YU Cheng-Ta
Curriculum Vitae
YU CHENG-TA b. 1983 in Tainan, Taiwan, Currently works and lives in Taipei, Taiwan.
contact infomation: chengta227@gmail.com www.yuchengta.com yuchengta.blogspot.com +886-926-763-183
2010 2009 2008
2007 2006
Artist Grants, Department of Cultural Affairs of Taipei City Government, Taipei, Taiwan Selected Taiwanese Artist for International Residency Project, Taipei Artist Village / Unitec New Zealand, Taiwan Selected Taiwanese Artist for International Residency Project, Council for Cultural Affairs /ISCP New York, Taiwan Taipei Arts Awards (First Place), Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan S-An Aesthetics Praise-Arts Creation Support in the category of Plastic Arts, S-An cultural Foundation, Taiwan Project Grants, The National Culture and Arts Foundation, Taipei, Taiwan Outstanding Art Work Prize, Fine Arts Department of Taipei National University of the Arts, Taipei, Taiwan Kaohsiung Awards in the category of Mixed Media, Kaohsiung Fine Arts Museum, Kaohsiung, Taiwan S-An Aesthetics Praise-Arts Creation Support in the category of Plastic Arts, S-An cultural Foundation, Taiwan
COLLECTION 2011 2008
She is My Aunt, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan Ventriloquists : Introduction, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan
EDUCATION 2011 2006
Taipei National University of the Arts, M.F.A., Taipei, Taiwan Taipei National University of the Arts, B.F.A., Taipei, Taiwan
PARTICIPATED ART-IN-RESIDENCE AND PROJECTS 2011 2009 2007 2005
Artists in Residence Programme, Unitec, Auckland, New Zealand Taiwan Cultural Council of Affairs Artists in Residence Programme, ISCP, New York, U.S.A OPEN SPACE, Summer Art Camp, Kunsthochschule Kassel, Germany The New Taiwanese-Digital Witnesses, Curator assistant, Kuandu museum of fine arts, Taipei, Taiwan Nijinsky’s, Curator assistant, Kuandu museum of fine arts, Taipei, Taiwan
Curriculum Vitae
AWARD, PRIZE AND GRANT
SOLO EXHIBITION 2011 2010
OURS. KARAOKE, Chi-Wen Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan adj. Dance, Chi-Wen Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan Universes in Universe, Galerie Grand Siècle Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan
GROUP EXHIBITION 2011
Curriculum Vitae
Crystal City: Contemporary Asian Artists, The Dowse Art Museum, Wellington, New Zealand Invisibleness is Visibleness-International Contemporary Art Collection of a Salaryman- Daisuke Miyatsu, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan The Empty City, GlogauAir, Berlin, Germany Plug in X Add on: Taiwan Contemporary Art Exhibition, Rag Factory, London, UK Soceite Generale Chinese Art Awards, Shanghai Library, Shanghai, China
Artistree Taikoo, Hongkong, China Tokyo Midtown, Tokyo, Japan
Paris-Beijing Gallerie, Paris, France Haushan 1914, Taipei, Taiwan
LIVE AMMO, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan Universes in Universe: City Guide, Snowwhite Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand 2010
Taiwan Calling: Elusive Island, Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary Trap, art issue projects, Beijing, China Soceite Generale Chinese Art Awards, 798 Creative Space, Beijing, China The Seventh Taipei Biennial (screening), Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan The Practice of Everyday, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei, Taiwan Post-adolescence, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei, Taiwan Over Sees: Babel, Machon Hamayim Gallery, Givatayim, Israel Vision2: The Future that Encomprsses the Past, Tina Keng Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan Foreign Affairs: The 53rd Venice Biennale Taiwan Pavilion returns to Taiwan, Taipei Fine Arts Museum,
Taipei, Taiwan
Post-adolescence, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan Grand Opening Show, Taipei Contemporary Art Center, Taipei, Taiwan `
2009
Open Studio, ISCP, New York, U.S.A 2009 Asian Art Forum: Whose Exhibition is This?, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan The 53rd Venice Biennale Taiwan Pavilion : Foreign Affairs:Artists from Taiwan, Pallazzo delle Prigioni,
Venice, Italy
