"WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO DO BESIDES ART? — Chen Hui-Chiao and Glitch's Chang Wen Hao in conversation with Sih-Yu Chen of ARTouch.
gdm is delighted to share Chen Hui-Chiao's recent feature in ARTouch. The coverage presents the artist in conversation with Glitch's Chang Wen Hao and Sih-Yu Chen of ARTouch, expounding upon the two artists' experiences of over 30 years operating independent art spaces.
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In the second half of 2025, Taiwan's contemporary art spaces appear to be at a significant historical juncture. The article seizes this moment, through a dialogue between Chen Hui-Chiao, a founding member of IT Park, and Chang Wen Hao, the operator of Glitch, to explore the evolution of spatial operational strategies and the independent spirit over a 30-year span, and how this mirrors the changes in Taiwan's arts and cultural environment.
To understand the differences in spatial operational strategies, it might be useful to first return to the social contexts at the time of their founding. 1988 was the year IT Park was established, a period when Taiwanese society had just emerged from martial law, and the art environment was still dominated by conservative government-run exhibitions and a gallery system focused primarily on commercial painting. Chen Hui-chiao recalls that IT Park's founding was less about "operation" and more about creating a "stage." At that time, she, along with artists such as Tsong Pu, Liu Ching-Tang, and Huang Wen-Hao, met at Jun T. Lai's studio and collectively felt a lack of exhibition space. Commercial galleries at the time did not accommodate installation art or highly experimental works; if artists wanted to present such work, they had to find their own venues. IT Park emerged precisely to fill the "gap for experimental aesthetics" that the mainstream system could not absorb.
Chang Wen-Hao recalls his first encounter with IT Park, coming from a non-art background himself. For him, IT Park represented a free creative atmosphere, where artists engaged in various interesting experiments, and mediums were no longer confined to traditional painting. This initially shaped his imagination of the art world. However, compared to the physical space experience, Chang believes what influenced him most was IT Park's online "art archive." In an era before widespread internet information and when personal records were hard to find, the website established by IT Park played an extremely crucial role in historical documentation.
Excerpt from “WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO DO BESIDES ART?”─IT PARK's Chen Hui Chiao and Glitch's Chang Wen Hao: A Dialogue on 30 Years of Operating a Space (translated from Chinese).
Text courtesy ARTouch.
Images: Chen Hui-Chiao, A Room with a View, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 2021 (installation view)
