U.S. artist's big red ball to bounce around Tainan March 29-April 7

Taipei, March 5 (CNA) A giant inflatable red ball created by American artist Kurt Perschke will be wedged into 10 Tainan landmarks, including the city's Great South Gate, from March 29 to April 7.

On Monday, the Tainan City Government Cultural Affairs Bureau revealed via an interactive game on the social platform Line that the Great South Gate would be the final stop on the 4.5-meter artwork's tour of the city.

"The RedBall Project," considered the world's longest-running street artwork, will appear in 10 locations across Tainan, five of which -- the Official Reception Stone Arch, the National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) Old Main Library, Fort Zeelandia and the Great South Gate -- have already been announced.

With Tainan celebrating its 400th anniversary this year, the bureau said that it hoped the RedBall Project's appearance at city landmarks would spark people's interest in history.

Created by American artist Kurt Perschke, the RedBall Project brings a large inflatable red ball 4.5 meters (15 feet) in diameter to a different site each day during its exhibition in a city.

Last month, Tainan's culture bureau revealed the dates of four of the ball's appearances, including March 29 at the Official Reception Stone Arch, April 1 at the the National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) Old Main Library, Fort Zeelandia on April 2, and the Spring on April 4, which is also Taiwan's Children's Day.

Perschke considers guessing the locations where the ball will appear as part of the art, writing on his website that "the person [who makes suggestions] is not a spectator but a participant in the act of imagination."

As a part of the artwork, the artist will start inflating the red ball at 9 a.m. onsite each day, and finish deflating it at 6 p.m., the bureau said.

As the RedBall Project only visits a given city once, the public should seize this once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the huge ball appear in history-rich Tainan, the bureau said.

The bureau's Director-General Hsieh Shih-yuan (謝仕淵) said the sites visited and chosen in advance by the artist align with the city's water heritage essential to its historical development.

To introduce the historical significance of the city's water heritage, NCKU also planned a historical neighborhood action exhibition scheduled from March 27 to April 10 at the University's Old Main Library.

Perschke is expected to show up at the location on April 1, the day the ball will be brought to the site, and create an artwork on site, added the university.

Since 2001, the RedBall Project has traveled to more than 40 cities globally, including Barcelona, Montreal, Sydney, and Taipei, which it visited in April 2010, according to the artwork's website.

(By Yang Ssu-jui and Wu Kuan-Hsien)

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