Liu Yu

The Ship of Fools Mooring at the Train Station

“Ship of Fools” is a literary term derived from Sebastian Brant’s 1949 satirical allegory of the same name. The work tells the story of a wandering vessel with 111 fools aboard; each of whom represents a social issue. The Ship of Fools Mooring at the Train Station is a two-channel video work by artist Liu Yu, concerning the community of people residing on the fringes of society at Taipei Main Station. Taipei Main Station is a train station in Taiwan’s capital that has also become a gathering spot for more than two hundred transient people, including unemployed workers, disabled people, and those struggling with mental illnesses, who have been ostracized from society. Taipei Main Station has thus become a sort of ‘ship of fools’, bringing together and offering a sanctuary for those who have been abandoned and discarded by the system. As decades have passed, these diverse people facing both external and internal obstacles have become a structured community, with an organized hierarchy, divisions of labor, and their own history. 

Starting in 2014, Liu Yu began getting to know various people that have been alienated from the general population in Taipei. Liu participated in the NGO Homeless Taipei in order to better understand the ways in which NGOs support the unhoused population in the city. Among other projects, she sketched the portraits of unhoused people and documented their personal stories. This process led her to the community at the Taipei Main Station. During her time spent at this train station, Liu gradually began to grow her own network, shifting her perspective on its inhabitants. Through this project, the artist came to realize that the inhabitants of the train station were not aboard the ship of fools, rather the passengers on that ship are those who participate in the marginalize these people by subscribing to the binary ideological value systems that judge who is deemed useful and worthy in society.