Mi You 由宓 | Aalto University (original) (raw)

Papers by Mi You 由宓

Parse journal, 2017

This essay aims to examine and problematise some aspects of the conceptual history of secularity ... more This essay aims to examine and problematise some aspects of the conceptual history of secularity in the case study of the Russian theosophist and painter Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947). More precisely, it looks at conjunctions of secularity and politics through the tracing of Roerich’s messianic life project to bring about the mystical kingdom of Shambhala, a pan-Buddhist state in Cen- tral-East Asia—a plan that also coalesced various con icting strands of political ideologies. Following Charles Taylor, we treat secularity as it arises from the modernisation process of European societies, through which religion is taken as only one option among other ways of self-ful lment and human ourishing, and the latter as an indica- tor that self-su cient humanism has never existed on the same scale before in European societies before the Enlightenment.

Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, 2018

This article focuses on Royce Ng's Kishi the Vampire, a lecture performance on the Japanese puppe... more This article focuses on Royce Ng's Kishi the Vampire, a lecture performance on the Japanese puppet-state of Manchukuo (1932-45) and its finance minister Nobusuke Kishi (1896-1987). The article investigates the question of nationalism and pan-Asianism in Manchukuo, Kishi's invention of state-guided capitalism and its implication for East Asia until today, and then offers a historical materialisminspired theoretical reflection on the mutation of desire under capitalism. The flow of decoded desire in conjunctive capitalism dislodges the man-heaven alignment in a traditional society, manifesting itself in the perversion of desire in the eroticgrotesque culture and necropolitics. Appropriating this aesthetics and focusing on the disenfranchised bodies, Ng's performance aptly enacts this flow of desire. This article focuses on Hong Kong-based Australian artist Royce Ng's Kishi the Vampire, 1 a lecture performance on the Japanese puppet-state of Manchukuo (1932-45) and the invention of East Asian capitalistic system under its finance minister Nobusuke Kishi (1896-1987), portrayed as a vampire. Closely reading Kishi the Vampire, the article investigates the question of nationalism and

The chapter looks through the lens of Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen’s theatre production Ten Tho... more The chapter looks through the lens of Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen’s theatre production Ten Thousand Tigers (2014) to examine intermediality through technicality and the affectivity of (inter)mediated encounters. The core of the narrative, presented through a complex installation or theatre machine and chanting actors, is the mythical transmogrification between tiger and man. While the tiger symbolises a cosmological order deeply rooted in traditional Malayan belief systems and eco-philosophy, it also synthesises strong, new symbols in the context of colonialism in the nineteenth century, the military occupation by Japan during World War II, and the haunting/haunted communist history before and after. The multi-layered, anachronistic worlds of Southeast Asia suggest a univocal view of matter and mattering, and an intensive perspective of time and history.

Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 2016

This article aims to bring to light the heterogeneity and nomadic character of ‘Chineseness’ by m... more This article aims to bring to light the heterogeneity and nomadic character of ‘Chineseness’ by mapping the curatorial practice of the Chongqing-based art space Organhaus. Their curatorial projects involving Xinjiang and Iran shall be examined through the lens of ‘minoritarian practice’, which at the same time affords a tool for unpacking the notion of Chineseness as related to empire, state and in an inter-Asian context. It shall be argued that it is through minoritarian practices that negotiation and actualization of Chineseness emerge.

Performance Research, 2016

This article examines media artist Ralf Baecker’s installation Mirage (2014) featuring a ‘sleepin... more This article examines media artist Ralf Baecker’s installation Mirage (2014) featuring a ‘sleeping’ computer. Inspired by the ‘Helmholtz Machine’, an unsupervised learning algorithm that adopts ‘wake’ and ‘sleep’ phases, Mirage captures the output of a computer’s ‘sleep’ phase, i.e. anticipatory pre-response in the form of random data based on real time data input, and translates it into mechanical movement, which is then made visible as a projection of undulating landscape on the wall. Drawing on Whitehead and Parisi in analysing the implication of Mirage, the article adopts the concept of ‘prehension’ as a pre-epistemic operation and recasts ‘speculative reason’ in the context of computational process as capable of changing the initial condition of computation itself. Hence it undermines the mechanical view of computer as rule -- obeying and subject only to deterministic randomness, and instead endorses it with speculative reason. Though beyond human cognitive registry, the computational processes are, in the end, rendered legible into visual and spatial experience, which has an affective quality and opens the work up to performance research. Taking Mirage as performance helps us conceptualise both the algorithmic ‘dream’ of the computer and the participating audience as part of a larger whole. The article draws a plain of immanence that accounts for both as being in the world that is made up of interwoven processes of prehension. Not only could the audience performatively approach the computer at ‘sleep’, they are also part of a performativity outside of the work – the generative, creative intelligence that constitutes the world.

