Interview in Artfractures Quarterly

http://www.artfractures.com/journal/


Private Public Interface:
An interview with the artist Lan YuanHung
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Robert Priseman: On a practical level, what kind of equipment do you prefer to use to make your images with?

Lan YuanHung: I feel more competent with digital media, and most of the time I really just use what’s available for me. Right now I have a passable pc laptop and a basic DSLR. When I am working on a 3d CGI project, I can sneak back into my old college for more computer power. I’d say if opportunity is provided, I’d like to try to shoot on large format film camera.

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RP: What do you feel you are trying to communicate with your work?

Lan: Initially my work is the response to the insufficiency of words. While I still very much rely on speaking and writing, I always feel limited by what one can say with words. This awareness creates an anxiety for me, and so I turn to visual forms for better expression. Some people say there’s always a sense of “quietness” in my images, and I think it’s related to this anxiety. In a way my pictures represent the opposite state of my anxiety, they soothe me and have become an obsession which drives it away.

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RP: What do you find creates anxiety for you?

Lan: Back in college, I wrote a paper on two kinds of anxiety that I thought were influencing my generation. One was about the political state of Taiwan and how we are not really China but we are also not quite an independent nation. The other was the speed of modern society and how we need to be constantly updating to keep up with the world. The former caused the issue of historical and cultural identification; the latter created information anxiety.

But then if I exclude these factors, I know I will probably still feel anxious. It’s the disturbance of the needs of human beings, something not so much about the outer world. It’s much more personal - the needs of companionship, expressing oneself, love & sex, etc. I guess my inner anxiety is how I find it difficult to fulfill these needs. This raises issues of communication.

In a way, I also use my work to probe life. Very often in the process of working, I come to understand why I feel the way I do. And I guess the subjects which really concern me, what I am unable to put into words, are my thoughts on human emotion and desire, or maybe more specifically, the failure to express emotion and desire fully. I have this feeling that people can’t live together as a whole; they live separately with the urge to communicate with each other. So it’s a bit contradictory, a constant struggle and unstable state.

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RP: This idea of living separately yet wishing to communicate is fascinating - communication being the binding glue - could you elaborate?

Lan: When I say people live separately with the urge of communicating, I mean it in a pessimistic way. I think that what people wish to achieve through communication will never happen, for it’s never truly transparent and neutral. However, I still feel people are always trying to express themselves as best they can and don’t give in. I see a kind of beauty there, a strength against the solitude and fragility of human existence.

This perhaps explains the settings and atmosphere of my images. I prefer private spaces because I am fascinated with a sense of intimacy and I always seem to approach this intimacy with a sense of exposure. I guess I am trying to reveal something inner and ambiguous, something that could correspond to that incapability of communicating.

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RP: So there is a juxtaposition of two forces at work in your images, the isolation of the individual against the group dynamic of society - is this the core idea? Is this a metaphor for you?

Lan: Yes, I like the juxtaposition. I think the reason it speaks to me is because I spend a lot of time in my room and communicate with people through the internet, not just friends, but total strangers too. I’ve been doing this for a long time and I imagine what others are like in their rooms too. I’m fascinated by how people today can reveal their private selves in the public arena from the most private of spaces. I often wonder why it comes to be like this and how it affects our minds. Of course I don’t have the answers but it certainly gives me a feeling that there’s this huge emotional flow among people that’s invisible in everyday life.

A story occurs to me here: one time I had a chance to photograph an exhibitionist, as he jokingly labeled himself. He told me he volunteers to be a nude model in art classes and he enjoys it; the gaze of people makes him feel strong instead of vulnerable, and he explained to me that it is probably because he receiving a lack of attention when he was a child. It seems that he is getting in touch with his past self by exposing his body now.

Another aspect of my work is my own personal sexual desire and fetishes, and my thinking on those of other’s. To me, sex (in the broad meaning) constitutes a major part of human existence and yet it’s so primitive and wordless. That really interests me. Maybe in the work I’ve done, this aspect didn’t show much but I can see a trace of this and it will be a direction for me for my next project.

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RP: Would you care to elaborate on the theme of human sexuality?

Lan: Most of the time, I have really scattered and confusing thoughts. Sexuality is probably what’s guiding me in my work. Fetishes though, are something I see as a doorway to explore on the theme of sexuality. They are like the characterization of sexual desire as well as the means to satisfy it. I once read this term “late-onset fetish” in a psychology book. It’s saying that most fetishes grow out of us as we get older and are influenced by our lives. So if I were to say sexual desire is something really deeply personal and inner, then fetishes are like its interface to the world, and vice versa.

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RP: This resonates beautifully with what you are trying to express through your work – the flow of a deeply personal state of experience out into the world of the public arena and back again.

Lan: Yes. Thank you.