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| Code Name Doomsday, Future Maneuver Yuan Goang-Ming’s Tomorrowland |
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text by Sing Song-Yong
The word “tomorrow” is clearly the keyword that links Yuan Goang-Ming’s two exhibitions within the last four years. An Uncanny Tomorrow (2014) and Tomorrowland (2018) can naturally be regarded as a series with reciprocal resonance. The inspiration for An Uncanny Tomorrow arose from the artist’s brother-in-law being trapped during the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, which compelled Yuan Goang-Ming to explore the dangers hidden throughout his home and hearth. Coincidentally, Tomorrowland revolves around a similar narrative. Through five works, this exhibition delves into the themes that interest the artist in a well-knit structure, further underscoring his panoramic perspective. Unmistakably, the new work Tomorrowland reverberates with similarities to Dwelling (2014). From the moment of explosion to the scene’s restoration, the miniature external world and domestic domain both teeter on the brink of perception and imagination through the placement of physical objects such as the sofa, floor lamp, and carpet, as well as the park bench and street light. This could be some catastrophe that has arrived too soon, or an event that has yet to occur. The continuity and similarity of the two works occurs between “too late” and “too soon,” signaling the artist’s adroitness in maneuvering images of the world. Is this not a fantasy sequel to the explosive destruction of a luxurious mansion at the end of Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970) meant to criticize consumerism and American imperialism responsible for instigating the Vietnam War? Years hence, the predicament that confronts us now is possibly even more precarious. In the post-Cold War era, every war, every influx of refugees, and every nuclear threat intensifies regional conflicts and provocations that constantly incite global mayhem, prompting artists to re-imagine a potentially more wonderful or perhaps completely disastrous world order. Tomorrowland represents Yuan GoangMing’s immediate response to the status quo.
In actuality, Yuan Goang-Ming’s contemplation on human civilization began as early as 30 years ago, in his maiden efforts About Millet’s The Angelus (1985) and Out of Position (1987). In contrast to French Barbizon painter Jean-François Millet’s L’Angélus (1857–59), which depicts the simple quietude of pre-modern peasant life, About Millet’s The Angelus is a brief respite to this classical work. The tone of the tolling bells in the work shifts from devout to disquiet, resonating like a spell that induces an unnamable rampage. Yuan Goang-Ming’s reinterpretation of this renowned Western oil painting was not conjured out of thin air. Artist Salvador Dali once pointed out that, the two peasants in the painting who pause their work at hand to bow in devout prayer upon hearing the toll of distant church bells, do so in response to a death. In the early 1930s, the surrealist master was inspired to create two consecutive paintings L’Angélus Architectonique de Millet (1933) and Réminiscence Archéologique de L’Angélus de Millet (1935), highlighting the illusions beyond reality and the specter of death. In 1963, after repeated requests by Dali, this painting — previously in the collection of the Louvre and currently at the Orsay Museum — was scanned by X-ray. To the astonishment of all, a small casket had originally been painted in place of the basket full of potatoes. The devil is in the details — a painting within a painting hidden in the draft. A continuous, rapid shift between images moving and still, fast and slow, black and white, positive and negative, About Millet’s The Angelus may be said to materialize the concealed death event: the distant bells are irrelevant to pious prayer, but are literally a death knell. The impulsive dash through the underbrush, the flickering views of the painting, and especially the parallel montages of the found footage of bleeding eyeballs and a space shuttle liftoff — all point to an imminent ill-fated civilization.
About Millet’s The Angelus paved the way for Out of Position, where Yuan Goang-Ming uses a rarely seen photo of himself as a child wearing a pair of cat eye sunglasses, alongside images of children from around the world, to reveal the absurdity of historical violence through the innocence of childhood. As with the hidden death event in L’Angélus, no image is more horrifying than actual images of a child’s shrouded corpse in Out of Position. From innocence to demise, all misfortunes have arisen from the endless barrage of massacres: all kinds of terrifying violence (World War II, the Spanish Civil War, the Vietnam War) and news events (racial conflicts in South Africa, rallies and protests, third-party movements) make their appearance. The pacing between the still images and the rhythmic sound, and the misalignment between the moving image and the singing become increasingly layered and disordered. The song “O Superman (For Massenet)” (1981) written by American artist and singer Laurie Anderson for the Iran hostage crisis (1979–81) begins to play alongside images of executions, lynching, the skinning and devouring of animals, and pornography — this song that condemns scientific and technological inventions for the loss of love and justice now crusades against a civilization of brutality and greed. Intriguingly, however, Out of Position concludes with black-and-white images of eyes wide open, with eyelids horrifically forced open by thin filaments. It is clear that Yuan Goang-Ming not only intends to confront the history of violence, but also turns the gaze toward humanity as the root of that violence in an act of political criticism.
