The 4th Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition 2014 (2014 TIVA) – "The Return of Ghosts" can be seen as the sequel of the 3 previous exhibitions. With the curation of "Dwelling Place", "Eattopia", as well as "Melancholy in Progress", Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition has accumulated the depth and width for discourses on contemporary living agenda and the development of modernity. This year, "The Return of Ghosts" attempts to explore the narrative possibility beyond modernity space, so as to review the modern world constructed by modern narratives, globalization, and Neoliberalism. Modern history in the era of globalization absorbs the scientific language and the rational dialectic logic from the West in the process of modernization, becoming a tool that shapes the world. With such knowledge structure, the theories and practices such as animism, supernaturalism, witchcraft, spirits and ghosts are easily belittled as myths or pseudo-science and therefore are excluded as outcasts. The study of the return of ghosts is a de facto endeavor to develop non-modern video narratives.

In recent years, "Animism" has become a hit in the art society of the West as an instrument to comprehend the cultural structure shrouded by western modern society and to probe into the fetishism in contemporary consumer culture. Nonetheless, "Animism" in Taiwan and other non-western societies, though excluded by college and intelligentsia, is an open landscape in the life of commoners. Thus, the discourse on animism and spirits in Taiwan has its own contextual distinction which needs to be sorted out. For Taiwanese artists, spiritual world is not some shrouded, veiled history enigma, but a living cultural space filled with common, bodily experience. In the face of such distinction, the artists from Taiwan and Asia region tends to treat spiritual entities such as ghosts as a kind of narrative approach toward historical document as well as political reality.

"2014 TIVA" has more than 30 invited and selected artists (artistic group) participating in the event. The largest scale in this series exhibition. Furthermore, this exhibition aims to construct spans of timeline as well as of the device of moving images. The works exhibited include Jean Rouch’s Ethnographic film "Les Maîtres fous" (1955), Philippine director in the 80s, Kidlat Tahimik's experimental film "Turumba" (1983), Taiwanese director in the 90s, HUANG Ming-Chuan's independent film "Bodo" (1993), and the moving images and multimedia artworks of contemporary young artists from all corners of the world. The platforms that screen the moving images include 16mm film projectors, CRT TV sets, digital projectors, and i-Pads with interacting function. The screening space, in addition to the Museum itself, includes a square in front of a temple, Lo-Sheng Sanatorium and Hospital, Ankang Detention Center in XinDian, common space in YiLan, and the mobile theatre at the shooting site, suggesting the possible historical narrative space which screening technology may occupy. "The Return of Ghosts" tries not only to depict the departure from the western narrative of modernity, but also to return to the level of image aesthetics. Summoning via the power of time, space, device, language, and issues, we hereby invite audience to come to appreciate the phantom nature of images and to witness the ghosts of modern history possessing within.

Born 1966 in Chayi, Taiwan. In 1998, GONG graduated from the Department of Philosophy of the National Taiwan University with his dissertation "Dialectics between Body and Imagination: Nietzsche, Husserl, Merleau Ponty". After teaching positions at several universities in Taiwan, in 2007, he was appointed associate professor and director of the doctoral program in art creation and theory at the Tainan University of the Arts. From 2009, he also organized the quarterly art magazine Art Critique of Taiwan (ACT), as chief editor and chairman and established it as a public journal. One year later, in 2010, ACT won the Prize of National Publication as Outstanding Cultural Magazine. GONG is also acclaimed as Chinese translator of writings by Gaston Bachelard, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Carl Gustav Jung into Chinese. Besides his research, GONG is engaging with curatorial activities. In 2013, he curated the exhibition "Are We Working too Much?" at the Eslite Gallery, Taipei. In 2014, he curated the Asian art forum, "Absolutely Impure East-Asia Forum: POST News/Art Against Black Box—Tainan/Tokyo Exchange Project", Tainan; "residency east-asia dialogue (r:ead) #3", Tainan; and "The 4th Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition 2014 - The Return of Ghosts", Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei.

Nobuo TAKAMORI, born in 1985, an independent curator, a lecturer in Taipei National University of the Arts, and a Ph.D. candidate in the Institute of Applied Arts, National Chiao Tung University, currently lives and works in Taipei. TAKAMORI excels at the observations on the cross-culture and contemporary arts in Asia. The exhibitions he curated were mostly involving issues on local, ethnic minorities, interdisciplinary, historical memory, etc. He established in 2010 and runs a curation group "Outsiders Factory", curating numerous exhibitions including "Post - Actitud" (Ex Teresa Arte Actual, Mexico City, Mexico, 2011), a Vietnamese & Taiwanese Artists Exchange Project "South Country, South of Country" (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Tainan, Taiwan, 2012), "Sommerreise" (GlogauAir, Berlin, Germany; Main Exhibition "Urbanscape in Tainan", Artist Fair Taiwan, Tainan Cultural & Creative Industries Park, 2013), "The Lost Garden" (Eslite Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan, 2014), and "The 4th Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition 2014 - The Return of Ghosts" (Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei, 2014).