Welcome to the Desert of the Real, TungHai University Art Gallery, Taichung, Taiwan Biennale Cuvée - World Selection of Contemporary Art, OK Center for Contemporary Art, Linz, Austria Code Share - 5 Continents 10 Biennales 20 Artists, Contemporary Arts Center, Vilnius, Lithuania Socially Disorganised, Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, Australia The View From Elsewhere, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney, Australia Taiwan-Israel Young Artists Interchanging Exhibition 2, Kuandu museum of fine arts, Taipei, Taiwan
The Sixth Taipei Biennial, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan Taipei Arts Awards Exhibition, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan Asia Students and Young Artists Art Festival, Seoul Station Old Bldg, Seoul, Korea Grooving : New Wave of Taiwan Contemporary Art, Project Fulfill Art Space, Taipei, Taiwan Borderline.Mirrorlike: Taiwan-Israel Young Artists, Kuandu museum of fine arts, Taipei, Taiwan Xiao Mei Hurts, Underground Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan No Error Lost, NanHai Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan
2007
Art Party, Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan Taipei - Fukuoka Interchanging Art Exhibition, Kuandu museum of fine arts, Taipei, Taiwan OPEN SPACE, Kunsthochschule Kassel, Kassel, Germany 0 – 0, National Taipei University of Education Bombproof Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan
2006
Intermedatine, NTUA, Taipei County, Taiwan GUAN C PARK, Underground Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan
2005
Art Taiwan- The Fourth Artist Fair continues, Chinese Culture and Movie Center, Taipei, Taiwan The New Taiwanese - Digital Witnesses, Kuandu museum of fine arts, Taipei, Taiwan
Screening and Presentation 2011
Movie Night Vol. 4: Global House Video Screenings, Kunsthalle Gwangju,Gwangju, Korea Body Talks? Silence Beyond, Art Fair Tokyo 2011 Related-Program: Special Video Program, SYMPOSIA, Tokyo, Japan
WEEKENDHAUS–TAIPEI PROJECT : COLLECTIVE MEMORY, Taipei, Taiwan 2010
Lecture at Fresh Paint 3, Tel Aviv Contemporary Art Fair, Tel Aviv, Israel
2009
AMEI AMEI Gathering Party, ISCP, New York, U.S.A The Williamsburg Art Wok, Brooklyn Chinese restaurant, New York, U.S.A MUST MORE - Visual Voice from Five Asian Countries, Point B, New York, U.S.A
Curriculum Vitae
2008
The
Statement
process of imagining the relationships between different entangled forms in life, for me, involves rethinking the distance between others and myself, and beginning to determine my own position therein. In my works, I attempt to address the imagined relationship between a subject and an other, through the subtle cracks that may exist within culture, language or identity, and the differences that exist within those cracks. This creates the possibility for a new kind of relationship. I do not attempt to express the conflicts and contradictions that lie within differences, but use humour as a means to make connections, or produce accidents. In the series “Ventriloquists”, I address the cracks that exist within the differences between language systems by playing the role of a transparent yet visible interpreter who uses bodily manipulation and the voice to express a new form of politics and a new dialogue of foreign relations. I take my own video artworks as a reproduction resulted from a game. Before it turns into a completed work, i have already finished a game for amateturs. In my work, I design a game-like structure for those people being recorded. The production process is structured within an open script, in which any mistake and error is allowed. The development of the script depends on the differences among cultures and the variation among systems. In this game, I make a self-split subject to indulge itself into the game. The subject simutanenously plays multiple roles such as the avtivity orgaziner, the activity host, the participator, as well as an observer. While I bring the recorded video back for post-production, the subject turns itself into an artist who is working on the arrangemnt and the disposition of the work. I, as the subject, develop myself in the work, wraping the “object”within the well-arranged relationship structure layer by layer. What I try to emphaize in my artistic practice is the cross-cultural, cross-geographical, and cross-temporal corelation, and how it affects me. Through a series of conversations among heterogeneous individuals, I thus demonstrate a critique against a stablized rules.
