Yuan Guangming (Yuan Goangming)

Private Collection, Taipei

Liverpool, International Liverpool Biennial, September 18-November 28, 2004, p. 216, illustrated in color

This work is in excellent condition. There are no visible condition problems. It is mounted on aluminium.
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Taiwanese artist Yuan Goang Ming works predominantly with digital photography, video and new media and is among the strongest voices of new media art in Taiwan.  Although they are powerful tools for contemporary artists, digital and computer technologies bring their own set of problems: in transferring video footage to digital media via computer, for example, frames are often 'dropped' or lost in the transfer (although this is entirely dependent on the power and processing speed of the computer).  The potential for elements or even whole sequences to be 'lost' - or purposefully removed - fascinates Yuan Goang-Ming, and City Disqualified - Liverpool (Lot 267) is one extraordinary manifestation of his interests.

Taking more than 300 photographs over the course of two weeks from the top of one of Liverpool's landmark buildings, the St John's Beacon (Radio City tower), Yuan produced a large-format, high-resolution digital film depicting the urban landscape.  Seen from a high angle, distinctive architecture, street layout, lights and signs clearly mark the place as the city centre of Liverpool. But the silence of the scene is strangely disconcerting, and it quickly becomes apparent that something is amiss: every vestige of human presence has been painstakingly removed by the artist.  No cars, no people, just an empty urban landscape - an incomplete city, a city disqualified.

Is it possible for a city to function in any way without its cast of players? Advertising, for example, relies on its viewers and has no function without the potential to evoke desire on the part of the viewer for some product or (un)necessary consumable.  Without viewers, advertising becomes redundant, disempowered.  In removing the human trace from a living city - Yuan proves that it is the human presence that gives any city its life.

Developed for the Liverpool Biennial in 2004, City Disqualified - Liverpool references an earlier work by Yuan in which he turned his meticulous surveillance techniques on one of the busiest intersections in Taipei, the principal city in which this increasingly international artist continues to work today.

Adapted from an essay by Adrian George.