Right Alignment, Shared Taste —— Otherness and Togetherness in Tainan

The project explores the everyday paths and scenes of immigrants in Tainan. It looks at how the relationship between foreigners and locals is formed and explores the twists and turns in the minds of these “outsiders in the city”. Through the development and on-site investigation of the project, immigrants of Southeast Asian descent, international students, and researchers were invited to consider how the microhistory of their lives becomes a precious map in the macrohistory of migration.

Centering around the theme of “Right Alignment, Shared Taste”, the project delves into three sub-themes: (1) Travelogue Sketches, (2) Table to Island and Recipe Exchange, and (3) Light Source, Refraction, Spectrum—Gender Practice and Performance. In addition to the exchanges with the diverse migrant worker communities in Tainan, the project also invited puppetry scholar Chen Sheng-Yuan and Filipino artist Al Bernard Garcia to develop lectures and demonstrations on arts and culture in response to the research and on-site investigation themes. The various activities included migrant worker on-site interviews, food culture documentation, food sharing, themed lectures, and demonstrations. By seeking out the “right alignment” as a method of adaptation, learning, and self-coordination, the project considers the diversity of cultural patterns and activities in Southeast Asia, and responds to the co-creative potential of community coexistence, making cross-cultural dialogue more of a “shared taste”.