Multimedia artist Zhang Liaoyuan creates interactive and participatory installations, environments, and performances using commonly encountered objects in urban China. His installations have included packing boxes, locker units found in supermarkets in China, and concrete blocks from city roadways. Zhang’s best-known work to date is a three-channel video installation called Titanic (2008), in which performers navigated three different sets resembling a café, a supermarket, and a library, while being hosed down with water. Though Zhang thinks of the piece as a direct metaphor for the doomed state of modern life, he also thinks of Titanic as a demonstration of the individual ability to persevere and survive.
Multimedia artist Zhang Liaoyuan creates interactive and participatory installations, environments, and performances using commonly encountered objects in urban China. His installations have included packing boxes, locker units found in supermarkets in China, and concrete blocks from city roadways. Zhang’s best-known work to date is a three-channel video installation called Titanic (2008), in which performers navigated three different sets resembling a café, a supermarket, and a library, while being hosed down with water. Though Zhang thinks of the piece as a direct metaphor for the doomed state of modern life, he also thinks of Titanic as a demonstration of the individual ability to persevere and survive.