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A Practice of Singing: Japanese Songs

5 channel video / 2012

Taiwan is still deeply under the influence of Japanese culture as it was previously colonized by Japan. Especially during the 80's, many popular Taiwanese songs were based on Japanese melodies. Throughout the years, the boundaries between Japanese and Taiwanese cultures have slowly become quite blurry. During my stay in the Aomori Contemporary Art Centre for an artist-in-residence program, I selected five Japanese songs to represent the cultural transplantation from Japan to Taiwan. I translated the lyrics from Japanese into English, and then from English to Chinese. I then sang the songs in the three languages by reading the lyric translations on a giant cue poster. With awkward pronunciations and lack of fluency in my singing, I intended to demonstrate a sense of "similarity" through linguistic simulations after a series of cultural deconstruction of the lyrics.

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