YUDI WU 吴彧頔
Be a Flâneur, a photographer, a daydreamer
September 2021 - May 2022, WANDERLUST, short film+photo book, Graduation work at Royal College of Art
May 2022, "Invisible Shadow", co-presented by Freezing Fog & London MP Birla Millenium Gallery
May 2022, Accolade Global Film Competition Award-Award of Recognition: Film Short (Student)
Position: Cinematographer, Writer, Monologue, Editor
I am what Baudelaire called a 'flâneur', a person who likes to feel the city I live in, the city and the outside world through walking/wandering and other physical movements. Everything about the city and the outside world affects my psycho-emotional state and I respond to my surroundings and daily activities in response to city life.
Using the camera during my wanderings/walks allow me to redigest and reconstruct the visual landscape made up of landscapes, people and objects, and also provide a valuable impetus to my creative work. As John Berger points out, "the real content of a photograph is invisible, it can be deduced from the drama, and meaning is interpreted in terms of time rather than form" - for me, the relationships and meanings of natural and cultural landscapes in 'space' and 'place' can be deduced and articulated from the complex web of people and events around them and their processes.
I have always been drawn to everyday life, literature and urban landscapes, and wanted to tell my own stories about a visual ethnography of literature and the city, so I enjoy the feeling of exploration - of finding what Roland Barthes calls punctum, of feeling the shifting of space and time, of feeling the connection between places and people as I walk.
The main research method in psychogeography is 'dérive'. Dérive can be described as a kind of 'wanderlust' . I am what Baudelaire called a 'flâneur', a person who likes to feel the city I live in, the city and the outside world through walking/wandering and other physical movements. Everything about the city and the outside world affects my psycho-emotional state and I respond to my surroundings and daily activities in response to city life. Using the camera during my wanderings/walks allow me to redigest and reconstruct the visual landscape made up of landscapes, people and objects, and also provide a valuable impetus to my creative work.
For these reasons, I undertook to create a series of photographic works on the theme of 'WANDERLUST’.
The times when I get the most enjoyment out of my daily life, apart from reading and watching films, are when I am constantly walking through the city. There is a part of the population that does not like to act with a clear purpose at the outset, but rather enjoys the feeling of discovery. They are more interested in the abstract, sensual and poetic elements of life than in the physical, in the search for what Roland Barthes called punctum, in the elusive and misty experiences of life, in the search for their own touch, in the transformation of everything into literature, poetry and film. Walking constantly, feeling the changes in space and time, feeling the connection between places and people, this process will make you calm and broaden your perception of the world.
