Re: Battle City Opens at Kaohsiung’s Neiwei Arts Center

What kind of creative sparks fly when familiar Taiwanese phrases such as “the glory of Taiwan,” “economic miracle,” and “doomsday prophecies” meet polystyrene foam, tissue paper, and toy models?

Survival is one long battle

Chang began making Battle City in 2010. Despite financial hardship and several moves, he kept the project going through odd jobs and occasional grants, filming it bit by bit. He wrote the scripts and drew the storyboards, directed and acted in the films, played multiple roles, and provided the voice acting. Most remarkably, he also made every paper puppet and architectural model by hand.

Completed over 14 years, Battle City grew out of Chang’s search for the “essence of art” and his effort to understand the age and environment in which he lives. Drawing on childhood fantasies of doomsday scenarios, extraterrestrials, and supernatural phenomena, as well as grounded social observation, he dismantled and reassembled the stories accumulated in his mind with extraordinary patience, turning them into model-animation films for Parts 1 and 2 and a comic for Part 3.

Still from Battle City 2: Economic Miracle, 2018–2022, video. (courtesy of Chang Li-ren)

Through the series, Chang examines the social impact of falsehoods spread by the media; appropriates society’s celebration of achievers as “the glory of Taiwan” to ask how hero worship can itself become destructive; and offers thoughts about a hollow civilization that, under the pressure of capital, values economic growth above all else. With a visual language that is wry and highly theatrical, he brings the social problems and human alienation hidden in the cracks of urban life sharply into view.

This is the first house Chang made—a kind of “first home” for the project. Through several moves, he preserved on its walls the signs he could not bear to discard.

This is not a model exhibition—it is a film set

Inside the exhibition venue is a miniature city Chang built by hand. Apartment blocks, expressways, scooters parked along the curb, pasted-up ads for private investigators, and weathered window grilles all evoke Taiwan’s everyday streetscapes. The uncannily lifelike details have visitors marveling at one discovery after another—as if finding a new world—and reaching for their cameras.

Chang’s hand-built miniature city captures Taiwan’s everyday streetscapes in exacting detail, from weathered window grilles and rooftop billboard frames to scooters parked at the curb.

Battle City was filmed in this hyperrealistic model city, where it feels as though someone might step out and say hello at any moment.

Equally striking are the paper puppets displayed on the walls. Each was cast from tissue-paper pulp in the same mold, then painstakingly painted and fitted with its own accessories. In Chang’s world, every character has a fate of their own, and even fleeting bit players have a story. Letters home from soldiers and a childhood composition belonging to a police chief appear on pieces of paper smaller than half a palm; when enlarged in a photograph, the tiny writing remains clearly legible. Such minute workmanship reveals Chang’s extraordinary patience and uncompromising attention to detail.

The paper puppets displayed on the exhibition walls were cast from tissue-paper pulp. Chang gave even minor characters their own fates and accessories: Members of the military’s “Loyalty Squad,” for example, come with cigarettes, letters home, and farewell letters. The level of refinement is astonishing.

The middle-aged version of Zhiqiang comes with a smashed cellphone, while A-Mei the Apostle comes with several forged passports.

Among the police chief’s accessories is a childhood essay. When the photograph is enlarged, its tiny handwriting and “Good Child” reward stamp remain clearly legible, revealing the artist’s extraordinary patience and meticulous attention to detail. (photo by Chen Chun-fang) 

 

Because of these displays, visitors therefore often mistake the show for an exhibition of miniature models. To Chang, however, the meticulously made buildings, paper puppets, and decorated rooms are sets and props made for filming. Even the model-animation videos of Parts 1 and 2 and the comic that forms Part 3 are “by-products” of his larger exploration of what art can be.

The exhibition includes a traditional Taiwanese living room. Visitors can use the channel changer to switch among programs—all videos made by Chang—and revisit the collective memory of the days when Taiwan’s three terrestrial television networks dominated the airwaves.

Chang had regarded Battle City as complete. Yet while reassembling and repairing its urban sets for the Neiwei exhibition, he was inspired to “restart the game.” Much as a player plays a game again after completing it once, carrying over accumulated experience points, Chang created Battle City 1: The Glory of Taiwan (Second Round) especially for this exhibition. The new version reworks material created more than a decade ago, before his production techniques had fully matured, and restores scenes cut because of practical constraints, in hopes of giving viewers a more immersive experience.

The Neiwei Arts Center recommends watching the model-animation films that make up Parts 1 and 2 before exploring the rest of Battle City. That is why the screening room is the first space visitors enter. (courtesy of Neiwei Arts Center)

To understand what the exhibition is really about, Neiwei Arts Center strongly recommends beginning in the screening room with the model-animation films that make up Parts 1 and 2, rather than stopping only to photograph the city sets. This is because Chang has embedded what he wants to say in the films’ details, waiting for viewers to uncover more surprises.

See if you can find this paper puppet—the only one not displayed on the wall—somewhere in the exhibition. Chang hid it as an Easter egg tied to the animated film’s storyline.