The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Your gallery, TKG+ in Beijing, presented a retrospective of your work this year. Reflecting on this, what are your thoughts about the path you have taken since your first solo exhibition in 1992? 1 The exhibition in Beijing displayed a part of my representative works between 1992 and 2011. 1992 was the year I had my first solo exhibition, with the main work from that exhibition being the video installation Fish on Dish 1992. Almost all of my works are related to my life experience, and many images in my work come from elements of daily life. Aside from utilising these images to reflect reality, they also invert the preconceived notions of representation, producing a different speculative space for viewers to gain new sensory experiences between the familiar and foreign, while also achieving a new ‘observed’ reality. In the ‘City disqualified’ series of 2002, I wanted to present a Ximending 2 without any people and cars. The name of Ximending is a product of the history of early Japanese colonisation, but has recently been referred to as the ‘Harajuku of Taipei’. But why link the two together? These terms project a ‘delocalisation of place’, suggesting a mixed and malleable city. By eliminating the people and cars, ‘City disqualified’ attempts to create a city that lacks historical memory and is ambiguous in its identity, while also alluding to the distrust of modern civilisation. In 2006, I established my permanent residence in a deserted building. Facing emptiness and desolation all around me as I worked to create a home, the building seemed to occupy a place in my mind. Abandoned furniture, books, clothes and decorations in nearby abandoned buildings all recall the history, lifestyle, and atmosphere of a home, while making me wonder what the original residents are doing now. The feeling of history imparted by this place continually leaps between the past, present, and future. And yet this ‘past home’ becomes a contrast to the ‘home that I am establishing’, and so in 2007, I produced the work Disappearing Landscape — Passing I , drawing from the things happening in my life. Building on the ‘elimination’ concept from ‘City disqualified’, I transformed that to ‘disappearing’, to filming my family, including my father, in the home that I have created in ruins. In 2009, four months after the birth of my first child, my father died of stomach cancer. For those four months I faced the incompatibility of a new and a fading life, while imagining my child’s future and retracing my father’s past. The reality of this life experience prompted me to make Disappearing Landscape — Passing II 2011, but the work divulges more about concepts of ‘family’ and ‘passing’. The family scene and camphor tree in the work suggest a sense of warmth, while the reconstruction of my father’s reading room provides a meditation on time and memory. The ruins, the sea, and the speed of the car remind us of a subconscious anxiety about the unknown and loss or passing, simultaneously highlighting the circumstances of ‘nature versus human-made’ and ‘civilisation and ruin’. In Disappearing Landscape — Passing l and Passing II you have experimented with combining video art and cinema through the creation of micro-narratives. What has prompted this new direction in your work? Since the beginning of my explorations with video in 1984, the possibilities of video art have been a constant concern, including the format and the interactions within its parameters. In part, the ‘conceptual’ and ‘non-narrative’ qualities of video and the formalities and distinctions of ‘cinema’, coupled with a change in my life after 2006, which had a direct impact on the way I think about the world, have forced me to search for a more appropriate mode of expression. And so, in 2007 I experimented with a form of image-making between cinema, documentary, and video art, in an attempt to accurately express my thoughts at the time. In the work Disappearing Landscape — Passing II , I utilised cable cameras to document my home and the surrounding environment. These three cameras create a panorama view, shifting in constant linear motion, similar to the act of scanning, gazing at my daily life. Micro-documentation automatically implies micro-narrative. These changes have prompted the production of Disappearing Landscape — Passing II , while encouraging explorations in formerly uncharted parts. In another sense, the work, presented in a theatre format, embodies my experiences of the birth and passing that my family encountered in the span of four months, as seen through the inclusion of the reconstruction of my father’s study, which is a surrealist dreamscape for me. Interviewed by Amanda Slack-Smith, July 2012. 1 ‘Disappearing Traces’, TKG+, Beijing, 21 April – 27 May 2012. 2 Located in the Wanhua District of Taipei, Taiwan, Ximending is an important consumer district highlighting Taiwanese fashion, culture and nightlife. It also features Taiwan’s first and largest pedestrian zone, which is featured in the 2002 ‘City disqualified’ series of digitally altered photographs and digital projection. YUAN GOANG-MING An interview 217