What gives comfort? What offers support? And what small moment of kitsch sparks a sense of fleeting joy? (One set of answers: break-up songs, (2023), the Berlin-based, Tehran-born Natascha Sadr Haghighian’s newly commissioned installation at the Taipei Biennial 2023, combined these elements in the tree-filled courtyard of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM). There, Sadr Haghighian created an approximately 40-minute-long sonic environment of music, field recordings, and dialogue that was broadcast by transducers located inside body-like forms perched on top of walkers. The song that inspired the work and filled the gravel-floored space—“Suddenly” (1999) by Cantopop star Karen Mok, originally in Mandarin and then translated into Minnan and Cantonese by Haghighian—was voted the TFAM staff’s favorite. Its original chords and subsequent re-recordings in different languages tug on the heart.
