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M+, Hong Kong, © Yuan Goang-Ming
On View
Mediatheque
Yuan Goang-Ming 袁廣鳴
The Cage 籠
1995
The Cage by Yuan Goang-Ming exemplifies the Taiwanese artist’s early forays into video art, a field in which he is now considered a pioneer. At the time of its production, Goang-Ming was living in Germany. We see views of his neighbourhood through the bars of the birdcage, as Yuan takes his small songbird for a stroll, beginning in his house and meandering through sunny, tree-lined suburban streets and parks. The camera angle grants us an odd vantage point, as we look upward from the bottom of the enclosure. It seems to be a play on words with the filmic technique of a “bird’s eye view,” meaning an aerial shot from directly overhead. Here, we have the opposite; and, we do not even occupy the vantage point of the songbird, since our view is below the creature’s.
At the beginning of the walk, the bird abandons its perch to find grounding at the base of the cage. As the video progresses, the presence of the bird’s body becomes less discernible as Yuan simultaneously twirls the cages and intensifies the camera speed, throwing us into a frantic, disorienting spin. The artist then jolts us in the opposite direction, depicting the same movements with slow motion. The final frames of the work consist of total blackness; all we can hear are a few worried cries from the bird.
For the majority of the piece, we see Yuan’s disembodied arm holding the cage from below, such that it resembles the arm of a mechanical crane. Here, we see the artist’s long-standing interest in the boundary between technological and human consciousness.
At the beginning of the walk, the bird abandons its perch to find grounding at the base of the cage. As the video progresses, the presence of the bird’s body becomes less discernible as Yuan simultaneously twirls the cages and intensifies the camera speed, throwing us into a frantic, disorienting spin. The artist then jolts us in the opposite direction, depicting the same movements with slow motion. The final frames of the work consist of total blackness; all we can hear are a few worried cries from the bird.
For the majority of the piece, we see Yuan’s disembodied arm holding the cage from below, such that it resembles the arm of a mechanical crane. Here, we see the artist’s long-standing interest in the boundary between technological and human consciousness.
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