2012 Working Table Of An Artist

2012 solo exhibition — JAM WU [ Working Table Of An Artist ], XinYi Eslite bookstore - ART STUDIO. © Jam Wu. Photo courtesy of the artist.

To link the individual’s collective memory within folk or festival culture. Using this popularly recognized “stamp” as a “pivot” and taking to heart a kind of resistance to definition, during the establishment of the Art Creator Trade Union and subsequent discussion about how to officially define “art workers” as professionals, I used my experience during college of cutting hair to barter for daily needs, to construct the [ Working Table Of An Artist ] participative project, which, on one hand, ties into Eslite Bookstore's ART STUDIO , and on the other hand, transformed my personal experience into a publicized act.

In this project, every participant went through this process: registration, confirmation of time, location and any particular special requirements, going to the haircut appointment, the exchange of goods, and finally, they had to fill out a questionaire to complete this whole process. At that time, starting from these questions, some serious, some interesting, some nonsensical, I expected to develop another extension to this project, and to consider the participants’ reaction towards the whole participatory process. Most questionaires are concerned with statistical opinions of certain field, in order to review and get feedback. It’s the same for me, I care about the attitudes and viewpoints of the participants after the realization of the whole process. Furthermore, I’ve added a curious “question mark” to the whole process, and thinking about the “question mark” itself only brought forth more “question mark” thoughts.