Statement
Ventriloquists: Introduction, video installation, 2008, Taipei Biennial
Ventriloquists: Liang Mei-Lan and Emily Su , video installation, 2009, Venice Biennale
The Topological Foreign Affairs of Voice The “Phono – Art” of Cheng-Ta Yu Huang Chien-Hung
Essay
Cheng-Ta Yu belongs to a generation too young to have experienced the severe battle of public opinion that raged around the question of “identity” in Taiwan during and after the 1987 lifting of martial law. Nonetheless, he lives in an era framed by a host of problems surrounding the coexistence of different ethnic groups, and because of this, the special quality of his art lies in his artistic imagination being able, in a state removed from historical developments, to engage in a highly limpid and profound dialogue with the realities of society regarding history. In his works The Ventriloquist (2007), She is My Aunt (2008) and Ventriloquists: Introduction (2008), a focal point clearly emerged, which commentators have characterised as “self-fracturing political intimation”. Its form is a kind of mise-en-l’abîme: creating fissures that generate disparate meanings. For example, in The Ventriloquist and Ventriloquists: Introduction, Yu hides behind a featured “speaker” who directly faces the camera, and it is in fact Yu that then provides “voice” and “text”. A kind of inverted relationship appears between the power relationships of language and the power relationships of the body. Similarly, in She is My Aunt, audio and video that have developed dissonance due to a lack of historical connection are stitched back together, yet they also correspondingly highlight an internal inability to reunite. The political allusions in Yu’s works become a non-deliberate “surfacing” of political consciousness, or political nature. What unintentionally appears are the traces of a bio-politique that exists between incidents and phenomena. In other words, “evasion – implication” must exist within the various kinds of “self-fracturing” forms conjured in the work. For example, using familial relations to reference the extreme display of hysteria, or perhaps using the bodies and voices of outsiders to depict one’s own “fiction”, constantly creating a kind of fold, in which politicality appears in the contrast between the two sides of the fold that is formed, and also in the gap carved-out by evasive circumnavigation. Indubitably, this gap is the extra space that appears in the activation of the imagination. It causes the artist’s political concern to become vague – through this circumnavigation the artist’s “cold
Essay
feelings” toward politics are expressed, yet Yu does not consequently erect a barrier blocking out “politicality”. On the contrary, his creations allow these gaps to form virtual connections, by bringing together starting points for notions that are entirely unsubstantiated and imaginary. This new form of political art – which does not demand a homogeneity between political ideology and artistic image – directly addresses a form of “foreign affairs” extraneous to foreign affairs. In addition to creating a giant portrait of international relations, the notion of foreign affairs, in individual imaginative constructions, is an issue that involves numbers (the collective re-creation of countries) and extension (the transcendence of national boundaries). But such discrepancy has always made use of a “projective” (geometrical) method to complete the uniformity between the individual and the country in foreign affairs. Yu’s latest work, Ventriloquists : Liang Mei-Lan and Emily Su is an expansion of his 2008 undertaking, Ventriloquists: Introduction, which embarked on an exploration of a different kind of “numerical” problem. In other words, in Ventriloquists: Introduction, an unnamed self and an other, whose common nationality is unverifiable, serve as the units of extension that shift between friendly cooperative relations and the slips of vocalisation. Through numbers (vocalising individuals) the contours of a different, compound, fissured form of the self are sketched out. In other words, the artist does not treat the geometrical projective relationships between number and number, but rather allows the connections between
Essay
individual and individual to be rendered as internal differentiations, expressing a single numerality within the framework of foreign relations, or a kind of micro-foreign affairs. This “language” achieved through an “exchange of voice” or even the topological foreign affairs undertaken through behaviour and the “singing voice”, form a powerful contrast with the foreign affairs achieved through text and contract within the system of designated appointment (or, one might say, macro-foreign affairs), or even possibly an oppositional relationship formed as art confronts politics. From the level of dialogue in Ventriloquists: Introduction, we can more clearly access the possibilities afforded in the works of Yu. The speech of the “human shadow” elicits not merely the re-representation of forms of “translation” and “heteronomy”, but even more fully, the tension produced through interaction, and a subjective posture of resistance when placed in a certain state of restriction – replication, dialogue, appropriation and severance – and moreover, accompanied with the reproduction of the body, allowing the reproduction of the body to connect to issues related to life and politics, Yu’s “human shadow” serves not simply as “scriptwriter” or “puppet master”, but also as a mask-like schizophrenic, whose “split” eschews projectivist foreign relations, attempting to permeate the “body” with sounds that are distorted and off-key. Yet in his new work of 2009, Ventriloquists: Liang Mei-Lan and Emily Su, Yu not only expands on the theme of proximal foreign affairs that he explored in Ventriloquists: Introduction, he also brings together the proximal action achieved through fiction that he employed in She is My Aunt. At Taipei’s Won Won Building, where Filipino labourers often congregate, Yu found several willing interviewees, or “collaborators”. In addition to doing a survey of their labour conditions and the experience of being an immigrant, the artist also experimented with a new “split” form. He no longer hides behind an “enunciator”, who is asked to narrate the “fiction” that the artist has constructed based on the speaker’s status and state, but instead Yu hides behind the camera and asks questions while standing in front of the interviewee. He also no longer invents fictional language on behalf of the
