Yushu Wu

Yushu Wu is an artist, a short stay in London, born and raised in China, BA in Advertising, Jilin University, China. MA in Contemporary Art Practice, Royal College of Art, UK.

Agnes, my diegetic name, is another name I use in film and writing to portray a borderline, "there's always a border, a line of flight or flow, only we don't see it". The installations and sculptures respond to my desire to hold the gaze between the intended and the accidental and to prolong the moment between "not yet" and "present".

My current presentations and presents respond to my passionate research in landscape and diaspora, filmic form of language, the stalemate of limbo in social mechanism, the psychic atmosphere in medium studies, the recent domineering viewpoint of cybernetics and information theory.

Screenshot of Dysfunction

Screenshot of Dysfunction – Dysfunction/Lost and Seek, is the first part of the film series Dysfunction. The anonymous protagonist, an outsider's view, seeks to investigate the causes of chaos, in pursuit of shaping the invisible inner turmoil into a tangible entity. This is followed by an ongoing crisis to counter psychological overload and loss of ego in alienated social mechanisms. She seemingly kept seeking the borderline of the safe zone. Yet when she thought she had a brief respite at the borderline,（continue on next column）

Screenshot of Dysfunction – she revealed that it was only a transitional zone where information was being loaded and she had to leave again. Storytelling voice, fiction, prose-style argument lingers over the imagery, where landscapes and ostensibly insignificant details are prolonged and attached to the rhythms of nature. Whether it is an antidote to the anxieties of modern life or the “TaoHuanYuan” for the ancient Chinese literati, the natural landscape carries with it an overt implication of "escape". (continue on next column)

Film: Dysfunction: Lost And Seek – The "Phantom Oscillating" of civilization can still squeeze into the cracks of the psyche. "The problem of self-perception remains insoluble" (Beckett). The story begins with a lost outsider, who is led astray by a wrong message on social media, and an absurd farce ensues.(The End)

Screenshot of Dysfunction

PDF: Dysfunction/Lost and Seek Script Writing

Medium:

Digital Video

Size:

Duration: 00: 07: 18: 00

Basic Needs

Basic Needs is conceived as one half of a juxtaposed pair, echoing the title of the film Dysfunction. Unlike the juxtaposition of two divided screens in the film, the imagery chases each other and the ceaseless flow of energy builds up in the turbulence and movement. The lack of subtitles in a movie reduces its readability, bringing it closer to a noise lingering in one's mind. The juxtaposition of the concepts of Basic Needs and Dysfunction slices an opening rip for potentially stagnant emotions. The installation mimics the display method of merchandising retail shelves, with three hundred packages neatly suspended on the slatwall hooks. Whereas I refused to accept a whole set of display solutions for maximum efficiency, I replaced the display panel with clay, filling the gap between the shelf structure and the wall and re-stabilizing the structure.

On the new, spontaneous, and anti-efficient structure, the question "What are the Basic Needs?" is raised again. What are they now, when they are removed from their functional and practical environment?

The installation is working in progress, list the collages experiment in next pages.