Entitled You and I Don`t Live on the Same Planet, the Biennial is being curated by Bruno Latour and Martin Guinard, who have collaborated on four international projects over the past four years, including 2016`s Reset Modernity! at Zentrum für Kunst und Media, Karlsruhe, where Latour is a fellow and Guinard is a guest curator.

The curators describe the exhibition as a planetarium, with each artist having their own `pull of gravity`. These include artists of the `Terrestrial Planet`, such as indigenous Taiwanese (or Paiwan) artist Aruwai Kaumakan, who used weaving to bring together her village after Typhoon Morakot, and artists of the `Global Planet`, such as Mexican artist Antonio Vega Macotela, who worked with craftsmen and hackers to encrypt information about tax evaders in large tapestries.

They argue that because our understandings of the world are now so divergent, attempts to unify us, looking back from the moon at the small blue planet we share, have actually slowed down action on ecological issues.

`What is needed now is a real-politic which actually takes seriously the ecological implications of the ground on which it stands,` they said.

In the absence of consensus, they believe we should nevertheless undertake diplomatic encounters in order to make progress.

`In the fictional space of the exhibition, we wish to multiply those encounters to mimic what would be needed in the real world,` Latour added.

One platform for diplomatic encounters is the Theatre of Negotiations, part of the Biennial`s public programme led by curator Eva Lin. Developed with scholars and students from the Taiwan Science, Technology and Society (STS) Association, participants will role-play as stakeholders in controversies that have occurred in Taiwanese society, negotiating according to their agendas in a performance akin to War Games or a student United Nations.

The full list of participating artists follows below. —[O]

Taipei Biennial 2020 Participants

Aruwai Kaumakan

Erika Balsom and Grégory Castéra (Council), with Daniel Steegman Mangrané

June Ballthazard and Pierre Pauze

Hicham Berrada

Cemelesai Dakivali

Chang Yung-Ta

Chen Yin-Ju

Cooking Sections (Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe)

Cui Jie

Em`kal Eyongakpa

Fablab Dynamic

Anne-Charlotte Finel

Jean-Michel Frodon and Rasha Salti

Femke Herregraven

DJ Hatfield

Hai-Hsin Huang

Hamedine Kane and Stéphane Verlet-Bottéro with the help of Olivia Anani, Lou Mo and Nathalie Muchamad

Jean Katambayi Mukendi

Navine G. Khan-Dossos

Franck Leibovici and Julien Seroussi

Antonio Vega Macotela

Marianne Morild

Fernando Palma Rodriguez

Mika Rottenberg

Jonas Staal

Daniel Steegmann Mangrane

Su Yu Hsin

Territorial Agency (John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi Rönnskog)

Yao Jui-Chung

Theater of Negotiations

Hsin-hsing Chen

Wen Ling Hong

Paul Jobin

Yi-Ping Lin

Wenling Tu

Chia Ling Wu

Shashank Keshavmurthy