Everyday Maneuver
Tomorrow Land

  • Everyday Maneuver, 2018, Tomorrowland — Yuan Goang-Ming Solo Exhibition, TKG+, Taipei, Taiwan
    Courtesy of the artist

Everyday Maneuver is a video that presents the viewer with an unrealistic scenery. Shot from a drone, it shows a city at daytime, but there isn't a single human being in it. What seems disconnected from everyday life, and as artificial as a landscape created with computer graphics, is in fact a recording that was made during one of the annual "Wanan Air Raid Drills" that have been implemented in Taiwan since 1978. When the exercise takes place at the beginning of spring, for thirty minutes during the day people take shelter in buildings, and car and motorbike traffic is limited. While elderly and foreign citizens sense at these occasions the shadow of war, for young people they are just routine events, so it seems to depend on such aspects as age and position how the Taiwanese people deal with. The images of five locations completely devoid of people - including the busiest street in Taipei - inspire the viewer to think about the threat of war that lurks even in the seemingly quiet and peaceful daily life in the city.
Tomorrowland is another video that celebrates "tension" in a different kind of way. Here the viewer witnesses how an amusement park as a symbol of utopia is suddenly blown up. The seamlessly looped video creates an impression comparable to that of a dream far beyond reality.
Both works were realized using media technology, and consist of images somewhere between reality and fiction. They project the artist's awareness of issues related to globalization, terrorism, war, immigrants, refugees, natural disasters, economic disparity, and other problems the world is facing today. The two works may be understood as metaphors that hint at the contemporary reality of "war walking side by side with the everyday."

YUAN Goang-Ming

  • Born 1965 in Taipei, Taiwan
  • Based in Taipei, Taiwan
  • Courtesy of TEDxTaipei

At the cutting edge of video installation in Taiwan, Yuan Goang-Ming uses drones and equipment of his own making to create video pieces in which questions concerning reality hide within daydream-like beauty. Everyday Maneuver, footage of an empty city with wailing sirens captured by drone, seems to the audience both extraordinary and also somehow real. It makes perfect sense once you learn that this is the actual state of the city during military exercises held in Taiwan. His videos bring us through time and space, challenging our physical senses and revealing political questions and uncertainties that lurk in the world like fissures.

Selected Works & Awards

2016 Memories through Cycle-Images by RongRong & Inri & Yuan Goang-ming, Contemporary Art Center, Art Tower Mito, Ibaraki, Japan
2015 La 13e Biennale de Lyon, La vie moderne (Modern Life), Lyon, France
2003 50th Venice Biennial, Taiwan Pavilion, Venice, Italy
2002 4th Gwangju Biennale, PAUSE, Gwangju, South Korea

Map

Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art Gallery (8F)

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Aichi Arts Center 8F
1-13-2 Higashisakura,Higashi-ku, Nagoya
461-8525 JAPAN

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・5 minutes on foot from Sakae Station on the Higashiyama Subway Line or Meijo Subway Line.
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