Essay
interviewee, but correspondingly collects real descriptions from the speakers. Slips in language no longer occur in “inferences” of vocalisation beyond the sphere of denotative meaning, but rather emanate from “confrontation”, from convoluted vocalisations and off-key sounds that occur in order to express meaning. Furthermore, the artist arranges videos of singing, forming an extremely different scenario of “liberation”. The introduction of song incites a different bodily expression in the labourer, a body set within reality yet “escaping” the conditions of labour. Using a different kind of language, a form of behaviour liberating oneself from the realities of labour and immigration, the hard work of the labourer’s body is no longer framed within a predetermined “tragic” or “marginalised” appearance or form; instead, the interviewee is relocated to an extemporaneous “dithyrambic” moment. These “type – documentations” are what allow the work to transcend the status of a documentary, not the lens’ stylistic language or the theoretical delineation produced by the images. Because of the behavioural facets engendered by voice and language in the interviewee’s “off-key” vocalisations and narrations in the “transpositions” between different languages, and the performances they “can’t help” but give in response to the artist’s interrogative language, these issues of vocalisation incite a different kind of expressiveness. This expressiveness leads us to move beyond the limited number of topical images that customarily appear, and touch upon an alternative form of immediately present “labour”, a kind of “purely personal” labour: a moment when foreign workers at their place of work do not lack “self-expression”. And in a spontaneous moment, the artist takes part in the acting-out of a different kind of world: a foreign affairs of “broken language” that veers clear of elitist diplomatic rhetoric.
Works 2008-2011
Ours.Karaoke , 2011 Redaing the City: Wellington , 2011 A Practice of City Guide: Auckland , 2011 Exploding Taiwan, 2011 adj. Dance, 2010 Ode to the Republic of China, 2009-2010 Works List
Universes in Universe IV: Flags, 2010 Universes in Universe III: National Anthems On-The-Go, 2010 Universes in Universe II: External Observer, 2010 Universes in Universe I: World Map, 2009 Ventriloquists: Liang Mei-Lan and Emily Su, 2009 Ventriloquists: Introduction, 2008 She is My Aunt, 2008
Works 2003-2007
25CM, 2007 Goodgirl Search, 2007 Pixel Brattice, 2007 The Forest Without Location, 2007 Talk to YOu, 2006 Channel 07, 2006 Double Sun, 2005 Color Wall, 2004 Moving Lines, 2003
Ours. Karaoke
8-channel video installation color/sound 2011
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There are both the desires of “performing” and “seeing a performance” hidden deep inside us. The webcam and the system turns on the switch, allowing the Body to enter a visualized situation. Simultaneously, part of the Body is doing its best to perform, while the other part of it is gazing into the recorded self through the camera. In the project “OURS . KARAOKE,” the artist Yu Cheng-Ta has invited his friends to join the performance: he has walked in his friends’ places with a laptop, recording their Karaoke performance. The YouTube-like collected videos of those unrehearsed clips creates a show of desire which is beyond the songs being recorded
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Reading the City: Wellington video installation 09’59� HDV color/sound 2011
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A Practice of City Guide: Auckland Single-Channel video installation 07’38” HDV color/sound 2011
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As a tourist country, New Zealand has put much effort in the tourism industry, offering detailed tourist information and tours to promote its wonderful landscape. During the art village residence, Yu Cheng-Ta has transformed the tourist-like experience into his project “A Practice of City Guide: Auckland.” In the work, Yu Cheng-Ta has made himself as a tourist guide. Just like those television hosts of the travel/adventure programs, Yu also adopts a foreigner’s perspective to re-introduce the scenery of the country. The only difference is that he chooses a foreigner’s language, through which he provides a discussion about the interplay of these cultures and the re-position of the characters. With such a rehearsal-like shooting style, Yu also re-constructs the relationship among the locations, the scenes, and the production team.
Works Installation View in Taipei Artist Village, 2011, Taipei, Taiwan
Exploding Taiwan
3-channel video installation HDV color/sound 2011
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Yu Cheng-ta uses images as his primary form of creation, with his previous works employing different media as mean to explore the phenomenon of message distortion. In his 2008 Taipei Biennial work Ventriloquists, the artist invited foreigners to repeat Chinese phrases spoken by people hiding behind them. This strange combination of circumstances brought many unpredicted mishaps, symbolizing the issues of cultural communication and translation under this era of globalization, transmission and interaction.
