Tsai Ming-Liang: ‘Walker’
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Walker is an installation that features three audiovisual works conceived specifically for Tabakalera by the acclaimed Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang (Sarawak, Malaysia, 1957). The project’s origins date back to 2011, when the director collaborated with the actor Lee Kang-Sheng on the play Only You. Fascinated by a sequence in which the actor walked with extreme slowness, Tsai decided to transpose that bodily rhythm onto the screen, transforming the body into an observer that moves through different places around the world.
For the filmmaker, this pursuit of slowness connects with the figure of the Chinese monk Xuanzang, who during the Tang dynasty (between the 7th and 10th centuries), a period regarded as the Golden Age of Chinese civilisation, travelled thousands of kilometres to India in search of Buddhist scriptures. Lee Kang-Sheng embodies a contemporary version of this monk: with a shaved head, bare feet and a red robe, the character walks through the urban landscape in an exercise in radical introspection.
Since 2012, the Walker series has grown to comprise twelve films shot in ten cities, including Taipei, Hong Kong, Marseille, Tokyo, Paris, Washington DC and San Sebastian. The latest film in the series — Dust — shot in San Sebastian during the summer of 2025 in collaboration with Tabakalera, is being presented in the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera section of the 2026 San Sebastian Film Festival. This series of films is, in short, a never-ending journey, a process of deep observation that restores the lost value of stillness to the world.
Through the three works in this series selected for gallery display —No Form (2012), Walker (2012) and Journey to the West (2014)—Tsai Ming-Liang invites us to walk the streets of Hong Kong, Taipei and Marseille through a restrained perspective. By making slowness a virtue, the filmmaker reveals a different way of approaching life and observing the environment around us.
This project is part of Tabakalera’s exhibition programme dedicated to exploring the intersection between contemporary art and cinema.