Social Movements, Music and Documentary in Democratic Taiwan

• Main Authors: Ferrand Melanie, 費曼靈
• Other Authors: Liao, Hsin-Tian
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/58uk2w

碩士 === 國立臺灣藝術大學 === 中華藝術全英語碩士學位學程班 === 106 === Taiwan is a young democracy, proud of this status acquired partly thanks to a great number of social movements in the 1980s. French people may have the reputation of protesting a lot, but Taiwanese people truly have no reason to envy them as thousands of people regularly gather in the streets of Taipei for various issues of oppression, injustice or transparency. Civil society is very active in Taiwan and supported in its propaganda by artists, who help to mobilize people for demonstrations and spread messages through their art work. Some even become mainstream, as when the band Fire EX. won the Song of the Year Golden Melody Award in 2015 for “Island’s Sunrise”, which happened to be the anthem of the Sunflower Movement from 2014. When a song calling for the youth to take to the streets wins the most prestigious Taiwanese song prize, it is a clear sign of the crucial position occupied by social movements among the sources of inspiration for local artists. Nevertheless, academic studies have yet to investigate the strong ties existing between art and activism in Taiwan. This paper is an attempt to give a first overview of some of the most obvious examples that exist. It is not an exhaustive presentation of the abundant artistic activities related to social movements but a focus on cases that best highlight the effect of social movements on the artists’ choices during the creation process.