Works Present in this exhibition, Yu Cheng-ta creates through the video work Exploding Taiwan a “miniaturized media.” In every tent within exhibition room 201 a video is secretly played, each one with an anonymous interviewee describing in detail the first hand information they have obtained. There are discrepancies in the story of each person, explained perhaps by the confidentiality of the information itself. However, they all point to a common fictitious scenario: Taiwan’s head of state is getting prepared to blow up the entire island, and plans to invite world renowned demolition artist for assistance. The event would be broadcasted live globally, in order for the world to see this historical moment of madness. In the two years during which the project had been planting explosives across the nation, those who knew had sought asylum in other nations. On the day the island sinks and disappears, the Taiwanese people would be scattered across the nations of the world. The work imitates the “repeat what others are saying” game of the media, allowing the public to experience the possibility of Taiwan as an object of fantasy.
Works Installation View in Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, 2011, Taipei, Taiwan
adj. Dance
3-channel video installation 05’11” / 12’08” / 12’38” HDV color/sound 2010
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Works With our lifestyle gradually turning into a stereotype, such expression behaviors in the video always bring us a fresh feeling when the vocabularies / movements that we use habitually are interposed with new glossary / gestures. The ardent dance performance reminds us of a satisfaction emotion when we were first being involved to the world in our childhood. Meanwhile, it also delivers a great sense of security caused by mutual understanding between self and others due to the shared common experience. transforms the abstract adjective vocabularies into a series of physical codes / dance movements, which allows audiences to interpret and imitate on their own. Through the regular rhythm and the alternate subtitle explanation in the video, we came to find ourselves sharing with the performers a common emotion toward a certain abstract sentiment. That is the hidden reaction when we saw performers attach their personal experience into the dances.
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Yu Cheng-Ta tries to interpret linguistic literary vocabularies through the format of visual movements, which forms a very quaint and foolish representation of such series of “adjective-adjectival movements.� While watching performers use different movements to interpret each adjective, are we, through the dance, really understand how language codes are used for description? Or the dance contrarily leads us to question and guess the metaphor that the dance delivers. is presented in the format similar to the dance teaching video, which seemingly to be one of those mass consumption product or self-learning programs on TV channel. The content thus becomes a language supplementary education product as well as a medium for consumers to learn socialization. However, within the game rules set by Yu Cheng-Ta such as the 17 adjectives / 2-measure tempo / 1.5 square meter area, we can somehow temporarily get rid of the communication anxiety or stress from the inadequacy in languages under the high social competition. Rather, we, for the short moment, can still re-embrace the pleasure of interaction to feely express ourselves.
Ode to the Republic of China
Single-Channel video installation 03’10” HDV color/sound 2009-2010
Works Ode of the Republic of China is remembered as a political song about Taiwan in Taiwanese people’s collective memory. However, when one scrutinizes the lyrics, he or she would find a number of Chinese historical signifiers. The lyrics demonstrate the past national glory of cultural China, while the term “Republic of China” is only mentioned in the climax of the song. This absurd construction of the lyrics push Yu to reconsider the historical meaning of Ode of the Republic of China. In the video, he taught each non-Taiwanese a fraction of the song and put the fractions together, as commentary to such absurdity and incongruity as well as Taiwan’s nebulous identity.
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Universes in Universe IV : Flags Posters 42x55 cm x 3
2010
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Universes in Universe III : National Anthems OnThe-Go IPOD Touch 103 National Anthems 2010
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No matter whether it is a national anthem or a national flag, it is only meaningful to the people of that specific country--more often than not, we hardly can sing along when hearing other country’s national anthems, nor can we recognize the flags when seeing any. These two pieces here plays on this common confusion--the artist turns symbolic, nationalist flags and songs into some easy, informal, random objects. The iPod plays national anthems of various countries on shuffle to random passers-by on the street, while the flags are rearranged simply according to the colors and are made into poster to be taken away as-one-pleases. Nothing is being criticised? The relocation of objects/significance is inspecting a new value.
