Friend from the otherside
The World, Sitting Right in Front of You - High school Culture exchange
The countries in their textbooks suddenly walked into the classroom. An anthropologist, a geographer, an artist and a landscape architect, from four countries, sitting in a junior high school in Taitung, answering every single "why."
In the summer of 2023 I invited four friends, from Ireland, Norway, Sweden and the United States, to Baosang Junior High in Taitung. The students fact-checked their geology books against real people: Irish history, polar nights, "Do people in the Arctic eat ice cream?" The questions drifted happily from geography to daily life, and at the end the children traded doodles from their notebooks, and their own imaginations of the world. The journey went beyond the classroom. There was a briefing on tourism strategy with the Penghu National Scenic Area Administration, a visit to local farmers supermarket, and a stop in Chishang, standing waist-deep in rice fields. Our friends brought their professions and took home the landscape. The children took home something else: the world isn't in a textbook. Sometimes it walks in and sits down in front of you.
“Do people in the Arctic eat ice cream?”
2023.06
In collaboration with 寶桑國中美術班 / Brona Keene / Bertine Tønseth/ Ida-Johanna Lundqvist/ Miles Hamaker / Shiau Yun Lu