Artwork Appreciation
The artist Lu Chih-Kai mainly uses the media of photography, video, and physical performance. His recent works use the various camera movements and perspective characteristics of aerial cameras to reveal the interrelationship between the body and its field. For his Nobody but My Body, he used an aerial camera to take a bird’s-eye view of himself swimming in a swimming pool—but actually, there is no water in it. Lu Chih-Kai relied on his body movements and a pulley hidden under his body to shoot a series of fluid swimming movements, giving viewers the impression that “the artist was videoing himself in a filled swimming pool.” However, Lu preserved the traces of the pulley on the bottom of the swimming pool. It is not until the end of the film, when he stands upright and starts walking, that he reveals that there was no water in the pool to begin with. He uses his ingenuity with camera movement and screen design to place himself in the work and create a strange viewing experience for the viewer.