Why does Ximending draw such a crowd?

As a queer stronghold in Taipei, Ximending continues to attract dense flows of people, desires, and performances. When artist Huang Yenchao takes Ximending as a starting point for his creative project, he selects the ubiquitous claw machines — which have aggressively invaded Taiwanese streets — as his primary vehicle. These machines become a metaphor for the multiplicity of fast-consumed desires, and a stage upon which diverse forms of craving can be played out in real time and space.

Huang creates a “doll-person,” a performative avatar stitched with plush toys and dressed in a chroma key (green screen) suit. This hybrid figure enacts a conceptual de-physicalization, embodying a kind of haunted desire, where the doll becomes both singular and sticky — a congealed mass of wants.

The artist carries out a series of “missions” across different zones in Ximending, navigating a desire-laden maze of intersections and iconic symbols. Through these multi-site performances, he presents a high-density visual cluster — desire layered to the point of bursting, producing a sensory overload that suggests getting “lost” in the excess. The stitching together of plush bodies reveals a viscous choreography, a collision of compacted forms — a field of measurement.

At such moments, Ximending becomes an autonomous system, operating as if a mini-nation, in friction with the outside world. The doll-person’s appearances — from outer plazas to the famed rainbow crosswalk — orm a bodily excavation, entering, bouncing, slipping through escalators as if restocking and preying simultaneously. The movement produces a trembling rhythm of voyeurism and surveillance, peering into the cracks and colors of this urban spectacle.

In traversing various affective terrains, the doll-person and the camera crew together create a site of mutual capture — a live scene of being clawed, watched, and watching, where multiple subjectivities confront each other in a loop of gazes.