Da-tou is a dog we encountered on the way from Duolin Station to the Deenyana Tribe during our field visit to Alishan in June this year. Da-tou had a sturdy body and shiny black short fur. Naturally, it walked ahead of us on a downhill road, maintaining a subtle distance with our group, almost like a guide. Sometimes it would walk far ahead, and other times it would suddenly turn into the grass by the roadside and stop, or it would come close to us, wagging its tail at our feet. Whenever we deliberately slowed down, we could see a black figure with a thin red collar wandering in the distance. In this exhibition called "DA-TOU," When Pigs Fly organized a collective outing as the theme. Each member proposed a recent field research location, a place for project presentation, or simply a place they wanted to visit, and took on the role of a guide to arrange the itinerary. Therefore, each journey was undertaken by a different member, taking on the task of "Da-tou" from January of this year until the start of the exhibition, covering the paths of the North Coast, Jinguashi, Hsinchu, Miaoli, Changhua, Alishan, and Hualien, amounting to a total of seven gatherings and seven trips.

If we look back at the journey of When Pigs Fly from its establishment in 2016 to the present, compared to the projects produced as a collective, the individual accumulations in the roles of artists, designers, curators, and so on, have been relatively intense and focused. However, we have consciously extended our university four-year friendship into our post-graduate lives, whether through collaboration or companionship, witnessing the changes in life, the gaps between imagination and reality through each other's perspectives. So when we are once again invited to exhibit as an "art collective," it signifies that we will return to the state of collective production, rethinking the significance of the group for each of us at this moment and the positioning issues regarding "why we are who we are" or "why When Pigs Fly is When Pigs Fly."

While discussing the possibilities and future of this collective, we have also realized that in the over ten years of knowing each other and in the practices of everyone in When Pigs Fly, there are traces of mutual involvement. Therefore, in this exhibition, we have decided to take inspiration from the past interactions and focus on the stages that each member is undergoing through the act of traveling. We will use objects, images, and words to document how these thoughts transition from personal secret bases to spaces that can be read by the audience.

In this exhibition, we attempt to rearrange the exhibition path of "182artspace" through different forms of oblique narratives. For example, the contrasting object representations, the visual footage of interviews between members, and the collective writing in printed materials all preserve intertextual relationships and individual experiences at different levels. If the audience enters through the main entrance on the first floor, they can sequentially and clearly comprehend the purpose and content of this project. Alternatively, they can choose to take the side staircase directly to the artwork on the third floor, approaching the accumulation of our perspectives and stories during the journey through imagery reception.

Just like the black dog "Da-tou," who is written into the core of our story as a Non-Player Character (NPC), reminding us that simply following our intuition and embracing unexpected moments can yield a memorable experience. Da-tou rescued us from complex and tangled conversations and accompanied us on a relaxed journey.