Performance Research, 2016

Aptly combining video, installation and performative formats, Lawrence Abu Hamdan has created a r... more Aptly combining video, installation and performative formats, Lawrence Abu Hamdan has created a rich body of works that often reveal the political dimension of language and speech. The article investigates, in particular, the live performative lecture Contra Diction: Speech against itself, which draws on taqiyyah, an old esoteric Shi’a Islamic jurisprudence practised by the Druze Islamic minority, whereby ‘a believing individual can deny his faith or commit otherwise illegal acts while they are at risk of persecution or in a condition of statelessness’. The artist analyses various moments involving language and speech act in the Druze community, such as in the Islamic conversion and the communication between mother and baby through the lens of taqiyyah, which reveals the paradoxical structure of language and language in its pre-semantics instance. Similar to games that are dynamic, the application of taqiyyah suggests transformations of rules that challenge the structural divide between form of expression and form of content in language. Furthermore, drawing on Massumi’s notion of ‘non-sensuous similarity’, the alignment of taqiyyah to the ‘sense-perceived meaning’ highlights the dynamics of the immanence that constantly differentiates into language and expression. This leads to a conceptual comparison to Deleuze and Guattari’s interpretation of the game Go, which reveals how taqiyyah may be seen to reclaim a consciousness pertinent to the smooth space, hence avidly transforming the condition of language.

Intermedial Performance and Politics in the Public Sphere, 2018

Southeast of Now, 2018

This article focuses on Royce Ng's Kishi the Vampire, a lecture performance on the Japanese puppe... more This article focuses on Royce Ng's Kishi the Vampire, a lecture performance on the Japanese puppet-state of Manchukuo (1932–45) and its finance minister Nobusuke Kishi (1896–1987). The article investigates the question of nationalism and pan-Asianism in Manchukuo, Kishi's invention of state-guided capitalism and its implication for East Asia until today, and then offers a historical materialism-inspired theoretical reflection on the mutation of desire under capitalism. The flow of decoded desire in conjunctive capitalism dislodges the man-heaven alignment in a traditional society, manifesting itself in the perversion of desire in the erotic-grotesque culture and necropolitics. Appropriating this aesthetics and focusing on the disenfranchised bodies, Ng's performance aptly enacts this flow of desire.

Parse Journal, 2017

Just as we separate in space, we fix in time. The intellect is not made to think evolution, in th... more Just as we separate in space, we fix in time. The intellect is not made to think evolution, in the proper sense of the word-that is to say, the continuity of a change that is pure mobility.

This article aims to bring to light the heterogeneity and nomadic character of 'Chineseness' by m... more This article aims to bring to light the heterogeneity and nomadic character of 'Chineseness' by mapping the curatorial practice of the Chongqing-based art space Organhaus. Their curatorial projects involving Xinjiang and Iran shall be examined through the lens of 'minoritarian practice', which at the same time affords a tool for unpacking the notion of Chineseness as related to empire, state and in an inter-Asian context. It shall be argued that it is through minoritarian practices that negotiation and actualization of Chineseness emerge.

Drawing on Whitehead and Parisi in analysing the implication of Mirage, the article adopts the concept of ‘prehension’ as a pre-epistemic operation and recasts ‘speculative reason’ in the context of computational process as capable of changing the initial condition of computation itself. Hence it undermines the mechanical view of computer as rule--obeying and subject only to deterministic randomness, and instead endorses it with speculative reason. Though beyond human cognitive registry, the computational processes are, in the end, rendered legible into visual and spatial experience, which has an affective quality and opens the work up to performance research.

