The project brings together the artist’s latest video installations, whose production is based on a principle of radical DIY. Designing his own tools inside game engine, Li Yi-Fan develops his works through a constant process of experimentation with machines, making each project a long and meticulous process. Last Warning thus marks a milestone, offering both a
glimpse into a practice in constant evolution—always ahead of its own obsolescence—and a reflection on our relationship with the virtual, caught between fascination, saturation, and disorientation.
The warning came too late. It flashed across our screens, repeated to exhaustion, stacked among notifications, slogans, and obsolete urgencies. Like a system alert ignored for too long, it lingers in the background of a world that has grown accustomed to its own chaos.
With his video installations, Li Yi-Fan does not just observe the virtual—he creates it in order to deconstruct it. His approach is as much that of a hacker, infiltrating existing structures, as of a digital craftsman. He designs his own tools, writes his own code, and subverts software languages, bending them to fit his own system. The artist, both creator and actor, is everywhere. And yet, his control is limited. The image retains its autonomy, constrains possibilities, and forces its creator to negotiate with glitches and bugs. Video thus becomes a space of negotiation: between interface and gesture, who really decides?
There is play in Li Yi-Fan’s work—in both the literal and figurative sense. From the iconic “Big Boss” battles of final levels to the familiar gestures of gamers, and even the landscapes of certain video games, the artist multiplies references to these digital spaces where the illusion of choice is governed by invisible rules. His omnipresent voice guides us, shifting between seriousness and dark humor.
This Last Warning is far from a solemn message. It mocks itself, aware of already being outdated. It exists within a continuum where accelerating speed renders every signal obsolete almost as soon as it is emitted. Its urgency is expired, swallowed by a present that is too fast, too dense, too fluid for any single signal to hold attention. Perhaps, in the end, there is nothing left to warn about—only the observation of what unfolds in this entanglement of the virtual and the real, witnessing the tipping point, taking note of the acceleration of a system caught in an endless loop.
