2025 Praxis School | A Topology at the End of History Lecture Series
Since its establishment in 2016, TheCube Project Space’s The Praxis School has organized annual lecture series dedicated to creating platforms for in-depth discussions on art, culture, and social issues. Over recent years, the series has explored histories of technology and human-object relationships, culminating in the exhibition Madeleine Moment: The Technology of Memory and Sentiment in 2023. In 2025, amidst an era characterized by daily shocks and transformations, Praxis School shifts its focus towards historical inquiry. The first three lectures, organized in collaboration with theater critic Wu Sih-Fong, will feature a lecture series titled “A Topology at the End of History,” delivered by scholar and art critic Kuo Liang-Ting.
A Topology at the End of History consists of three dialogues inspired by Kuo Liang-Ting’s first book with the same title. The book addresses two of Taiwan’s most intellectually complex contemporary theater and visual artists, employing methodologies from Henri Lefebvre’s “Production of Space” and David Harvey’s “Geography,” enriched by detailed analyses of the artists’ works. Initiating a critical debate against Fukuyama’s “end of history” argument, the dialogues are positioned within a relational discourse spanning “West-Inter-Asia-Taiwan,” inviting conversations with Taiwan’s small theaters, contemporary art scene, and broader intellectual community.
▍ Lecture Theme
In Taiwan’s post-war political context, lifting martial law symbolized the realization of democratic freedom and pluralistic openness—paraphrasing Francis Fukuyama, it was seen as the “end of history.” From the 1980s to today, spanning the post-Cold War period and the Anthropocene, we’ve remained trapped within a mindset that suggests “capitalism, however bad, remains irreplaceable.” We are experiencing a prolonged end. Yet, as Henri Lefebvre stated, “time can only be experienced through space.” So, what kind of spatial structures has neoliberalism built to erase experiences of time and diminish our imagination for the future?
Since the end of martial law, theater director Wang Mo-Lin and artist Chen Chieh-Jen have continuously questioned: “Has martial law truly ended?” This lecture series will traverse spaces—the city and its margins, museums, and small theaters—to explore how their methodologies, akin to geography, search for exits from the proclaimed end of history.
▍Information and Schedule
1. City and Its Margins
Speakers: Huang Sun-Quan × Kuo Liang-Ting
Moderator: Chow Ling-Chih
Time: April 18, 2025 (Fri.), 7–9 pm
Venue: Hong Foundation, Minlong Forum (12F, No. 9, Sec. 2, Roosevelt Rd., Zhongzheng Dist., Taipei; near Exit 6, Guting MRT Station)
Registration: https://forms.gle/fybh5Q9mt2euoBto6
2. Return to the Little Theater
Speakers: Cheng Yin-Chen × Kuo Liang-Ting
Moderator: Chen Ya-Ping
Time: May 16, 2025 (Fri.), 7–9 pm
Venue: Hong Foundation, Minlong Forum
Registration opens mid-April.
3. Images and Performance in Museums
Speakers: Sing Song-Yong × Kuo Liang-Ting
Moderator: Tung Yung-Wei
Time: June 13, 2025 (Fri.), 7–9 pm
Venue: Hong Foundation, Minlong Forum
Registration opens mid-May.
*photo credits for key visuals of this lecture series: Hsu Ping
▍Outlines of Lectures
City and Its Margins
Huang Sun-Quan × Kuo Liang-Ting × Chow Ling-Chih
On the eve of martial law’s lifting, rapidly capitalizing Taiwan formed a local “society of spectacle.” Concurrently, Wang Mo-Lin and Chen Chieh-Jen began developing their respective methods of “spectacle disruption.” Chen’s Dysfunction No. 3 took place in Taipei’s Ximending movie district, while Wang’s curated performances entitled October amid the ruins of Taiwan’s northern coastline. Each artist, from city center to urban periphery, exposed Taiwan’s urban spectacle production process, seeking ruptures within it. These fissures were quickly reabsorbed into newer spectacles, yet they allow us to observe the dynamic structure of spectacle and its ruptures.
Return to the Little Theater
Cheng Yin-Chen × Kuo Liang-Ting × Chen Ya-Ping
Taiwan’s cultural decolonization movement has historically featured two competing routes since Japanese colonial times—the Cultural Association and the anarchist “Ghost League.” Chen Chieh-Jen utilizes diverse forms of grassroots self-organization, expanding the legacy of the Cultural Association, while Wang Mo-Lin deeply investigates “how the colonized perform,” continuing anarchist Zhang Wei-Hsien’s unfinished work. Around 2020, both artists turned to myth and ritual to reconsider historical ruptures and public connections. Both chose the Guling Street Avant-garde Theatre, prompting a reconsideration of theater’s role within the contemporary society of spectacle.
Images and Performance in Museums
Sing Song-Yong × Kuo Liang-Ting × Tung Yung-Wei
Revisiting post-war art history reveals that the notion “capitalism is the ultimate system bringing maximum democracy and freedom” materialized earlier in museums than society at large. Museums during the Cold War foresaw an “early end of history.” Facing museums, institutions ostensibly open to all critique, how does one critique the institution itself? In the 2016 Taipei Biennial, Chen Chieh-Jen’s Realm of Reverberations and Wang Mo-Lin’s Hermeneutics of Hamletmachine contextualized museums within histories of colonial exhibitions, exposing invisible and excluded elements within these grand spectacles. Their work reveals that exhibition mechanisms simultaneously obscure; the end of history has its own history.
