TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT－ A Solo Exhibition by YU Cheng-Ta

“TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT” is about the exchanges of the gazes, desires, friendship, and wanting in between a traveler and an exotic culture. This relationship of exchange started when David was on the street in Malate, Manila. He engaged with the “marketings” on the street as a foreigner, and from this strange encounter, they developed friendship. Owing to the needs of shooting the films, the negotiation as well as transaction came along. The various relationship and processes of exchanges are intertwined with the reality, the social network, the diverse desires and imaginative gaze and illusion across cultures local to Malate. From November 2015 to June 2017, David constantly flied to Manila, shifting his identities as a traveler, a friend, and a film producer. Via these ambiguous narratives, the complex multiple meanings underneath the cross-cultural appearance is thus revealed.

In this exhibition, the artist arranges four mockumentaries: “Malate”, “David”, “Joara”, and “The Shop”, which are intertwined and yet independent from one another. Each film respectively symbolizes the products deriving from various peoples, cultures, viewpoints, gazes, and wanting. Through the mirror of this alien character “David”, who is the intersection point implied in the four films, many of the core issues of this exhibition are exposed. “TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT”, a greeting on the street refers to the transaction structure on the street of Malate. The artist incorporated the negotiation on the local streets into the production of the films. He kept experimenting with the social and economic frameworks beneath this exchange relationship. At the same time, he tried to draw out the definitions of friendly exchange and transaction from the viewpoints of different cultures, disclose the bias rooted among different nations, and uncover the hidden class consciousness behind the tourism entertainment and international transaction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VyNlH9FoWo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TkkI4ZccF0

https://youtu.be/jIDC5e3DYoA

As long as you stay the night