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張騰遠

CHANG Teng-Yuan

In recent years, Chang Teng-Yuan has raised questions through his paintings and animation installations as to how humans will move into the next era.

Escape to Earth: 100 Ways of Surviving on Earth is a survival guide presented through an animation installation intended for users in the event of an evacuation to planet Earth. The animation video consists of 100 brief and concise instructional segments. Each one highlights various aspects of basic survival, showing ways to create conditions for survival on Earth by utilizing readily accessible objects. The video will be played on several downward-facing circular monitors distributed throughout the museum. With the museum as the stage, viewers have to tilt their heads up to watch the video in a movement that mimics the heliotropic nature of plants seeking sunlight for survival.

By combining human-made objects with fictitious instructions for use, the artist creates survival methods that amalgamate reality with the fictional. For the artist, the method of survival depicted in each animated segment represents a key word, and these key words are contextually connected and annotated to reflect and weave a cross-section of an unknown future toward which human beings march.

The random distribution of exhibited works creates a certain uncontrolled state and a communication lag of sorts between artwork and viewer, between viewers themselves, between viewers and the museum, and between the museum and the artworks. The neurotic sensitivities of contemporary humans, the forced growth and experience of being on display in a limited space are distilled through this absurd intentional misinterpretation of objects and contexts.