text by Chen Chieh-Jen
Bade in Taipei City is where I filmed my previous video Factory. Many factories serving labor-intensive industries were concentrated in the Bade area before they started moving abroad.
While filming Factory, I met some Bade residents, many of whom originally worked in the area factories, but could only find unreliable, temporary work after the industries left. Later, these residents brought me to factories which had been sealed by the courts after closing under questionable circumstances. Computer equipment abandoned twenty years before filled an office at one factory,[1] and in another factory area, there were placards and banners left by workers after a protest. These spaces, because they were soon to be auctioned off by the government, were legally restricted and could not be entered without explicit permission.
It was also illegal to remove the things that filled these court-sealed buildings, even the garbage. This restriction on removing things from these places that were once filled with hundreds of workers seemed to have a dual significance: the restriction didn't just refer to the objects in the sealed buildings, but also reflected the plight of the area residents who were left behind when the industries relocated abroad.
Beside the road leading to these sealed factories stood a billboard printed with the ironic message Majestic Village, advertising homes for sale.
For the film Bade, I invited my unemployed friends and some of the day laborers from this part of the city to walk from the area with the discarded protest placards along the road with the Majestic Village billboard into the sealed factories that were about to be auctioned off.[2]
At the factory, I asked these friends and workers to repeatedly move and pile up the tables and chairs left in the office, the same offices where it was strictly forbidden to remove anything. This repeated and pointless labor, staged after the industries moved abroad and performed by myself and workers who had grown up during Taiwan's industrial heyday, was no longer labor in the service of capitalist exchange value. This time, our ceremonial labor was in response to the traces and atmosphere left by those who once worked in this now silent space.
This film is record of the workers and I entering a restricted space to carryout repetitive and meaningless labor, and also a record of me following these Bade area day laborers as they wandered aimlessly in a restricted area. Residents would sometimes climb on the roofs of these buildings, which were not under anyone's active supervision since they had been sealed awaiting auction, and transform the factories into places to congregate, drink or sing karaoke. In the final part of the film, we moved a mattress printed with a dolphin leaping out of water from this space where it was strictly forbidden to remove anything.
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[1] The computers which appeared in the film were produced by Wang Laboratories which was founded in 1951. In the 1980s, demand shifted from mainframes to small personal computers. In 1992, unable to produce computers for the new market, Wang Laboratories declared bankruptcy. While some of these computers could still be turned on, they would only display the message "POWER-ON DIAGNOSTIC IS RUNNING."
[2] The buildings in the film were sealed by the courts because the factory owners were unable to satisfy employee pension fund and bank debts. After I finished shooting the film, the auctions continued and the buildings were demolished after being sold. |
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