I have posed an imported chair as if it were a French tourist travelling around the island. The Louis IV French rococo style chair symbolizes how Taiwanese recognize and/or understand French culture. Photographic elements such as the subject facing the camera, frontal lighting, and the relatively small proportion of chair to background were carefully thought out in order to replicate a tourist snapshot aesthetic. There is a kind of performance by the chair as it walks around the island posing itself against various backgrounds. The tourist/chair ascertains the location and decides what is personally important enough to be photographed.

The concept of these images is a discourse between import/export cultural issues.

A chief economic strategy for any developing country is the exporting of ones culture. With the influence of the information age upon us people from the global “village” can pick and choose various aspects of different societies, consciously or not, to form a distinct hybrid nation. These villagers no longer need to leave their homes for tourism in the traditional sense; they have become armchair tourists. Ultimately the pictures are sent back to France for exhibition to complete the import/export cycle.

At the Contemporary Art Center of La Femme du Buisson in Paris I presented this idea with an eighty-slide tray projection of large, distorted, and fragmented images with the intention of representing a tourists’ glance. Fragmentation also signified my personal view about the importing and exporting of culture: that is, no matter how much technology improves communication, people’s understanding of each other will remain fragmented. At IT Park in Taipei I continued the use of slide projections but with increased audio sounds of the tray shuffling up and down intended to convey a psychological distraction or interruption. For example, while a tourist stands quietly to be photographed street vendors selling souvenirs frequently interrupt the moment. In addition to the slide projection the exhibit includes large color prints and photo installations.

At the beginning of this project I wanted the chair to symbolize what a French tourist in Taiwan might photograph but soon afterward the chair came to represent myself.

At this point photographing for me became a review of my own views and is a continuation of my earlier work in Between Real and Unreal.