Huatung Village

Huatung Village was once an Amis tribal settlement located in the Xizhi district of Taipei. In 1984, there were three aboriginal families farming vegetables there. By 1996, it had already become a complete tribal community consisting of 215 families. It was a huge block of illegal buildings – villagers used sheets of iron, wood, and other materials to build houses, tribal lookouts, community meeting rooms, and churches. In 1997, the government evicted the whole village and moved them to subsidized government housing. Nowadays, if one tries to find the original location of the village, one can only find a few ruins left behind.

The narrative in this work interweaves three scenes: the first scene was the chieftain’s oral history of the already non-existent tribe; the second scene was the filming of the actual site, and the third scene was presented on five LCD TV split screens with marquee subtitles.

Taiwan
00:07:35
16:9
Color
Sound
Five-channel video installation

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