Universes in Universe III : National Anthems
Universes in Universe II : External Observer 40 Serveys 21x39 cm 2010
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Currently I am working on this survey project—taking myself as a starting point, I seek networking to begin a platform by sending emails and running a website. If you live/work abroad, you’re invited to be my corresponding External Observer--just to answer a few questions based on your own experiences. Project “External Observer” is designed to examine how one looks at possible relationships between individuals. “Being external” could be viewed as being physically external, i.e., abroad. Or, it could be a status of being mentally external--an imaginary distance between the person and the nation he belongs to. Observers participate in the project by, based on their overseas experiences, providing their feelings toward their home countries as well as by picturing an ideal country in their mind. Questions: 1. Name of the Observer 2. Background information (eg. location? profession? interested in?) 3. Based on your daily experiences, please describe how you see Taiwan (or R.O.C.) from an external (abroad) status. 4. Based on your daily experiences, please name 5 different nations as prototypes of your ideal country. You may want to describe some specific aspects or reasons of your choices.
Universes in Universe II: External Observer
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Universes in Universe I : World Map Single-Channel video installation HDV 09’49” color/sound 2009
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Universes in Universe I: World Map is a video work, in which two girls from Asia reimagine and reconstruct a whole new world map. They communicate with each other in English, the only language they share, to decide where to locate different nations. In the process, the participants’ individual experience mesh together and result in constant shifting of the pieces. Their judgement, in some ways, resonate with their embedded imagination of the “Others”. One usually preconceives the world and reflects on oneself through his/ her own experience. Though maybe biased, it is also an interesting contrast with the real world.
Universes in Universe I : World Map
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Ventriloquists: Liang Mei-Lan and Emily Su video installation HDV color/sound 2009
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Filmed at the Won Won Building in Taipei Ventriloquists: Liang Mei-Lan and Emily Su is a film of two women from the Philippines who married into Taiwanese families. Having lived in this foreign land for over a decade both women have come to use the local language as an essential tool in everyday life, but because of their different backgrounds they use the language in different ways. When interacting with Liang Mei-Lan, I attempted to converse with her in three languages (Mandarin, Taiwanese and English). When communicating with Emily, who has no Taiwanese citizenship, I used Mandarin and English. All three of us were using forms of voice that were not particularly “official or standardised�. It was a conversation within the cracks of language and unable to always convey what we meant situations of miscommunication and dissonance occasionally arose. Eventually I asked them to sing a Chinese song, in an attempt to liberate them from the intangible box that inherently exists in the give-and-take of language, and to set free the poignant images of the disparity between foreign cultures.
Cora Billan Her Chinese name is “Liang Mei-Lan�. She is 36 years old, coming from Carbiz City, the Philippines. She came to Taiwan in 1997 to marry a local Taiwanese. With the ability to communicate in both English and Taiwanese quite well, she also speaks Chinese to some degree. Now she lives in San-Hsia and runs a salon in Wan-Wan building, on ChungShan North Road, Taipei city.
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Ventriloquists: Liang Mei-Lan HDV sound/color 09:12 2009
Ventriloquists: Liang MeiLan and Emily Su
Emily Rodriguez Su She will become 40 this year, from Iloilo City, the Philippines. In 1998, she married a Taiwanese guy but still remain as a Filipino citizen. Speaking of language, she is fluent in both Chinese and English, but her Taiwanese remains poor. She resides in Chun-ho district and owns a grocery store recently in Wan-Wan building.
Works Ventriloquists: Emily Su HDV sound/color 09:12 2009
Ventriloquists: Liang MeiLan and Emily Su
The 53rd Venice Biennale Taiwan Pavilion : Foreign Affairs:Artists from Taiwan Pallazzo delle Prigioni, Venice, Italy
Works The languages spoken in the film are Mandarin, Taiwanese and English. The subtitles are in English, color-coded green (for Mandarin), yellow (for Taiwanese) and white (for English). And the translating Grammar is according to the language own structure.
