VDXX – Tobie, JJ, Jonathan
Tobie Openshaw is a South African-born filmmaker living in Taiwan for 18 years. His work has been seen on documentary channels such as National Geographic, Discovery, and Al Jazeera.
Tobie’s current passion lies with the marginalized indigenous people of Taiwan, where he has forged deep connections. For the past year he has been producing a full-length documentary on the Taiwan president’s 2016 apology to the indigenous people.
In 2013 Tobie travelled to New Zealand with Tony Coolidge, where they attended the Wairoa Maori Film Festival and forged connections that are coming to fruition in various cross-cultural projects.
He is also Executive Producer at MataTV, a startup news page for sharing Austronesian news from Taiwan, in English.
攝影師自傳： Tobie Openshaw是南非籍電影工作者，至今已在台灣生活了18年，他的作品曾在National Geographic, Discovery，和Al Jazeera頻道播出。Tobie目前專注在台灣原住民的邊緣化問題，他對此議題已經長期研究並且有著深刻的聯繫。從2016年蔡總統向原住民道歉以來，Tobie便著手製作紀錄片至今。
2013年，Tobie與Tony Coolidge參加紐西蘭的Wairoa Maori電影節，接觸到許多人脈和資源，使得許多項計劃能夠順利的進行。
Tobie也是MataTV的執行製作人。MataTV是新創媒體平台，在台灣以英文分享南島語族新聞。
展覽論述：
2016年，台灣總統蔡英文為原住民在過去政權所受到的不公平壓迫，做了全面性的道歉。在此之前的幾個月，Tobie就開始採集各方說法，傾聽大家對於總統將道歉一事的期待和希望，或是多數人抱持的強烈質疑。一年之後，縱使轉型正義已有多方進展，然而在賠償的範圍，合法性和代議的推進方面，卻引起強烈的懷疑和不滿。Tobie此次的展覽不但包括原住民在現代化環境下保有的傳統生活的影像，更囊括街頭巷尾的鄰里，山居人，熱切的抗爭者和激進人士的說法，為台灣原住民不屈不撓的大無畏精神貢獻了非常重要的紀錄。
He will be exhibiting his works at Visual Dialogues XX in August 2017 at the Red Room.
Tobie Openshaw
Photography and Video
MataTV – Austronesian News from Taiwan
https://www.facebook.com/matatvintaiwan/?fref=ts
Bio
JJ is a Taiwanese animated film director who was born in Paris and raised in Brussels, Belgium, where he spent most of his lifetime -27 years- with his Taiwanese parents.
He studied and graduated in Brussels from one of the most famous national art university called ENSAV (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels) La Cambre, in animation movies directing.
Due to his upbringing, he speaks in French at a native level, fluent in English, and can speak relatively fluently chinese, although his reading and writing are more limited..
Raised in a western country, but curious about his own cultural roots, he discovered step by step the beauty of the chinese traditional arts during his animation studies days, and since then, had merged those 2 arts on several occasions in animated chinese paintings. His painting style is definitely chinese inspired (he emphasises the importance of composition within a vast blank space), although with a more modern approach, by adding in his paintings a more contemporary dynamism he learned as an animator.
After getting his Master degree in animation film directing, he came to Taiwan for more than 9 years now, and has been working on various fields such as directing animated music videos (such as the MV for DJ Code, Asia River, which won the AMP Award 2012 of best music video, and was screened at the international animation film festival of Brussels : Anima) and advertisements, working on storyboard and postproduction (FX, compositing, and editing) for a Taiwanese animated TV series and an animated feature film in 2012, and was director of animation from end of 2013 to August 2015 on a mobile phone game called Last City, now available on the Apple store.
On the side, he has also participated into the 39 hours of Tainan and the 48h of Taipei for the past 4 years, having taking part in the production of 6 shorts movies, at various levels of the process (scripts, storyboard, acting, directing, special effects, animation, editing…).
Thanks to all these accumulated experiences, he has now extended expertise on visual storytelling, and has done several workshops at various universities about this topic (Asia University in Taichung ; Becoming community, NTUA and Fujen University in Taipei ; Hsi Chien University in Kaohsiung).
The past 3 years, he gradually switched career towards another passion of his : Photography.
His background in animation (observing life in all its tiniest details in order to recreate it, and capturing movement) is a fundamental base for his photography, where he excels at capturing the spirit of the moment. It is also the reason why he much prefers to focus on street or event photography rather than still portraits.
After having been in Taiwan for a couple of years, and thanks to his good friend Tobie, JJ gradually got interested in indigenous cultures on the island, and is actively seeking to document events with them whenever he can.
His series of photographs here were taken during the 2015 Sur’Aw Indigenous Fashion Show, set in the mountains of Miaoli, in a National park. It was the last of a series of 5 annual fashion show, organized by two Atayal artists, Yuma, PHD in the research of traditional indigenous costumes, and Baunay, a photographer also specializing in traditional indigenous costumes. The organizers invited several designers not only from Taiwan, but also from Japan, Korea, and Russia, to be inspired by Taiwanese indigenous costumes and give it a modern touch.
The goal was to organize an event that blends tradition and modernity, so that young people who went to town to find work could all gather back again for a worthy project in their own birthplace, and get back in touch with their traditions while doing something resolutely modern.
Jean-Jacques Chen
chen.jien.chun@gmail.com
Bio
Jon Burke and his wife Deni moved from Australia to Taiwan in 2004. He became increasingly involved in the indigenous community, first as a volunteer photographer supporting indigenous activities and documenting social events and protests, and later as a founding member and photographer of Brightside Projects (an NGO dedicated to social welfare for marginalized groups). He also spent a year learning Atayal, the dialect of the indigenous tribe to which he is closest.
Artist’s statement
My work aims to raise the profile of indigenous culture in broader society, help give a voice to indigenous concerns, and improve people’s understanding of the indigenous community by breaking down stereotypes.
Preview of the upcoming show:
Jonathan Burke
fortigurn@gmail.com
