Swing Meandering

The Olfactory Project engages the sense of smell as an alternative sensory path and embodied experience to understand the Zeng-wen River. Distinct from visual or textual inquiry, scents are subtle and multi-layered, bypassing intellect to directly awaken subconscious memories and emotions. By gathering and reproducing natural and human-made scents across the watershed—from plant responses to land and climate, to traces of farming, livestock, aquaculture, and pollution—the project translates these olfactory signals into a sensory art experience. Artists create around "Scents of the Zeng-wen River," investigating local memory, ecological shifts, and historical narratives. Here, "local scent" becomes more than an environmental record; it tells stories of watershed transformation and co-existence.

The 2026 Mattauw Earth Art Festival transforms the Tsong-Yeh Arts and Cultural Center into a gathering realm for all living experiences across the basin. Artists Huang Wen-yuan, Lee Cheng-liang, and Wang Te-yu draw inspiration from foothill currents, the symbiotic hues of fish, and the enveloping touch of water to create large-scale, immersive installations. Intertwining family theater with high school camp initiatives, the project invites visitors to move from passive viewing into deep immersion—sensing the fluid, intertwined bonds between human bodies, the environment, and multi-species life.

Field Collaboration journeys deep into the Zengwen River Basin. Step into a specific scale of time to temporarily become a "watershed inhabitant"—sensing, absorbing, and giving voice to the lived experience of the land. Using multi-sensory tracking and descriptive mapping, the project traces the stark topographic divide between the north and south slopes of the Badlands, the shifting terrain repeatedly sculpted by river sediment, the vanishing habitats of flying squirrels in the Cayamavana tribe, and historical cartographic techniques that re-examine territorial boundaries. Starting from subtle field clues, it continuously examines the shaping force of the landscape, the vitality of species succession, the governance of state institutions, and the anti-dispossession power latent within micro-historical narratives.

Anchored by the core creation World Without Conflict, this curatorial section uses Chuanwen Mountain as its site to compose a cross-media, trans-local text. Transformed into four to six audio tracks, the piece relies on sound to guide visitors as they walk and listen around the mountain. The project extends into two complementary events: the workshop "What is it like to be an ear of a mountain? — Imaginary Listening and Walking Score Workshop" and the live performance "When Traceability Fades Away." Here, sound and performance art become physical pathways, seeking through site-specific creation to rediscover the feeling of sensing the earth and to touch upon the fundamental ethics between humanity and the world.

The Zeng-wen River meanders, loops, and folds through the low-elevation mountains. Within these geographical folds, mainstream narratives often overlook crucial details. The 2026 high school camp settles into two such folds—Daqiu Village and Guidan Creek. Using mind and body as measuring tools, students gauge grain sizes, flow velocities, and dam structures while drawing botanical maps and fisheye diagrams to document river health and human-water relationships. Guided by a three-year arc of "Connection," "Gratitude," and "Action," this year’s focus pairs gratitude with sacrifice—acknowledging that the reservoir’s bounty rests upon a system of basin sacrifices, and that true change begins with gratitude. On-site, participants feel like water carving stone: continually scraping, settling, and surging forward to shape their own rivers of life.

Could the rivers that cross Taiwan serve as learning places for elementary school students? How could editing concepts be applied to organize an entire watershed? The editing workshop of Small Things News led children living by the Zeng-wen River basin on a journey from the source's tribe to the estuary. In this river classroom, farmers, hunters, historians, artists, and educators became their teachers. Accompanied by farmers and hunters as guides, both young and senior editors explored from corners to land, from soil to river. Editors cultivated their professional skills in interviewing, writing, organizing, and editing through diverse and enlightening courses. During this exploration, lecturers and children learn and enjoy together, creating lasting river memories.

Focusing on the Tsengwen River basin, this project addresses the coastal retreat and ecological tensions driven by hydraulic engineering interventions. It adopts the "Court of Nature" as its core curatorial framework.

The "Court of Nature" is not a legal trial in the conventional sense; rather, it translates the ecological transformations of the Tsengwen River basin into the structure of a courtroom. By leveraging familiar legal logic and procedural language as an entry point, it converts the environmental damages inflicted upon non-human entities into intelligible testimonies.

