mensch
Eastern Promises
15
The Paratrooping Finn interviewed by David Frazier FINNISH ARCHITECT Marco Casagrande is in Taipei until October 17 at the invitation of Taipei City Government’s Department of Cultural Affairs for a project of some kind. I met him by chance at the bar Watersheds two days after his arrival on September 30. This is what we talked about:
“Spreading seeds. I will have a thing right here.” He indicated a basket on his hip. “See what I mean.”
I don’t know about that. The government here has strict controls on transportation. If you can’t get a private plane or a C-130, would you try to jump out of a commercial plane?
Are you going to document this? “You can come behind me and take pictures or whatever.” I have a DVD camera.
What kind of airplane? “C-130. I know the military has them here. I saw one just yesterday flying over.”
“That would work too.”
“That too.”
Do you think you can really do this?
What about landing? Taipei’s got a lot of buildings and stuff.
“We will see. I just got here the day befor Who invited you here?
Will they let you do that? “Why not? That is what we will see.”
“WHAT? You come down! You land! THERE’S NO PROBLEM. Maybe you break your leg!”
“The city’s culture department.” Um, what kind of seeds do you want to spread?
Have you ever parachuted before? And what did they say when you told them what you want to do?
“No.”
“In the meeting, of course they were all silent for a moment. And then somebody said, ‘Is this like a metaphor or something?’ And I said, ‘NO. IT’S NOT A METAPHOR. I WANT TO JUMP OUT OF AN AEROPLANE AND SPREAD SEEDS OVER TAIPEI.’”
Shouldn’t you take a class or something? “No. I will just do it.” What if the equipment screws up?
“Plants. Things that people can grow.” Not non-native species I hope. “No. Local plants, like rice and so forth.” That sounds great. Good luck. “Thank you.”
“It will work.” That’s cool as fuck. What if you can’t get a C-130? “We’ll try to find someone with a private aeroplane. They must have them here.”
“Thank you.”
AMIS: URBAN ABORIGINALS The Amis spokesman of the Xi Zhou village is a representative of a very brave Xindian riverside community. Being the descendants of the original three families of the Taidong Amis, the community have been fighting for their rights to live along the river. First the government destroyed their riverside farms and built a bicycle track instead. Then the officials tried to kick the Amis from their homes and “resettle” them, as they did with the Treasure Hill’s original community (p9). The Amis refused and has been fighting ever since. Now they are in a dialog with the government, who has proposed to move the village a bit further from the river and build to them new homes. The
making food collectively on street
Amis think that the government houses will be nothing compared to their self build houses that form a unique organic community that is as much a garden as it is architecture. The Amis prefer to build their new homes by themselves too in the same organic way as the community is built now and keeping the same dialog with the neighbors and collective spaces.
the river got polluted. The Amis (Chinese: 㜿⨾᪘; pinyin: āměi-zú; also Ami or Pangcah) are an indigenous people of Taiwan. They speak Amis, an Austronesian language, and are one of the fourteen officially recognized peoples of Taiwanese aborigines. The traditional territory of the Amis include the long, narrow valley between the Central Mountains and the Coastal Mountains, the Pacific coastal plain eastern to the The Spokesman is 37 years old and tells Coastal Mountains, and the Hengchun us that he spent all his childhood with Peninsula. the river, who provided the community its everyday food. The collective farming In the year 2000 the Ami numbered along the river was as essential to the 148,992. This was approximately 37.5% community sense as the river itself and of Taiwan's total indigenous population, those two cannot be separated in the making them the largest tribal group. The Spokesman’s childhood memory. Then: Amis are primarily fishermen due to their
coastal location. They are traditionally matrilineal. Traditional Amis villages were relatively large for indigenous groups, typically between 500 and 1,000. In today's Taiwan, the Amis also comprise the majority of "urban aboriginals" and have developed many "urban tribes" all around the island. In recent decades, Amis have also married exogamously to Han as well as other indigenous
Below : The Amis spokesman of the Xi Zhou riverside village. The Amis work on the construction sites around the modern Taipei, but when the day is done they return to their organic settlement by the river outside the city.
Amis spokesman