Wu Chia Yun: “The Dreamwalk We Call Life”: Solo Exhibition

Human thought is in constant motion, flowing endlessly like a stream. Untethered from the constraints of logic, the mind drifts from one idea to another, making unexpected connections and wandering between seemingly unrelated thoughts. This video installation draws on cinematic techniques, including long takes and handheld dolly movements, to evoke a trance-like state that gradually takes hold through sustained attention to a single action or prolonged confinement within a particular environment. Through these immersive experiences, the work explores how abstract sensations, memories, and connections might be expressed beyond the boundaries of language and literature.

In filmmaking, the dolly is a camera movement technique that can subtly draw viewers into a state of flow, bringing them closer to the characters' emotions and lived experiences. By allowing viewers to move alongside the characters, it creates a sense of immersion in the unfolding narrative and invites them to share in the temporal experience of the characters' world. Building on this approach, the film follows an actor through the course of a day, unfolding in long takes and punctuated by moments of direct dolly-ins. These movements offer glimpses into the continuous flow of the actor's inner monologue, moving between everyday trivialities, bodily sensations, psychological states, personal judgments, reactions to the outside world, fantasies, immediate experiences, and memories.

Yet the stream of consciousness that emerges in moments of mental drift ebbs and flows like waves, shifting back and forth or drifting from side to side. This fluid, uncharted movement flows ceaselessly through a boundless universe, branching, converging, and dispersing. Without a fixed temporal framework, it ultimately resists organization and control. Through time-based media, the exhibition seeks to condense the disruptions and dissolutions of reality while questioning how they come into being. In doing so, it gives form to an existence that is self-contained yet infinitely expansive, like the sea, ultimately responding to the void at the heart of existence.