Taking Mirage as performance helps us conceptualise both the algorithmic ‘dream’ of the computer and the participating audience as part of a larger whole. The article draws a plain of immanence that accounts for both as being in the world that is made up of interwoven processes of prehension. Not only could the audience performatively approach the computer at ‘sleep’, they are also part of a performativity outside of the work – the generative, creative intelligence that constitutes the world.

Kaleidoscope Asia, Aug 2015

Published in Kaleidoscope Asia No.1 Vol. 2

This paper was published in “Jing Shen - the Act of Painting in Contemporary China” by Silvana Ed... more This paper was published in “Jing Shen - the Act of Painting in Contemporary China” by Silvana Editoriale at the occasion of the homonymous exhibition at Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea in Milan, July 2015. It examines the act of painting in its (strange) genealogy in China, as informed by self-practice.

Books by Mi You 由宓

As part of the inaugural season’s “Asia Window” program at Asia Culture Center Theater, “Transgre... more As part of the inaugural season’s “Asia Window” program at Asia Culture Center Theater, “Transgression and Syncretism” takes the silk road as a figuration of thinking and “demystifying method,” which questions the constructed codes of culture and politics that define borders today in terms of nation, ethnicity, ideology, standard of development, and fixed in temporal linearity. Inspired by travelers on the silk road, historical and trans-historical, real and fictive, we embark on a journey that transgresses such coded structures that govern thinking and action today.

The silk road resounds for us not merely as a romantic image for trade and mobility, indeed we may have been as impulsively enthusiastic about the volume of historical land-route trade as we are about the prospect of transnational super-infrastructures today. Both have to be examined in the context and in the way they define movement, space and their relations to the centers. The aim is not to go back to any romanticized original state but to ask, in what way can the nomadic spirit find contemporary incarnation?

The three-day program is composed of a series of performatively interwoven lectures, screenings and performances with newly commissioned works. The program starts with tracing Eurasian connections and disconnections, to question the concept of nationalism, construction of identity and border regimes. At the same time, it highlights transgressive potentials through the medium and means of voice, translation, and transliteration. Further, it investigates what is the immediate counter-image of border regime—transnational capitalism—in the history of East Asia and in the globalized world today. Inspired by the old silk road, it proposes decentralized networks against centralized structures. Lastly, with a speculative leap, the program turns the gaze outward into extraterrestrial encounters in the heartland of Asia as well as inward into the deep geological history of planet earth. In one of the evenings, it travels to a temple in the nearby mountains to restore the balance of breathing with the geological body of the Korean peninsular.

You Mi is a Beijing-born curator, writer, and academic staff at Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Germany. Her interests are in the deep history of Eurasia and the silk road, which she has traveled both literally and metaphorically, philosophy of immanence through performance, media and technology, and she is currently working on the idea of digital Confucianism.

Detailed program:

March 11

HO Puay-peng
“Experiencing the Silk Road” (lecture)

Igor Demchenko
“Architectural Heritage, Nation Building, and the Cult of Science in Soviet Central Asia” (lecture)

Aslan Gaisumov
Prospect Pobedy (screening)

Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Language Gulf In the Shouting Valley (screening)

Tobias Revell
88.7, Stories From the First Transnational Traders (lecture performance)

Slavs and Tatars
The Tranny Tease (lecture performance)

MU Qian, Ubulhesen Memet et al.
Sufi Night (concert)

March 12

Diane Rabreau
Becoming a Satellite Explorer (workshop presentation)

Mohammad Salemy
“Blockchain and Decentralized Networks” (lecture)

Lawrence Abu Hamdan
“Contra Diction: Speech Against Itself” (live audio essay)

Royce Ng
Kishi the Vampire (lecture performance)

ESTAR(SER)
The Trochilus Exercise: Marton Bialek and the Ecstasy of the Rülek Scrolls (lecture performance and workshop)

PARK Soyoung
Su:um, Dari (performance)

March 13

ZHANG Hui
“Mystical Findings in Xinjiang” (lecture)

Agnes Meyer-Brandis
The Moon Goose Colony (screening)

SYNSMASKINEN
BURST (screening)

Ashkan Sepahvand
THE PANCOSMIC MANIFESTO TOWARDS AN ART OF THE FUTURE (reading)

