CURRENT

“It all begins with the clouded leopard skin . . . ” —WU Ming-Yi, “The Clouds Are Two Thousand Meters Up,” from The Land of Little Rain

Where mist and memory meet at two thousand meters — a story of seeking…

The Museum of National Taipei University of Education (MoNTUE) continues to explore the possibilities of bringing the languages of technology, literature, and cinema into the art museum, asking how a contemporary museum might become a space that breaks free of the frameworks of narrative and medium. Following its 2023 exhibition “The Man Who Couldn’t Leave ,” MoNTUE once again joins forces with director Singing CHEN to present The Clouds Are Two Thousand Meters Up, a single-user, free-roaming VR work conceived by Taiwan Public Television Service, directed by Singing CHEN, and built with entirely new technology. Adapted from WU Ming-Yi’s short story of the same name, the work received the Grand Prize in the Venice Immersive section at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival in 2025. The exhibition is curated by LIN Mun-Lee, with Singing CHEN and WU Ming-Yi as lead creators, and is co-organized by MoNTUE and the Taiwan Public Television Service. It not only translates the novel’s journey in pursuit of the unseen into a near-future visual reverie through virtual reality, but also builds a path that flows between the physical and the virtual through the interweaving of light, sound, and scent.

Across the three floors of MoNTUE, this search unfolds along an axis of perception. Departing from the writer WU Ming-Yi’s text, the third floor and the basement level transform into the experiential field of Singing CHEN’s VR work The Clouds Are Two Thousand Meters Up, where visitors follow the protagonist into dreamlike scenes—a surreal labyrinth of the subconscious, mist-wreathed mountain forests, and tree hollows—on a journey of seeking and healing. The second floor moves from “Heart Turns to the Mountains” through “Body Dwells in the Mountains” to “Soul Is the Mountains”: humanity’s longing for the high peaks is made visible in images captured over several years by the automatic cameras set up by ecologist Dr. CHIANG Po-Jen. The lens sought the Formosan clouded leopard—a creature that lives on in the myths of the Rukai and Paiwan peoples yet no longer appears in the world—but it also recorded the leaping vitality of countless species in the shifting light of day and night. Artist Yannick DAUBY’s installation gathers the murmurs and whispers of the wild, while the galleries are suffused with a mountain-forest scent composed especially for The Clouds Are Two Thousand Meters Up, heightening the senses in answer to the question of survival and extinction.

Next, the research team led by HUNG Kuang-Chi reflects on how humanity’s exploration of unknown lands hastened the study and development of the mountain forests: old photographs, maps, and archival documents are set side by side, layering the perspectives of indigenous peoples, seekers, forestry workers, and institutions one upon another. On the other side of the gallery, a clouded leopard pelt that once hung at the door of an ecology museum becomes the vivid, living leopard of the VR work. Does the clouded leopard still steal through the mountain forests? Or does it exist only in the minds of dreamers? To seek the clouded leopard is also a journey toward self-awareness. As the sound installation created by sound artist Yujun WANG in collaboration with CHIANG Po-Jen echoes in the ear, visitors retrace the seeker’s inner path, gradually composing the collective landscape of “Body Dwells in the Mountains” where humans and other species live as one.

As our footsteps turn from the living ecology of the mountain forests toward a place where knowledge and spirit are remade, we enter “Soul Is the Mountains.” Here the gallery overlays the study of the wife of the novel’s protagonist, Guan,  with the writer WU Ming-Yi’s actual study, creating an intertextual “double space” that recreates the inner ground of writing and research. It holds WU Ming-Yi’s book collection, his hand-made insect and butterfly specimens, clouded leopard illustrations, and the editing exchanges he had with the interdisciplinary experts while writing; over the course of the exhibition, the writer himself will hold residency events and meet with visitors. A green screen in the study lets visitors imagine the conditions under which the VR actors were filmed. The space passes from the physical into the virtual, entering the behind-the-scenes world of director Singing CHEN and the VR lead creators’ team. Visitors can survey the creative files, documents, audiovisual records, and manuscripts from the production process, along with the forest scenes of the VR experience—revealing the power by which the written word becomes images and is rebuilt as virtual space.

Where mist and memory meet at two thousand meters, in a time and space woven from literature and VR: “Rain falls between words. Perhaps rain can bring everything in the Cloud back to earth. ”