Asia
Gao Mingyan
Come on
2008
Come on
The television monitors utilized in the video installation Come On ostensibly serve as playback devices for a multi-channel installation of clips from blockbuster films as part of a larger commentary of mass entertainment and its relation to consumer cultures. Arranged in a grid, however, the monitors begin to resemble closed circuit security systems, evoking associations of surveillance and policing. More than just casual documents of the every day, Gao’s video works carry a subversively political charge and force viewers to reconsider their own relationship to media and perception.
Gao Mingyan produces video based-works that examine the political and epistemological violence of our contemporary moment. While his work may seem to document the everyday and mundane, he is decidedly interested in how the dissemination of popular media affects our perception of social tensions and anxieties. His practice stems from the belief that our contemporary moment is defined by a constant state of warfare in which epistemological forms of political and economic warfare inflict as much harm as live ammunition. His work, by extension, considers how even our physical movements throughout social space can be marked as forms of trespass.