Yuan Guangming (Yuan Goangming)

Yuan Goang-ming is Taiwan's most influential champion of video art.  Since the late 1980's, he has been at the forefront of Taiwanese video and photography, producing a substantial oeuvre that examines such topics as constructed environments, popular culture, nature and technology.  Despite the variety of his thematic interests, one sees in Yuan's work a consistent pursuit and development of formal innovations.  Yuan has exhibited his work in numerous international exhibitions, and he represented Taiwan at the 50^th Venice Biennale in 2003. 

Yuan's 2000 work Floating is a 3 minute 52 second video of a simple wooden skiff at sea.  Shot with a fixed-position camera focused on the bow of the traditional vessel, the video image rocks in synch with the powerful waves the boat encounters, as a small pail tethered to the interior of the boat bounces and rolls about.  At one point, the skiff tilts to such extremes that it takes on water, and the deck rises vertically into the air.  We begin to sense in these improbable movements a behind-the-scenes prank to achieve such effects.  Yuan envisions the work as an allegory of life and imagines a young boy adrift and alone at sea.  Extending this image to the allegorical, the work speaks to a feeling of loneliness that is universally shared, yet it also offers the optimistic impetus to challenge the unknown. 

Floating ranges from moments of tranquility in calm seas to exuberant bursts of violent instability.  The fixed camera position puts the viewer in the imagined little boy's position, and the viewer shares the helpless feeling of passage upon an out-of-control sea craft.  Although instances of heavy lilting and swaying might invoke moments of sea sickness, the overarching to-and-fro of the undulating bow provides a hypnotic rhythm through much of the work.  As such, Yuan's allegorical video echoes the very flow of life itself:  a course predominately composed of minor ripples and shocks that is occasionally hit by a nasty rogue wave.  Floating is exhibited as a continuous loop:  although the boat periodically capsizes, the optimistic journey begins again anew.

-Eric Shiner