Statement
I am a Taiwanese-American, interdisciplinary media artist living with a connective tissue disorder (Marfans). I often use intelligent projection, digital and hand-drawn animation, and lush sound design to create meditative 'memoryscapes.’ My work examines human perception as a vehicle for self-knowledge and community growth. Lately, I have been considering what modes of embodiment are available for the chronically ill and disabled bodymind.
Considering the crip body as a poetic, relational archive, I began tracking different ‘dimensions’ of my illness, as a means of creating a ‘soft data’ (as opposed to ‘hard data’) archive– highlighting overlooked, daily life realities of living with illness. Refusing the medicalization of the crip body, I work towards and dream of an equitable toolkit that serves as a collective site for holding space for illness. Thus far, this dream has manifested as a open-sourced journaling tool (Resilience Journal), an access-centered movement workshop series (held at Movement Research), and a live dance performance driven by the sounds of my bones and joints (‘the walls of my room are curved’).
This revealing and re-valuing of realities is rooted in the nuances and capabilities of the ill and disabled bodymind as a space for unprecedented aesthetics, emotion, and generosity. Notions of how the crip bodymind can be generative sources for creative expression– in visuals, sound, tactility, shape, space, movement– has coupled with my explorations in time-based media art and technologies, creating works that span from soft data visualization to soundscapes made from bone sounds, to impairment-generated dance scores, to extended reality installations. These explorations echo the complicated relationship between the body and technology, often precarious, discomforting, and transformative all at once. But fundamentally, these works reveal a yearning for a deeper understanding and vision of the self, reflected back in its wholeness.
Video Sample
1.the walls of my room are curved v1, v2, v3, 5 min 1 sec
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