Marco Casagrande

Martin Ross and Marco Casagrande with a Trojan Rocking Horse in Taipei, 2004. Photo: Nikita Wu.

l was really happy to get invited to Taipei on the Move 2004, and to be able to co-operate with Martin Ross.

The whole process took shape in a rather peculiar way. First of all, I wanted to drive to Taipei from my home in Finland, where also the Alaska-grown Marty lives. Knowing the Huns and Mongolians had ridden to Europe on horses some time ago, I also thought I would need to ride a horse to China and Taiwan. This would take of course too much time and patience, so I chose a motorcycle, which was close enough to a horse.

KTM 640LC4 in Kazakhstan.

Marty agree with my plan and backed me up by taking a Chevy Van across the Eurasian continent. I rode my iron horse to the Chinese border south of Kazakhstan, where we finally faced the Great Wall and had to leave the vehicles there...not this kind of driving in the Mainland yet. So we took a bus to Urumqi and then flew the plane of humiliation to Hong Kong and Taipei.

Here, the horse thing then continued. They said in Tamkang University that my name is Ka Ma Ko and that M means a horse and I understood that my name is something like a dead-end horse. Not a very good name. Fortunately I learned soon that the Mayor of Taipei shares the same destiny: Mister Ma. Dear Brother Horse Sir! Also Martin is a horse: Ma Ti. So the obvious Brotherhood of the Horse started to take shape n the form of an urban planning strategy.

Ma Ying-jeou, Martin Ross, Marco Casagrande.

I wanted to share the heavy burden Mayor Ma carries of trying to understand and develop the city, and to follow the way of Fritz Lang in Metropolis: The Mediator between the Head and the Hands must be the Heart. Mayor Ma is the Head and the Taipei citizens are the Hands. I wanted to create the Mediator.

There was no other way of course than using the Horse as the Mediator. When it comes to city planning, the Trojan Horse is the easy and the obvious example. I agreed with the tactics of the Trojan Horse but wanted to attack the city with positive things.

One of the horses was travelling on water.

As Mayor Ma is in the centre of the Taipei city drama anyway, I decided to symbolically attack the city and then surround him - but instead of demanding the keys to the city, I wanted to hand them to him. I received the keys from the normal people, the Hands.

C-Laboratory lining up outside the Taipei City Hall.

So the Trojan Rocking Horse is an attempt to record the common subconscious of Taipei City, and to work as a public mailbox for the citizens to deliver their dreams, memories or comments about their living environment.

Later of, the data will be analyzed as the base intelligence for urban planning in Taipei, following the Fritz Lang's maxim: "The mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart."

Tuomas Makkonen, Tamkang operators and a citizen.

Human Layer_Taipei

Artists: Marco Casagrande and Martin Ross
Participants: Taipei citizens and the Mayor of Taipei

Martin Ross and Marco Casagrande in Taipei 2004.