Lucie Tuma
Volkskörper #2: choreography of tectonics (performance and workshop)

19:00
JEONG Geumhyung
Fire Drill Scenario (performance)

On-going

You Mi
if on the silk road a traveler (research game)

Co-edited with Hendrik Tieben and Ho Chun Wang Steven, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010

Parse journal, 2017

Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, 2018

Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 2016

Performance Research, 2016

Intermedial Performance and Politics in the Public Sphere, 2018

Southeast of Now, 2018

This article focuses on Royce Ng's Kishi the Vampire, a lecture performance on the Japanese puppe... more This article focuses on Royce Ng's Kishi the Vampire, a lecture performance on the Japanese puppet-state of Manchukuo (1932–45) and its finance minister Nobusuke Kishi (1896–1987). The article investigates the question of nationalism and pan-Asianism in Manchukuo, Kishi's invention of state-guided capitalism and its implication for East Asia until today, and then offers a historical materialism-inspired theoretical reflection on the mutation of desire under capitalism. The flow of decoded desire in conjunctive capitalism dislodges the man-heaven alignment in a traditional society, manifesting itself in the perversion of desire in the erotic-grotesque culture and necropolitics. Appropriating this aesthetics and focusing on the disenfranchised bodies, Ng's performance aptly enacts this flow of desire.

Parse Journal, 2017

Kaleidoscope Asia, Aug 2015

Published in Kaleidoscope Asia No.1 Vol. 2

Detailed program:

March 11

HO Puay-peng
“Experiencing the Silk Road” (lecture)

Igor Demchenko
“Architectural Heritage, Nation Building, and the Cult of Science in Soviet Central Asia” (lecture)

Aslan Gaisumov
Prospect Pobedy (screening)

Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Language Gulf In the Shouting Valley (screening)

Tobias Revell
88.7, Stories From the First Transnational Traders (lecture performance)

Slavs and Tatars
The Tranny Tease (lecture performance)

MU Qian, Ubulhesen Memet et al.
Sufi Night (concert)

March 12

Diane Rabreau
Becoming a Satellite Explorer (workshop presentation)

Mohammad Salemy
“Blockchain and Decentralized Networks” (lecture)

Lawrence Abu Hamdan
“Contra Diction: Speech Against Itself” (live audio essay)

Royce Ng
Kishi the Vampire (lecture performance)

ESTAR(SER)
The Trochilus Exercise: Marton Bialek and the Ecstasy of the Rülek Scrolls (lecture performance and workshop)

PARK Soyoung
Su:um, Dari (performance)

March 13

ZHANG Hui
“Mystical Findings in Xinjiang” (lecture)

Agnes Meyer-Brandis
The Moon Goose Colony (screening)

SYNSMASKINEN
BURST (screening)

Ashkan Sepahvand
THE PANCOSMIC MANIFESTO TOWARDS AN ART OF THE FUTURE (reading)

Lucie Tuma
Volkskörper #2: choreography of tectonics (performance and workshop)

19:00
JEONG Geumhyung
Fire Drill Scenario (performance)

On-going

You Mi
if on the silk road a traveler (research game)

Co-edited with Hendrik Tieben and Ho Chun Wang Steven, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010

