Watching: Mianhua Islet

Overview

The refracted gaze on Mianhua Islet, Taiwan's eastern de facto border, turns the concrete landscape of physical territory into a mirage of topography and politics. The fragmented image of the frontier reflects the ambivalent state of Taiwanese subjectivity. The camera slowly sweeps over the contour of the islet as if touching the country's body to ensure its existence. The ever-imaginary border that eludes, obscures, and fictionalizes the construction of a nation confronts us with its external mirrored image, as a subject and as a site, where the process and paradox of forming national subjectivity are materialized, embodied, and caught in a liminal space.