To Walk with the Goddess
與媽祖同行
Each year, hundreds of thousands of devotees follow 媽祖, the Goddess of the Sea and Taiwan’s beloved protector, across 400+ kilometers of city streets and rice paddies, without a fixed route. The procession moves spontaneously, guided by palanquin carriers who divine her will in real time. There is no central organizer, no map.
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Though rarely named as such, Baishatun is one of the world’s most expansive unscripted choreographies. It’s also a profound expression of decentralized care: volunteers feed pilgrims, offer beds to strangers, and tend to blistered feet. Over nearly two weeks, a civic commons emerges, fueled not by spectacle, but by improvisation and relational attunement.
It enacts what contemporary art often theorizes: collective ritual, embodied knowledge, care as ethic. But it’s lived, not theorized. It offers a radical counterpoint to Western frameworks that aestheticize care without sustaining it, or treat collectivity as posture rather than practice. It models kinship with land and one another. It asks: what becomes possible when distributed care drives form?
Over 2025-26, I am conducting immersive fieldwork and research onTaiwan’s histories of colonialism and resistance to show how Baishatun is not only spiritually potent, but politically instructive. It offers insight into how communal art-making can be emergent, devotional, anti-institutional—positioning culture not as commodity or commentary, but as infrastructure for collective life.