Minds Rising, the 13th Gwangju Biennale online platform, 2020

Every Step in the Right Direction (Singapore Biennale 2019 Catalogue), 2019

This writing has a different nature from the above because we intend our writings to always be pa... more This writing has a different nature from the above because we intend our writings to always be palimpsest-like, written with what's written. The different nature is: in resisting explanations, we do it; in composing each component autonomously, we then tend to stitch them together to cover a cohesive field of subjects. A year has passed since our first writing. Together with fellow travellers, we have come up with a collective proposal for instituting a way to share the Eurasian imaginary and exchange the fleeting knowledge embodied over the course of a year-long experimental classroom at a radical art school. That is the Eurasia Underground Library. Together we have travelled into 'Eurasia' more deeply and broadly. We-here to include all below*-have attempted a rehearsal under the horizontally-stretched old rubber trees, and on the arms of an island. Might this be the reason why we write the way we write? Indeed, it is our hope this writing will serve as an open call in the near future, and organisational work for bringing the Eurasia Underground Library into various context(s) by providing some guidelines on the ideas and intentions behind its origins, concepts and modus operandi. It's an inscription which nevertheless is willing to be washed over in time. This is the second instalment of our writing as part of our long-term inquiry and curatorial project Unmapping Eurasia. The first text-part of the movement we called Eurasian Steps-was written in seven different segments, each like a free-floating island embodying a concept stemming from our individual and collective journeys into the Eurasian space-time, such as the Eurasian Imaginational Highway, Shamanic Connectivity, Time of Nomads, Star Atlas and Unmapping. Those concepts in archipelago were not explained but rather were enlivened through stories around what we read, whom we met and what we experienced and thought, which together and apart, form what we call Eurasia beyond the existing geopolitical strata and which evade ethno-essentialism.

China ist für zwei Mauern berühmt: die Große Mauer und die große Firewall. Die chinesische Mauer,... more China ist für zwei Mauern berühmt: die Große Mauer und die große Firewall. Die chinesische Mauer, die nicht zuletzt aufgrund ihrer beeindruccenden Länge auf der ganzen Welt becannt ist, diente seit ihrem Entstehen als Transitpunct für wichtige Informationen. Die in Grenznähe stationierten Truppen connten eilig zusammengezogen werden, sobald ein Rauchsignal aufstieg, das von einer an der Mauer gelegenen Befestigungsanlage zur nächsten übermittelt wurde. Zudem connten berittene Boten die Mauer problemlos im Galopp passieren. Die große chinesische Firewall hingegen erfüllt beinahe den entgegengesetzten Zwecc. Sie unterbricht, filtert und moderiert den Informationsfluss. Der vorliegende Beitrag setzt sich mit der Bildsprache der Verbuncerung und des Einmauerns auseinander, um zunächst eine andere Herangehensweise an Fragen symbolischer und tatsächlicher Macht zu erschließen und anschließend auf einige Problemen der politischen Öconomie einzugehen, die vom Wechselspiel zwischen Information und Kapital aus gedacht werden sollen.

Soils, Séances, Sciences and Politics On the Posthuman and New Materialism

Rockbund Art Museum "Being in Asia", 2017

Published in Tarek Abou El Fetouh and Ala Younis (eds.) The Time is Out of Joint, Volume I, Chapt... more Published in Tarek Abou El Fetouh and Ala Younis (eds.) The Time is Out of Joint, Volume I, Chapter: EQUATOR, Sharjah Art Foundation, 2016.

This study focuses on the recent staging of Elfriede Jelinek’s Das schweigende Mädchen at Münchne... more This study focuses on the recent staging of Elfriede Jelinek’s Das schweigende Mädchen at Münchner Kammerspiele to illustrate a stance of law and narrative mediated by artistic treatment. The play, taken its name from the defendent Beate Zschäpe who remains silent through trials on the NSU murders, takes the visual form of a trial room with the present parties being, intriguingly, a judge, angels, and prophets. The text heavily draws on media reports and biblical as well as mythos resources, championing in a operatic performance of speech.

The critical analysis of this theater piece draws on scholarship at the junction of art and law. Instead of a simple dismissing of the legal apparatus involved in the framing of the case, even though at times the characters express utter disillusion in truth and justice, the piece draws more attention to the social political, historical and religious aspects that may have given rise to contemporary phenomenon such as the NSU. Compared to other theater pieces (there are at least three in Germany) that take more of a documentary theater format, creating a piece that takes the rigid form of court trial seems to have reasons beyond mere affirmation of solemn rituality. The piece transverses the undecidable and non-deconstructable justice-to-come (Derrida) and utilizes the “undecidable immanence within law” which facilitates and perpetuates a certain continuous operation of “critical translatability between the legal, the ethical, the political” (Oren Ben-Dor). And as such, the piece depicts, albert in darkly satirical ways, exactly this undecidable immanence, which “transcends any ‘truth’ of legal decision” (Ben-Dor).

