街區串聯 SUPER LOCAL 鋼鐵外傳

When does steel become the fixed form by which we know it? Is it when it appears before us as something hard and heavy, or earlier—when it remains inseparable from rock strata, mineral veins, and earth? Within modern industrial systems, matter typically enters our understanding of the material world only after it has been extracted, transformed, named, and assigned a specific purpose. Once defined by human conventions and made available for recognition and reference, the long and complex processes through which steel comes into being gradually recede from view.

Throughout the history of human civilisation, fire has often been described in myth as a revolutionary force obtained through theft or bestowed by the gods. In the history of technology, it is a crucial agent that enables matter to move beyond its stable state and undergo transformation. Before fire brings iron into view, iron does not exist as an autonomous or pure substance; it remains combined with oxygen and other elements, concealed within rock strata and mineral veins. Extracted from the earth and transported to the furnace, it is transformed—through the combined workings of fire, fuel, and technical processes—into molten iron, and then, through blowing, refining, casting, and cooling, into steel billets ready for further processing.

This passage from mineral vein to steel is not merely a material metamorphosis brought about by fire. It mobilises coal, limestone, water, ports, machinery, and human labour; it also produces black smoke, slag, residual heat, and waste, all of which continue to enter environmental systems. SUPER LOCAL, the Satellite Programme of the Kaohsiung International Steel & Iron Sculpture Festival, turns to the networks of land, fire, technology, labour, and environment that lie behind steel’s familiar form and actively participate in its making.

Extending from Pier-2 Art Center into the Yancheng District, SUPER LOCAL connects six independent art spaces: A Jian Space, Orogeny Art Space, #FFFFFF, 3.3058m2 book, Sin Pin Pier, and YoYo Studio. The Kaohsiung Museum of History also joins the project as a participating institution. The exhibition shifts attention away from steel sculpture alone and towards the furnaces, factory grounds, harbours, railways, warehouses, and streets through which iron and steel have circulated. Spanning steel, metal objects, and a range of other materials and media, the works unfold multiple reflections on the formation, transformation, and movement of materials—between hardness and softness, fixity and changeability, visibility and invisibility. The contexts of land, bodily perception, and urban memory set in motion by these materials are interwoven into a fluid map of perception.

Nine artists of different generations and working across distinct practices, together with the Kaohsiung Museum of History as a historical point of reference, articulate three dimensions: “Material Formation,” “Interfacial Encounters,” and “Memory Sedimentation.”

“Material Formation” considers how materials take shape through natural conditions, technical operations, and human labour. Ming-Yu Lin allows clay, minerals, and glaze to expand, melt, flow, and solidify in the kiln, making firing visible as a process of pressure and duration akin to geological movement. South Korean artist Sujin Moon gathers local plants and, through the separation of fibres and the remaking of paper, transforms life grown in this place into thin sheets that can be carried and transported. Through fire and handwork respectively, the two works reveal materials as processes of continuous formation rather than finished objects.

“Interfacial Encounters” places architectural surfaces, metal, and human skin in a relationship of mutual reflection. Yung-Huei Amal Chao transforms corrugated metal sheeting from an architectural shell into contemporary jewellery worn close to the body, bringing postwar architecture, provisional dwelling, and environmental sensation into an intimate, wearable relationship. The metal sheet’s responses to salt, humidity, and heat resonate with the sensory capacities of skin. Yu-Ta Lin begins with bodily experiences of redness, swelling, bleeding, flaking, and renewal, treating skin as the boundary at which the body comes into contact with the outside world. This boundary further points to the power relations embedded in seeing and being seen.

“Memory Sedimentation” attends to the layered traces that industry, labour, and environmental transformation leave within a place. Drawing on his experiences of Hongmaogang, the shipbreaking industry, and his work at China Steel Corporation, Lung-Mu Hung allows discarded machine parts to carry the hard temporality and bodily memories of industrial sites. Drawing on the embodied memory of her mother’s repeated, gentle patting, Yun-Hsuan Hsu creates an extended rhythm through the interplay with looping imagery, one that continues to attune to, move in counterpoint with, and resonate with the space.At 3.3058m2 book, above Dagouding, Yu-Chen Ma, Yu-Dun Wang, and Zhi-Min Chang respond to the experience of temporary dwelling among those who have come to the city from elsewhere. Mattresses, white cloth, and ambient sound bring into view the waterway buried beneath the site, the body’s state of suspension, and a sense of urban estrangement. Meanwhile, the Kaohsiung Museum of History’s three permanent exhibitions—“Harbour,” “Railway,” and “Impressions of Kaohsiung”—provide historical coordinates for the gradual transformation of Yancheng and Kaohsiung from harbour settlements into an industrial city through port construction, transportation infrastructure, and archival images.

SUPER LOCAL is not an addendum to official history. Instead, it poses a question from the margins of established narratives: when steel has become Kaohsiung’s defining urban emblem, what experiences remain outside its frame? Following the branching networks that extend outward from steel, we can trace the repeated formation, transformation, and convergence of materials across the city. Through the connections among material, body, site, and memory, the exhibition asks: how has this seemingly hard-edged city been woven from countless material relations?