Yu Cheng-Ta adapts a playful approach to language in his video works, which involve realistic situations acted out in live performance to communication the artists’ concept of “living theater.” For Practicing Live, currently on exhibit at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Yu invited a select group of people to rehearse and then act in a play that he filmed using different camera angles. He then pieced these fragments together to create a detailed picture of the multiple realities that this process communicates.

The play’s narrative involves an ordinary family coming together to celebrate their father's birthday. The key difference is that the family is played by real life art professionals instead of actors. Yu invited the Director of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, a Japanese collector, his Taiwanese gallery director, an independent curator, an artist, an art critic, and an art academy Professor to perform in the play. Each individual's role overlaps with his or her real-life identity, which creates a tension that is injected into the play’s seemingly ordinary dialog and uncovers long-hidden realities of working in the art world. The audience watches as the participants deconstruct and reconstruct their various relationships. In this new work, Yu interprets the dynamics of the art world and the conditions of production that today's young artists must face.

*image (left)

Yu Cheng-Ta
Practicing Life, 2014
3-projection installation, 29'07"