Our team of curators presents architecture as the pedagogical act, as a biological idea, a politi... more Our team of curators presents architecture as the pedagogical act, as a biological idea, a political, social and civic stance. We demonstrate that architecture can be a force of occupation and transition, a speculator and a fantasist.", states chief curator Beatrice Galilee. Indeed, what emerges out of the curation of central exhibitions -"Future Perfect", "The Real and Other Fictions", "The Institute Effect" and "New Publics", as well as ten "Crisis Buster" grant projects and one hundred associated projects, is a critical engagement with contemporary spatial practices.

Translation from German to Chinese for the journal World Vol. 4 published by OCAT Institute (Beij... more Translation from German to Chinese for the journal World Vol. 4 published by OCAT Institute (Beijing)

The Biennial Reader Chinese verision (Jincheng Publishing House, 2015)

22nd International Symposium on Electronic Art ISEA2016 Proceedings

I propose a case study of the recent staging of Elfriede Jelinek’s Das schweigende Mädchen at Mün... more I propose a case study of the recent staging of Elfriede Jelinek’s Das schweigende Mädchen at Münchner Kammerspiele to illustrate a stance of law and narrative mediated by artistic treatment. The play, taken its name from the defendent Beate Zschäpe who remains silent through trials on the NSU murders, takes the visual form of a trial room with the present parties being, intriguingly, a judge, angels, and prophets. The text heavily draws on media reports and biblical as well as mythos resources, championing in a operatic performance of speech.

This paper aims to expand the concept Gongfu by going into two dimensions. Firstly, an account of... more This paper aims to expand the concept Gongfu by going into two dimensions. Firstly, an account of energy and work, which provides a physical perspective to Gongfu. And secondly, a theoretical dimension of epistemology and ontology, through which it provides a way to invigorate the concept of Gongfu. A departing point for this paper is, prompted by the theme of PSi “Avant-Garde, Tradition, Community” and Performance Philosophy network’s working tradition, how could we think further with Gongfu? What does thinking mean for Gongfu as, more commonly understood, an applied art of doing? What is beyond its mere appearance and practice? It is also hoped that this conceptual reading will contribute to what performance studies / performance philosophy can do with regard to theory.

A multi-voiced performative manifesto on Europe and European theater at “Perform Diversity” discu... more A multi-voiced performative manifesto on Europe and European theater at “Perform Diversity” discussion in Münchner Kammerspiele, with Zafiris Nikitas, Anoek Nuyens, Ashley Scott-Layton

In the statement from Your Honor we’ve heard the following on art and its social potential: “D... more In the statement from Your Honor we’ve heard the following on art and its social potential:

“Due to its unique integration of imagination and intelligence, understanding and sense-based perception that also appeals to affect, art can counter such dangerous populist effects by stimulating an increased competence in the public.”

I will provide evidence for your deliberation that the prevailing system IS the potential of arts, culture and history, thereby rendering this charge invalid on ground that one (abstract entity) is not able to exclude itself from itself.

Academy of Media Arts Cologne theory seminar (postgraduate program) summer semester 2015, winter ... more Academy of Media Arts Cologne
theory seminar (postgraduate program)
summer semester 2015, winter semester 2015/16

Some thirty years ago, I asked [Arnold J.] Toynbee what historical period and place he would most like to have been born in. He replied Xinjiang (now the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China) soon after the start of the Common Era, because Central Asia at that time was a meeting point for Buddhist, Indian, Greek, Iranian, and Chinese cultures.
-- Daisaku Ikeda (Japanese thinker)

Starting no later than 2000 years ago, the Silk Road connected East Asia and Europe through trade and cultural transfers. With its breadth of influence, degree of connectivity and interactivity, the Silk Road in its many different variations is the first significant transnational project of the human kind. The land routes of the Silk Road gradually waned when sea trading routes advanced, lending the Silk Road new cultural meanings. As the world strode into the New Era when the transnational project was no longer based on mutual ground, order-imposing technologies were adopted, leading ultimately to the fall of transnationalization to imperialism and colonialism, the symptom of which – with advanced capitalism and its celebrated byproduct of globalization – we still feel today.

The topic of the seminar is as much the Silk Road itself and what it symbolizes –nomadism, syncretism, rethinking nationalism and borders of all kinds. We will take transhistorical lines of flight to find strange connections that help us unpack our current frame of global geopolitics.