Within this dialectical framework, the project re-examines the very definitions of "damage" and "restoration" between human and non-human species, exposing the fundamental asymmetry between human governance modalities and ecological realities. By cultivating nuanced, multi-layered perspectives on the non-human condition, it invites us to reconsider the possibilities of coexistence among all beings and viable pathways for basin remediation.

The 2026 Mattauw Earth Art Festival champions the "Rights of Nature"—the idea that all beings are subjects of rights—engaging international water movements through philosophical inquiry, legal precedents, and artistic actions. The initiative features the Rights of Nature Study Notes archival exhibition, detailing global case studies and action pathways from the book Rights of Nature, alongside the International Water Dialogues, which gather European and local practitioners in talks and workshops to explore innovative ways to ground the Rights of Nature in Taiwan.

In collaboration with the Southern Region Water Resources Branch of the Water Resources Agency, Ministry of Economic Affairs, the festival presents three public artworks and four artistic actions within the Zeng-wen Reservoir area. Basuya Yakumangana responds to upstream fishing culture with traditional Cou fish traps (Yungu); Chen Wei-hsuan focuses on agricultural water and land production; and Tu Wei-cheng utilizes reservoir silt as a creative medium. Following the flow of water, these works and actions intersect through fishing, agriculture, and material cycles, establishing the reservoir as a pivotal site for observing the negotiations and connections among the basin's multi-species ecosystem.

Centering on the Zeng-wen River basin, the Watershed Film Festival unfolds along Tainan’s urban core, historic streets, coastal zones, farming villages, and foothill settlements. The featured films span geographic terrains ranging from foothill zones like Nanxi and Balin to the banks of the Zeng-wen River, the street blocks of the West Central District, Sicao, and the Taijiang Inland Sea, weaving together urban transformations, river memories, local life, and the natural environment. Emerging from distinct landscapes, the films document how waterways reshape the land while observing how people gradually forge deep, complex emotional bonds between rivers, settlements, and everyday life.

Set in Pû-á-liâu, this project traces the flow of waterways to contemplate how place comes into being through relationships. Waterways are more than physical geography; they weave together village life, collective memory, and multi-species co-existence across the basin. Through sound, video, fiber, and walking, artists and residents jointly translate local experiences, allowing the sense of place to continually emerge through the intertwining of people, environment, and time.

Carrying forward the "Vegetation Project" from the 2022 Mattauw Earth Art Festival, this initiative takes the riverside settlement of Balin as its base, focusing on plant ecology, farming wisdom, hydrological environments, and local life. After four years of maturation, the action model shifts from "collector" to "fermenter." Through long-term residency, physical labor, stewardship, and patient waiting, local relationships and knowledge undergo deep transformation. The project centers on three historic sites—the Balin Workstation, the Zeng-wen riverbed, and an abandoned general store—using artistic actions to participate in their cycles of decay and rebirth.

How do we traverse the geological strata of Zuozhen? We step into the terroir and landscape, seeking directions from the sea that once was. Zuozhen’s geology forms a rich transition zone, spanning deep sea, shallow sea, intertidal zone, to river alluvium, making it a unique ecological corridor of dual spatiotemporal transformations. Drawing from the concept of "Deep Time" interpreted by natural history writer Robert Macfarlane, we look to the fissures of folded strata, badland topographies carved by water, and the pulse of marine and terrestrial fossils—seemingly static objects that vividly manifest traces of vital force. The exhibition presents six artworks mapped across four walking paths: Path of Humanity, Path of Mountain and Sea, Route of Strata, and Route of Earth Kilns. We invite you to step into Zuozhen’s strata with your own feet and traverse the multifaceted foothill landscape across nature, ecology, culture, and history.

Taking the foothill settlements along the Zeng-wen River Basin as its writing site, the Foothill & Riverside Field Notes Lab is an evolving platform for local knowledge. Through field research, community participation, artistic co-creation, and sensory collection, it records memories of the land, flora, climate, and daily life. From orchard landscapes and seasonal scents to local lore, every walk, harvest, and creation marks a new beginning in knowing the land. More than an exhibition venue, the lab is an artistic method for connecting people, land, and nature to co-write a contemporary countryside journal along the hills and rivers.