Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture

Jury’s Comments for the Annual Shortlist Award Winner

The research and critique of imaging technology becomes a reflection on conditions of everyday survival. YUAN Goang-Ming’s work, An Uncanny Tomorrow, extends the question from previous existentialist “distress” and “doubt” into the national reality. Through the corrosion of image veneers, the vigilant physical consciousness at the exhibition site, and the ominous dramatics of quotidian spaces, An Uncanny Tomorrow questions reality as an object in the contemplation of images and visual performance aesthetics beyond a mere thematic choice. Through a stylized visual lexicon and image poetics, the artist applies a multitude of media—including recorded images, mechanical installations, and photography—to successfully highlight the collapse of survival and shelter, the parables of disaster, and the social relationship between the sites of social activism and mediating images. Images become “spectacle” and the artist ultimately reminds us of the unseen fissures that exist in endlessly elapsing time. 

Comments on the Finalist

In the An Uncanny Tomorrow exhibition, YUAN Goang-Ming not only persists in his consistently unique creative style and image aesthetic, but also intensifies his themes of critical thought that explore the conditions and environments of daily life. Contemporary issues that concern the collapse of survival and shelter, metaphors of nuclear crises, and accusations in the student movement-- are elevated using a variety of new media and interdisciplinary creative methods including recorded images, mechanical installations, and photography in a stylized visual lexicon and slow motion visual poetics. The works approach and penetrate changes in Taiwan’s social trends in recent years. They characterize the era and stimulate the depth and breadth of socio-cultural contemplations in the viewer, resonating with the call for social justice. (Commentator / Chih-Yung Aaron CHIU)

Artwork Introduction

An Uncanny Tomorrow centers on the present living situations and poses the question of how people can “dwell poetically.” In the English title of the exhibition, An Uncanny Tomorrow, the German equivalent of the English word “uncanny” is “unheimlich,” of which the word “heim” means “home”; therefore, “unheimlich” refers to the sense of worry and anxiety caused by a lack of sense of comfort provided by home.

The single-channel video, The 561st Hour of Occupation, was filmed with the camera on linear cable, recording the occupation of the assembly hall of the Legislative Yuan by groups of young students who were fighting for a better tomorrow. The video slowly pans over the hall, which has been made empty through post-editing techniques. The background music reminiscent of sacred music is actually the national anthem played at half speed, transmuting the assembly hall into a church with its holy, sacrificial ambiance. The extremely tranquil image presents a spectacular scene that had exceeded the media spectacle. The mechanical installation, Prophecy, now then again makes surprising, irritating clashing noise, correlating to the video installation, Indication, in which a group of people with blurry faces persistently point their index fingers to the audience, causing a sense of bewildering embarrassment as if being forced to reflect upon one’s mistakes. It seems to remind the audience to think: what is the reason for the aggravated resistance? The single-channel video, Landscape of Energy, adopts the approach of aerial photography, creating an overlooking gaze suggestive of video surveillance, as if the audience had stepped into the forbidden area of power. The indifferent, desolate feelings in the images remind the audience of the ruins in a future world foreseen in dreams.

The looping video, Dwelling, presents an IKEA-style living room of a bourgeois household. From an unforeseen explosion, one suddenly realizes it is an underwater scene. While the blast symbolizes “destruction” as well as “rebirth,” it also refers to the safest haven of human beings, “the amniotic fluid of a mother’s womb.” The title of this work is inspired by the 1951 speech, “…Poetically Man Dwells…,” given by the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), in which he expressed his reflection on technology and awe of nature, honoring a harmonious, co-existing state of the sky, the earth, the divinities and the mortals. However, when reviewing the normal conditions in modern reality, it is simply “difficult to dwell poetically.”

About the Artist

Born in Taipei, Taiwan, 1965, YUAN Goang-Ming is a pioneer of video art in Taiwan. Since working with video in 1984, he has received a Master’s degree in Media Art from the Academy of Design, Karlsruhe (1997). With a background in comprehensive media art training, YUAN is now one of the foremost Taiwanese artists active in the world of international media art. He currently holds a post as Assistant Professor at the New Media Arts program of Taipei National University of Arts.