Subtitle in the video: E/ Emily Su
C/ Cheng-Ta
E:you good good afternoon -I am Amy -I that English name is Emily Su -Ah..I married to a Taiwanese -He name is Shu Pong-Fu -We live in Chung-Hu -and -I have this shop for almost ten years C:That say you came Taiwan a lot long? E:I came Taiwan not much difference 15 years C:15 years already -That you start time why will come here? E:I came Taiwan 1995 year -original I came that is care a patient -Because in Philippines, be one Philippine nurse -but I came Taiwan, that one grandma already die. -but my boss still continued to hire me -but one condition is want help them in -market do business C:do business E:they selling garlic, ginger, with that vegetable. -in wan-tai market C:wan tai market -wan tai market. -that to say, so you came Taiwan you are at there meet your husband? -is say what kind condition? E:I in Taiwan met my husband -Because my husband still can talk English -talk…English….pretty good, -that he have, still have very many Filipino friends. -And then give us introduce
C:oh…so you are Taiwan in Taiwan introduce meet? -So thereafter, you then in Taiwan married. E:no. - until my that -two years until. -I original want be sent back. -And then after my husband with me together back go. -With my mother talk want with me marry C:Marry you? E:Ya, come to follow me C:Then after is in Philippines marry? Or is in Taiwan? E:Correct, we are in Philippines marry. -Then after everything already passed by the interview and the embassy -Then after… -Have not much difference…not much difference -three months then he can bring me back C:back come Taiwan? E:correct. Come Taiwan C:so you now have here’s ID? E:No. I no apply C:You no apply? E:I no apply. -Because I often go out country. C:So philippine’s passport relative good use? E:Also is in Philippines have doing business. -Than after I not much difference -one month then back one time
C:Philippines? E:Correct. -Um.. I feel I apply in our there -Relatively have some trouble. -Because everytime you go -Still want applying visa -then after still want again pay 1200 -then after in our there -deals very inconveniently C:so you opposite are you have is Philippine passport? E:correct, philippine’s passport -then after in Taiwan I then use residence permit C:that is spouse’s?
C:So that you have how many like this grocery store. E:I in Wan Wan building here -I have six stores -But three I want rent to others. -Then after three I myself use -Then after be secondary landlady. C:Ha…so make very much money? E:No make money. C:That say, so, that say, you yourself this shop already open ten years? E:This one have open -3, 4 years
C:Plus (similar to “speak”) Mandarin? E:Talk Mandarin. C:Plus Mandarin. -So that you at here have very many Taiwanese friends. E:Many Filipino friends. -Relatively more? -Correct. -Filipino friends also a lot, also have Taiwanese friends -Also have Taiwanese friends? C:So that, but you today want sing is Taiwanese song E:Correct, sing that ”I no drunk, I no drunk” C:”I no drunk, I no drunk” -Is whose song? You know?
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E:correct. -Because I feel I -no think want go any where up work. -I that is go do business. -So use that residence permit should pretty ok -Relatively no problem.
E:Is talk Taiwanese -They have some Taiwanese -But they speaking Mandarin
E:Ah..I not know C:Jiang Huei’s E:Correct. C:You know this song it is singing what? E:That is one lady, she is very frustrated in life -Then after she turned into drinking -Then after she said -Nobody understand her -But still good, much better the wine still can accompany her. -And understands what she feels. C:So is one sad song.
C:3, 4 years already.
E:Yes, it’s a very sad song.
E:Correct. This one’s
C:So that, wait one second we then listen you sing this song
C:That say, you have kids?
E:Okay -Good
E:I…no kids -We no birth -But my husband he has first wife -She has three kids -Then after, two married -One have not, with us live together -I live with my parents-in law together -Then -The first and -The first child and second child have grandchildren -Not much difference…three grandchildren C:So you then are “grand-ma” E:Correct, be grandma already. C:That to say, you in Taiwan, you live that long -You say, generally 15 years -That to say, normally in life relatively often use language is what? E:Talk..a lot, that is Mandarin and Chinese -Ah, Mandarin and English C:Mandarin and English. -That can or not can talk Taiwanese? E:Taiwanese I listen understandably. -But, not very good talk. C:Not very good talk. -Talk, talk no good. -Then after with parents-in-law(s)
Ventriloquists: Liang MeiLan and Emily Su
Ventriloquists: Introduction video installation HDV color/sound 2008
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Ventriloquists-Introduction is a series of work shot in the streets of Taipei. I hid behind the foreigners visiting in Taipei and directed them to look at the camera and repeat what I had said. What I had said‌ It was actually an imitation of tones, and these tones were put together as a forged self-introduction in Chinese. Because my foreigners are not familiar with Chinese, they were trying to imitate, just like an instrument. The instruments play out a language that is not really a language, and thus creates laughing points. I (the man in black behind them) am like the drifting power, which comes in and out of their body, resulting in the state of virtual identity and drifting subjectivity.
