The project is co-produced by Liu Yu and Wu Sih-chin in 2011. The presentation includes sculpture, installation, video and documentary. Works are based on two doomsday prophecies happened in Taiwan. One is from Chen, Heng-min, founder of R.O.C Soul Light Research Club. Chen founded “Salvation of God Church (a.k.a Chen-Dao Church)” in 1993, and foretold that there will be nuclear war, famine, earthquake and other anthropogenic or nature catastrophes occurred in 1998. He said God will send his message to TV show in Channel 18 at Garland city, Texas, US. And send UFO to save them by 10pm, 31th of March, 1998. Chen then built a site in the shape of UFO at Garland city, so as to let God recognize them, and come to save them. Press in Taiwan called this “ The UFO club incident” and it stunned local people and media. The other one was in 2011, the “511 doomsday prophet” announced by Chao-hung, Wang, also known as “Teacher Wang’s doomsday prophet”. Wang foretold that there would be a 14-magnitude degree earthquake at 10:42:37, 11th of May, 2011, which would cause Taiwan splitting into two parts, and be flooded by coming tsunami. Before the day came, Wang built container houses at Ai-lan of Puli township, Nantou county, put them on the foundation built with concrete in Bagua shape, believing that will save them from the catastrophe.
In two doomsday prophecies, the prophets both built vehicles to save them from disasters: UFO site and container houses. And the vehicles then became symbols of the incident. In the prophecies, those vehicles played the role of “Arc”, leading people to keep safe. The daily-life objects such as plank, street light and containers, has become narrative characters and mysterious gestures. In the project, artists “represent” or “remake” those Arcs through artworks, trying to break the stereotype of those incidents in society (the stereotype built by dramatic broadcast of media), and reinterpret those objects, or certain shapes of mind.
There are two short clips in the installation, one is taken while we’re driving to Puli (the haven in the doomsday prophet) with 2 friends. We went there on 10th ~11th of May, 2011, on the doomsday of Wang’s prophet. In the journey of “End of the World”, instead of going for somewhere safe, we went there to approach that “Doomsday atmosphere”. The video we recorded is different from the dramatic narration on mass media. The doomsday we experienced was documented and interpreted in the video. The other one is in autumn of 2011, we took a video of a mundane journey. We edited two clips by weaving them together, trying to catch our point of view and judgment towards doomsday incidences.
Talking about two events, we don’t care if the prophets are correct. Whether the doomsday comes or not, it has never been a scientific question. Ever since the concept of doomsday appeared, it has been discussed and structured, and been shared by the society through broadcasting of media. Counting down to the doomsday, no matter the prophet eventually realizes or not, it will be destroyed completely. With the growing consciousness of the end of the world, we don’t even have to challenge the belief of its existence, the end of the world has become something that can be rehearsed, we’ve been rehearsing the coming of it. Every prophet is a production of narrative, and it composes our endless imagination to the end of the world.
