Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Comments on the Finalist 

Starting in 2023, this trilogy has traced the historical context of the digital world, examining the influence of geopolitics and digital culture. It reveals the global deployment of the semiconductor industry and the system of technological subcontracting. Covering periods from the Cold War to the newer international division of labor under neoliberalism, and the myths surrounding hypermodern industries and cities, the work specifically focuses on severely exploited low-wage workers in labor-intensive industries hidden within global supply chains, often marginalized by gender, race, class, and life circumstances. It critically analyzes complex power structures and cultural formations, such as labor migration and economic-political landscapes. Addressing today’s world amid various crises, this work offers extensive insight, foresight, critical perspective, and active engagement, forming an indisputably significant epic of contemporary culture and technology. (Commentator / CHOW Ling-Chih)

Artwork Introduction  

Trilogy of Culture and Technology is an interdisciplinary exhibition project that combines artistic practice, field research, and theoretical production. It not only showcases Tech Art but also functions as a form of historical archaeology and geopolitical mapping of contemporary digital life. Focusing on three major global hubs—San Francisco, Shenzhen, and Hsinchu—the project traces how “technology” has transitioned from an ideal of utopian liberation to a material force that controls global movement today. Building on this idea, it further investigates the material basis of “freedom.”

About the Artist 

HUANG Sun-Quan, formerly editor-in-chief of POTS WEEKLY and a professor at the Graduate Institute of Transdisciplinary Art at National Kaohsiung Normal University, is now a professor and director of the Institute of Network Society (INS) at the China Academy of Art. In 1997, he served as chief convener of the “Against the City Government Bulldozer” movement. His documentary, Our New Homeland, was the first Chinese-language documentary to address forced demolition and urban renewal, which has been shown at many biennials and toured in numerous cities. His personal work primarily explores image, architecture, multimedia installation, and space, focusing on themes of space, mobility, “u-topophilia,” and the technological and political lives of the multitudes.