This exhibition is meant to reflect the price that our environment has paid and what the conventional structures including culture、society、morality、religion are losing to a global giant system. And we believe that Micro Cities might be the way to lead us back to “Paradise Revisited”.

Taiwan’s modern cities demonstrate the contrast of large metropolises and small townships formed during the industrialization over the last century. The traditions, beliefs and social systems that people relied on in agricultural societies collapsed along with the industrial growth. Farming villages were evacuated, cities swelled. Imbalance has become the destiny of modern civilization. High-rise buildings symbolize not only our worship of technology but also the consequence of large systems annexing small systems.

The magnetism of metropolises and desertion of rustic villages are the results of the relationship between capital and labor in the industrial age. Self sufficient country living with a complete cycle of production-consumption-decomposition in a community with a population in the thousands no longer exists. Instead, the formation of hyper cities has created a universal homogeneity.

A small, self sufficient city with a complete cycle of food, energy, waste and information is able to face the individual needs of its people; and is able to develop an autonomous organic entity with a sustainable metabolism. Such a city can also co-exist inside or outside to any Meta-city.

We call such a city a Micro City.

A Micro City is also an adapted city. While many developing countries are blindly developing huge cities, we should rethink the connotation of what does it mean to live in a city. We must consider the inequality between upper and lower structures, and how disadvantageous, exploited cities can break away from their destiny. Furthermore, how can a city find its real position considering the difficult ecological, social and ethical realities of our modern world?

The intention of this exhibition is to reflect upon the price our global environment has paid for our comfort and convenience and to help us realize what conventional cultural, social, moral and religious structures are losing due to the emergence of a global, universal, singular giant system.Text by Ching-Yueh Roan