Taiwanese and New Zealand musicians video dating through the epidemic (1) Photo Credit: Arlo Unlimited Taiwanese Amis musicians A-Lin (from left), Schumien, and A Luo participated in the South Island reality music program "Your Island My Home". So Arlo found music creator Suming Schumien, born singer A-Lin (Huang Liling), also from the Amis tribe in eastern Taiwan, and three New Zealand Maori musicians Maisey Rika, Troy Troy Kingi and Ria Hall started the cultural exchange between the two islands through a musical dialogue. "I used to look at the South Island from the perspective of anthropology, and I never knew what the South Island nation was all about. I thought it was a very interesting thing to do, which is to share across borders." In an exclusive interview with "Key Review Network", Alluo said, "Taiwan and New Zealand Maori are related, New Zealand is very close to us in terms of spirit and discourse, very similar to us, Taiwan's aborigines and Maori are in DNA It is very close to the language, especially the Amis, these are certified in terms of science, DNA, etc.
But I don’t know how this has anything to do with our actual life.” "I just want to pursue this aspect very much. I want to exchange it and see what the difference is. Taiwan and these South Islands are all related, and the language and culture are actually the same. If there is no pursuit and no real application, this thing is dead.” So in 2019, A Luo submitted a case to the Ministry of Culture to apply for a subsidy, and started the preparatory work for “exchange students”. "The original plan was that the three of us would fly to New Zealand as exchange students and live number list in a local tribe. We would shoot for at least two weeks. We would exchange tribes, houses, and families. That is, we went to New Zealand tribes. They also come to us to exchange life, so there are two groups of filming teams.” It was just that the epidemic happened unexpectedly during the filming, and the original plan to go to each other’s tribe as exchange students fell through. "Later because of the delay of the epidemic, for half a year we had no idea what the impact of the epidemic would be." Originally, Arlo was going to New Zealand to do fieldwork in early 2020, but he was completely immobile for about half a year starting in February.
I was thinking about withdrawing from the case, but I felt it was a pity, and I kept wondering if there was a way out. Then we decided to stay in Taiwan, and it happened that Auckland, New Zealand, was also closed, so we decided to start from Taiwan, from our Let's start with a story of three." Looking back now, Arlo is still a little helpless. "Your Island My Home" hopes to reflect the musical exchange between the Amis of Taiwan and the Maori of New Zealand, the two Austronesian peoples, so the six musicians instead use social media, traditional emails, video calls, mobile phones Through simple communication methods such as messages, the islanders of the two islands have a dialogue, sharing each other's life and culture, inspiring their own musical imagination and creative inspiration, filling the vacancy in their hearts and finding themselves. "Because no one could move, our sharing turned into a video. They took pictures of the local life and culture, and we took pictures of Taiwan. From one epidemic, we can see how people on two different islands deal with it. Practical life.