Arts, using craft art as the form of expression, employing materials such as metal, ceramics, fiber and wood to express the theme of "tools," transforming tools into displayed objects.

◆ Film Festival (11/24-11/27)
The School of Sound and Image specially selected four agriculture-related films: "The Factory Director Without a Sugar Factory," "We Fight for Water," "Searching for Wings on the Buffalo's Back" and "Field." On weekday afternoons they are screened at the theater in the school's Sound and Image Building, and on the evening of 11/26 they are shown outdoors at Bronze Mirror Plaza.

◆ Concerts (11/24-11/26)
Multiple concerts are arranged to entertain the audience, including "Farmhouse Joy Banquet" jointly performed by students of the Department of Music, and "Percussion and Two-Piano Concert," which is classical music; at seven o'clock on the evening of the 26th, a "Young Farmers Concert" is arranged at the temple courtyard of Daqi community, specially inviting Daqi Village's bamboo drum troupe, a Kaohsiung City ensemble formed by Indonesian foreign spouses playing their traditional instrument the angklung, the "Lao Lin Family Band" formed by several young music workers, the "Nong Wei Wei Duo," and MOCO Zhan Yuqi, a super-idol newcomer and school graduate, among others.

◆ Village Aesthetics Tour (11/26-27)
In many corners of Daqi Village, the results of artistic transformation in recent years can be discovered. The Tainan City Cultural Affairs Bureau has also invited dozens of communities from the city to come to Daqi to display and share their community-building results, along with community stalls, community artistic troupe performances, and so on. The MIGA art space, transformed from an old rice mill, also hosts multiple small lectures related to community building...

◆ Family Fun Tour (11/26-27)
This anniversary celebration especially welcomes parents and children to visit together, with multiple activities suitable for families:

Daqi Orange Picking: To encourage the fruit farmers of Daqi Village to transform, the school tries every year to support their non-toxic products. This year, for the pesticide-free orange groves, a "One-Day Farmer -- Orange Picking Experience" is held. Visitors can enter the groves to pick fruit, eat it fresh and take it home (one session each in the morning and afternoon on the 26th, and one session in the morning on the 27th; inquiries: Mr. Liang 0982906192).

Children's Music Party: the school's art bookstore (Nan Shu Fang) has also specially arranged for two o'clock in the afternoon on the 27th to invite students of the Department of Applied Music to design fun games, letting children come into contact with musical instruments and play with music.

Agri-Art Market Challenge: among the thirty stalls of the market, as long as you browse earnestly and look carefully you can smoothly complete the challenge and win prizes!