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Natalie Allen (23, Australia) tennis player tennis court 1:50
Kumiko Takahashi (33, Japan) visitor MRT station 2:00
Richard Cilli (21, Italy) exchange student university campus 3:11
Tanner Brecheen (28, U.S.A) English teacher on the sidewalk 2:07
Works Kel Kelleher (63, Canada) visitor in the lane 1:32
Kin Jin-Hee (33, Korea) manager in front of a convenience store 2:23
Phindi Peter (16, South Africa) visitor on the street 1:56
Loretta Necir (38, Philippine) maid in the park 1:47
Code Share - 5 Continents 10 Biennales 20 Artists Contemporary Arts Center, Vilnius, Lithuania
The project begins with a situation now globally experienced by people who travel to a country with little, or no linguistic competence of the local language. As an outsider, it can feel like this foreign language is as hefty a barrier as a brick wall. In addition the projections of another’s images and identities are apparently also filled with stereotypes, nonsense and assumptions. Yu Cheng-Ta took this experience one step further by speaking on behalf of different foreigners, but as a local in the first-person’s tone much like a ventriloquist. In the series of nine videos that make up Ventriloquists – Introduction, he performs time and again as a ventriloquist, hiding behind foreigners in Taipei and having them repeat his words in Mandarin. His ‘puppets’ represent a wide range of outsiders encountered in various scenarios in Taipei. They include an American dance professor sitting in a restaurant, a young American male English teacher on a scooter, an Italian exchange student in the university campus, a Philippine maid with her friends spending a Sunday in the park, a Korean manager in front of a convenience store, etc. As the artist introduces each foreigner’s name, profession, purposes and interests in Taiwan in Mandarin, the foreigner repeats his statement word for word without understanding what is being said. Given the difficulties of mimicking Mandarin for these people, mistakes are simply unavoidable and can be outrageously hilarious. So “65 years-old” is easily mistaken as “a young lion which needs some sleep.” And, “professor” as “suburban guarded area,” etc. Yu takes advantage of the discrepancy of sound dubbing and bi-lingual subtitling (Chinese and English) in which his dubbed script makes complete sense to Mandarin speakers and the foreigner’s ill-pronounced words are open to absurd interpretations which are shown as subtitles. For those who do not understand Mandarin, as well as for those who do, these ‘self-introductions’ simply become an array of semantic anomalies and incomprehensible self-presentations that perhaps await more charitable social interactions – if our globalised world is to bring us closer to each other and make peace possible. The humour of being lost in translation has become a common experience in our time, whether we travel or stay at home. (Manray Hsu)
2008 Taipei Biennial
Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan
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Code Share - 5 Continents 10 Biennales 20 Artists Contemporary Arts Center, Vilnius, Lithuania
Biennale CuvĂŠe - World Selection of Contemporary Art OK Center for Contemporary Art, Linz, Austria
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The 53rd Venice Biennale Taiwan Pavilion : Foreign Affairs:Artists from Taiwan Pallazzo delle Prigioni, Venice, Italy
She is My Aunt Single-Channel Video Installation 07’07� color/sound 2008
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I have entered She is my aunt with an invisible body. The main protagonist (the Aunt) has thus comes alive from my narration and my staccato words; I have thus become the medium of the medium (the video). The camera enwraps the event like tentacles entwining on its prey, parasitizing with the news media. The camera captures all people inside the frame and turns them into characters. These characters, post-produced sound effects, and the Aunt (a conscious naming of the main protagonist) have morphed this video clip into a new event, turning away from the so-called reality. This process also displays how mediated information will alienate us from the real object and bond us with the virtual media images—the media is the truth maker, and the virtual image is truer than the true self.
She is my aunt. She likes lilies. She only uses Bailan detergent. My mom told me that she is emotional. It seems that those who graduated from the First Girls High School are outspoken when it is necessary. Her daughter, Huang Ting, 16 years younger than me, followed her to the other side of the barricade. She is studying in Wan-Hua elementary school, Her grades are just ok Well, I have only seen her few times
Borderline . Mirrolike - Taiwan.Israel young artists interchanging exhibition Huashan Culture Park, Taipei, Taiwan
25 CM Installation C-print 38x29cmx9 Dimension variable 2007
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2003-2007
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2003-2007
Goodgirl Search video installation 08’30” DVD-NTSC Color/Sound 2007
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2003-2007
Pixel Brattice installation Dimension variable 2007
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2003-2007
The Forest Without Location installation Dimension variable 2007
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2003-2007
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2003-2007
Talk to You Single Channel Video
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2003-2007
6’53” 2006
Channel O7 Single Channel Video
6’34” 2006
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2003-2007
Double Sun video installation
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2003-2007
2005
Color Wall video installation
1’30” 2004
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2003-2007
Moving Lines video installation
2003
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Š Cheng-Ta YU. All Rights Reserved. contact infomation: chengta227@gmail.com www.yuchengta.com yuchengta.blogspot.com +886-926-763-183