Performing Hunger in Taiwan: Images, Objects, and Reflections

Abstract

In 1982, Hungarian-American artist Agnes Denes planted and harvested two acres of wheat on the Battery Park landfill, Manhattan, to draw attention to mismanagement, waste, and world hunger. More recently, from 2014 to the present, American environmental activist Rob Greenfield addressed food waste and demonstrated food freedom by dumpster diving and foraging. The ethos of these two examples align with Environmental Art, a general education course that I teach at Chung Yuan Christian University (CYCU), Taiwan. Environmental Art is an umbrella term for art that interacts with or comments on the environment. Among its subgenres, Ecological Art emphasizes the preservation and remediation of life, resources, and ecosystems of Earth. This article explores the online teaching pedagogy for the Environmental Art course final assignment, The Hunger Project, and its ramifications in relation to performance. Using Ecological Art and hunger statistics as a springboard, students examine hunger in Taiwan and in the global context. They consider various dimensions of hunger, such as access and distribution of food, and the question: why do the lack and the excess of food coexist? Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I and students realized the entire “The Hunger Project” online. The pedagogical methods facilitated the “The Hunger Project Website,” where students staged texts, images, and objects to visualize their reflections on hunger. Working in groups, students addressed metaphorical “hungers”, such as the hunger for being healthy, linked social class to food consumption, and proposed education as an antidote to poverty and food deficiency. This essay considers the performative and educational significance of this learning process in relation to hunger action.