Once examined through a retrospect of the artist’s early body of work, Tomorrowland comes into clear focus. A hand-drawn sketch by Yuan Goang-Ming hung on the gallery wall serves as an important clue. This was originally a black-and-white photograph taken on April 7, 1951, of high-ranking American military officers sitting on Adirondack chairs as they observed the nuclear testing of Operation Greenhouse. The surface of their protective goggles clearly and uncannily reflected the nuclear flash of the mushroom cloud that occurred out of frame. The relationship between technology and history was irrevocably manifested in that moment: a terrifying experiment involving a weapon of mass destruction was revealed to the world through the frame of a viciously searing photograph. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have ended World War II, but they launched another decades-long nuclear arms race between world powers. That destructive flash of light, which could not be directly viewed by the naked eye, was not only a spectacle of advanced armament, but also unfortunately a haunting specter of history. Therefore, in Yuan Goang-Ming’s eye, light has become a symbol of utter madness, threat, and annihilation. The series of explosions at the theme park in Tomorrowland is a vivid portrayal of a terrorist attack; here the artist’s criticism of global capitalism is an obvious departure in subject matter from Dwelling. On the other hand, the sudden burst of intense light in a smoke-filled room in the new work Towards Light is enough to cause viewers to experience momentary blindness, crippling them, making it impossible for them to advance or retreat. This physical immobility poses yet another challenge to the viewer in Towards Darkness — a fusion of performing arts and theater, of performance and improvisation, rarely seen in Yuan Goang-Ming’s oeuvre: in pitch darkness; indistinct sounds and jostling; the Chinese revolutionary song in the melody of Frere Jacques hummed softly in the ear; in a faint momentary spark of flint, glimpses of a Japanese colonial era soldier wearing a katana, a soldier from the Republic of China Army, and a man laden with a suitcase forced to move south…. As the absolute antithesis of Towards Light which embodies a darkroom for somber Chinese history, Towards Darkness is also an immersive live exhibition of avisuality. The artist’s covert stratagems elicit the sensory perception of the viewer, activating a certain amalgamation of physical and psychological visuality.
A dialectic between light and darkness, between perception and imagination, Tomorrowland underscores Yuan Goang-Ming’s visual, or more precisely, cinematic approach that distinguishes him from his peers. Beyond intense brightness and infinite darkness, The Strangers covertly moves along a dimly lit corridor of time, relocating the site of migration to contemporary Taiwan. A high-speed camera and spotlight installed in a train compartment films, at the rate of 1,200 frames per second, migrant workers who congregate on the platform at the Zhongli train station in Taoyuan, Taiwan on a Sunday. In the eight seconds as the train pulls into the station, the video is shot from inside the train as the frame slowly moves from left to right. In slow motion, the artist captures each face that comes into light and fades into shadows, conjuring a silent tableau vivant of migrant workers. In Yuan Goang-Ming’s early work, Kid (1994), his approach to visualizing speed and flow as the criteria for finessing the movement of the image was already palpable; this nuanced relationship between the artist’s observation and the image is strengthened in The Strangers ostensibly through the use of slow motion (in reality, this is the normal play rate of high-speed cameras). The alien sentiments of fatigue, nostalgia, and indifference — lingering between the visible and invisible, the perceptible and imperceptible, the speakable and unspeakable — are intricately revealed in the faces and stances of the migrant workers. The layered movements of the train and the camera transform the platform into a theater of interiority; the migrant workers become actors frozen in anticipation of directorial instructions.
Needless to say, Yuan Goang-Ming is a virtuoso at bringing the revolving world to a standstill. Whether a small train station or a large city, all is subject to the artist’s cinematic deployment. Taipei becomes a ghost town where everything comes to a stop in Everyday Maneuver. Warning sirens shift from loud to soft, as the bird’s-eye view camera advances then retreats, scanning one avenue at a time, and gradually panning across the deserted city. Diverging from the photography series “City Disqualified” (2001–2004), where the artist creates a no-man’s land using photo-editing technology, the uncannily deserted city in Everyday Maneuver was actually filmed during the Wanan Air Raid Drill. With the cross-strait military face-off remaining unresolved over the past 40 years, this military and civilian exercise takes place at regular intervals in cities island-wide. Evacuation procedures in response to a simulated potential future attack are enacted within 30 minutes. From this moment forward, the apparent hyperreal miniature of the city evokes the apocalyptic fable of Tomorrowland in déjà vu.
If this is not an illusion, do we still have time to run?
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Tomorrowland
Yuan Goang-Ming Solo Exhibition
3 March - 29 April 2018
Gallery TKG+
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