Aephie Chen: How did you encounter this subject and why Lanyu?

Charwei Tsai: I went to Lanyu because I was interested in the Tao people and their local shamanistic practices. I met a shaman in Taiwan who told me about the Tao's traditional hair dance, in which women sway their hair up and down for the waves to carry their men safely back from the ocean. The waves caused by swaying of the hair mimic the ocean waves. Lanyu is a volcanic island, it is very dangerous to fish around it because the waves are strong. The livelihood of the Tao depends on fishing. So practice of the shamanism alives, that brought my interests to visit the island.

AC: Was the shaman you met in Taiwan from Lanyu?

CT: She was more like an urban shaman, I met her through my cousin in Taiwan.

AC: Did you know the hair dance before?

CT: I had no idea about the hair dance. It was my first time visiting Lanyu. Because I grew up abroad, I didn't know Taiwan very well at the time. It was my first time exploring Lanyu and the culture there.

AC: At the time, in 2012, how did you approach the indigenous community and their culture?

CT: That was the interesting part. Because a lot of curators always asked me how I approached the Tao community. For me, there’s no difference on how I would approach them or approach another Taiwanese group or American group. Of course, culturally they are all very different. I never think of it as an anthropology project. Also, like most people in Taiwan, I also have indigenous blood. I never really saw Tao as that different. I was introduced to the island’s professor and stayed with her family so I got to know her community. At the time, there were less than 3000 people living in Lanyu. It was a really small community. So, I went there and told them I wanted to learn the hair dance. They told me they sometimes performed the dance but mostly for tourists and rarely. I asked if I could film them. At the time, the dance was less known compared to now. It became much more touristic these days. Back then, it was rare to capture them performing on the beach. Usually the outsiders saw them performing on the stage. It was a very funny experience and was not what I had imagined. Because when I met this group of women. They were squatting on the street, chewing betel nuts. They spoke their own language among each other. Their culture was well kept because the island is so remote. They were gossiping about me and the filmmaker I went with every time we showed up, they were trying to figure out our relationship. They often teased me to get them betel nuts otherwise they wouldn't dance. As soon as they entered the ceremonial mode, they started the hair dance. They really transformed their whole assent. It was a completely different energy.

AC: How did you find the location to film?

CT: They took me to the ocean.

AC: I was drawn to the sequence where there was a man on his own, using this long bamboo stick trying to call his son’s spirit from the ocean. This long narrow single line picking the waves next to a video of lines of hair, the hair dance, all these lines were trying to bring something back from the ocean.

CT: With the hair, it connected to the head. It’s like a flow of mind-stream. From the waves, the ocean to the body to the spirit. The bamboo stick was a ceremonial prop. It started with the hair dance. Slowly, I met the man in the village. He was specialized in shamanism and told us stories of his life on the island. Through him, I learnt about the whole nuclear waste problem. I made this work piece by piece.

AC: Most of the indigenous culture is persevered in the ritual or protected by shamanistic practices because the outsiders were afraid of the unknown which they learnt to respect afterwards. How did you decide to make the sequence of the nuclear waste issues?

CT: For me, everything happened spontaneously. I came to Lanyu with the idea of filming the hair dance. I got to know the women first. From the beginning, one of the most important conversations on everybody’s mind was the nuclear issue. I was talking to the professor whose brother has cancer, obviously related to nuclear waste. I felt really sad watching old clips they showed us about the protest by the indigenous group arguing with Taiwanese government officials. And the government officials kept using the scientific numbers, charts and graphs to approve the safety of the nuclear waste. As an artist, I could relate a lot to the indigenous people that use another language, words aren’t their strength. Tao people were arguing that if it is indeed safe, why didn’t they keep the nuclear waste in Taiwan? Everything was provided with evidence, but it was so sad to see how the government officials were degrading towards the indigenous.

AC: You chose to film the waves breaking on the island to express the sequence of nuclear issues. I felt it was full of anger, with the repetitive waves. The indigenous people were already fighting this back in 2012 and they continue doing so. The nuclear issue is still unsolved, how did you relate to this?

CT: Though my works relating to social issues were filmed regionally, in secluded areas that most people do not have easy access to, we can find similar issues happening at every corner of the world. In this work, I filmed the nuclear waste on the small island of Lanyu, where there are only 3000 inhabitants, but the nuclear issue is shared everywhere. In many developed countries, governments also treat indigenous communities' homeland in this way. Everywhere with environmental problems, the indigenous people often contribute least to the problem, but are most affected by it. So, Lanyu is an example of something that happens everywhere, it is not specific to Taiwan. Afterwards, I continued to make a series of short films that reflect on the problems of inequality in Nepal’s earthquake victims; in London I made the work of women asylum seekers from a detention centre; in Kaohsiung, Taiwan I made a work about migrant workers working on boats. Usually, I present these three projects together. Even though these are three very different cultures, each facing its own economic, political and environmental issues, they share the basic human emotions of hope and fear. In the end, when people face most despair, what brings us together are feelings such as love and compassion, which are what that matters the most.

Credits

Charwei Tsai
Lanyu—Three Stories
2012
3 HD videos with sound, 4 min each

In collaboration with Tsering Tashi Gyalthang