Abstract

One of the main natural obstacles of Western-privileged globalization of cultures is the world’s systems of productivity in most fields that tend to follow, if not obey, the Western-origin categorizing forces. The many world networks of parallel yet intertwined ways of thinking and of producing knowledge - and in this case, making art - in its most diverse sense preserves a striking diversity. In this sense, when categorization becomes loosened, the boundary becomes blurred and rationality becomes flexibilized in a particular cultural background and a specific curating act. The fluidity of meanings in a Westernen-like perspective within the essence of organizational forces and lines thus offers a poetics that in turn (re-)defines art making, both art and making, in its very own right. Advocating for knowledge production decentralization, Yipei Lee, the co-curator of internet artist residency “Flaneur in the insular cities: island ecology” (漫遊島城——島嶼生態學), is very much the case of this poetics. Putting it in a less utopian wording, Lee’s co-curation offers a chance to funding entities, research-based artists and curators themselves to build a multifying dimension of co-centralities in art making. This poetics of playing with meanings in art making itself is marked by the project’s all-encompassing interrelations and interactions among curators and artists rhizome-like webs of ideas that have been materialized during the ongoing process of this online residency: Participating individuals are supposed to do flânerie as their own initiatives within and without some certain universality of insularity and its ecologicality as main themes of their artistic research. This essay aims at exploring, if not attempts to offer an insight on how the elasticity and flexibleness of to-be-reappropriated meanings in this particular case can serve as an alternative way of decentralization, while giving a very brief overview about the event.
While Lee as an independent curator offers necessary empirical evidence for the writing of this essay, Cheong Kin Man, as a visual anthropologist, tries to give third-party commentaries and observations on it.

Keywords: Decentralization, Knowledge production, Art making, Curation, Visual anthropology

Introduction

“Une île
Claire comme un matin de Pâques
Offrant l’océane langueur
D’une sirène à chaque vague”

Jacques Brel, “Une île” (1962)

One of the most remarkable ways of how the artist residency “Flaneur in the insular cities” is textually (re-)presented, is to see how meanings of words are flexible. Organized as an immediate reaction towards the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent confinement across the globe, the internet-based initiative can be seen as a great ambition, which is “with a focus on research and decentralization of knowledge production worldwide (致力於跨文化的藝術研究。作為一藝術性實驗，以島嶼生態學為出發點，探索島嶼集體化的系列主題).”1 When one reads both in Chinese-Mandarin and English, the multifying ambition becomes lucider: While exploring the world’s island collectivities and their ecologies within the framework of this residency as an artistic experimental, decentralization of knowledge making is an aspiration. In this framework, the residency results in a series of online and public presentations in four chapters: “Travel & On-board” (航行記), “Patch” (區塊帶), “Migratory & Decentralization’’ (遷徙記) and “Stability & Sustainability” (永續記), with the participation of London-based Singaporean photographer Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee2, Mexican artist and architect Ivan Juarez, Chinese duo x:x (Xiong Yu-Xiu and Xue Yu-Xuan) from Chengdu or Chengtu, Yipei Lee, the co-curator herself being from Taiwan and residing in Shanghai and in Chapter 3 (See annex I for biographies), Syarul Anuar and Chu Hao Pei from Singapore and Lin Tzu Huan from Taiwan. These chapters were already presented and their public online presentations are partially available online3: most notably Chapter 2, in which the audiovisual works by Juarez4 and x:x5 and the recording of the audiovisual yet non-verbal presentation by Elizabeth Lee are available on YouTube6. The presentations were held between January and April 2021 and the event is still ongoing at the time this essay is submitted.

As for this Chapter 1, one reads this opening paragraph of introduction on the website of Shanghai’s Rockbund Art Museum7:

Taking off an airplane, we often look out of the window and see that the land area diminishes with the height. Our perception has been raised from a two-dimensional perspective to the perspective of God in just a few minutes. From urban plains to winding rivers, from hills and valleys to magnificent mountains, they gradually become towering islands in the vast ocean. It suddenly became clear that islands are miniature continents, and continents are very, very huge islands. It seems that the land and the sea are connected, but the world is both formed and unconnected. It is this beautiful emptiness that makes us want to explore8. (See annex II for the integral textual presentation.)

This poetics itself both challenges and questions how meanings and ways of categorization vary in such a specific curatorial ambition and collective art making process. It offers an alternative understanding about the traditional, and most importantly, Western-origin interrelationality between and hierarchy of insularity and continentality. The potential interchangeability between an island as a “miniature continent” and a continent as a “huge island” implies a noumenon of how this project follows Yipei Lee’s long-term curatorial practices: an always encompassing attitude towards a “knowledge production worldwide” and its “decentralization”. The blurry contrast between insularity and continentality mentioned here only echoes a bigger complex of other blurry contrast-like polytomies: insularity-ecologicality-continentality, insularity-urbanity-flânerie, insularity-globality-researchability and so on. Adam Grydehøj (2017, 8) pertinently suggests avoiding an “insularity within island studies” and the curatorial conceptualization and realization observed here constitutes a curious and intriguing example. With its gravity that even attracts non-insularity or continentality in an almost undichotomized way, this rhizome-like complex of an encompassing insularity, which is materialized through a merged and merging process of art making and curating, may even propose an in- and outsight as an alternative form of organizing thoughts, thus producing knowledge in- and outside the world’s academia that is still mostly driven by Western-origin forces of categorization and rationality.

Decentralizability and meaning

Observateur, flâneur, philosophe, appelez-le comme vous voudrez [...]

Baudelaire (ca. 1868-1870, 57)

As the Museum of Contemporary Digital Art’s curators, Eleonora Brizi, Chiara Braidotti and Serena Tabacchi (2020) pertinently and concisely put it, “pure decentralization is a utopia.” If it is to be added, it would be even an impoursuivable ideal to be pursued. Any decentralizability may be considered stemming from another mirrored side, a certain centralizabiliy. The linearity of the idea from creating some to-be-centralized thing to inventing some to-be-decentralized one should sound too evolutionist and it may only perpetuate this on- and backwardness of de-centralizabiliy. Even centres become deformed and transformed in order to be shared and redistributed as groups of centres, whether they are interrelated inside these “groups” or not, some undeniable centrality of power still exists as if the dualism of centralizabiliy and decentralizability seemed to be a mere slogan-like concept. On the other hand, even if entirely isolated centrailities achieved their existence as an act and result of decentralization, it is questionable how much powers would be delegated to them. If, for example, the internet is considered to serve -including social media (see Maria D. Leake, 2014 or Robert W. Sweeny, 2015)- as a means of this decentralizability, there is then a risk to misunderstand the fact that it is the mulitifying delegated cocentralizities in a long-established hierarchy of powers alone to be further decentralized instead of decentralizing the central powers themselves. It thus seems to be illusionary to aspire a complete decentralization in a literal sense, nor it would be realizable and achievable. Decentralizability in its most realistic form would be a centralizability or centrality that within its gravity generates and then attracts, structuralizes and extends its co-centralizabilities and co-centralities.

One of the strategies used in “Flaneur in the insular cities” is to loosen categorization, blur boundaries and flexibilize rationality, as mentioned in the introductory abstract of this essay. It is very interesting to observe this “non-Western” strategy as one can also find a similar reconceptualization and redefinition of “commonplace” by Hong Kong writer Dung Kai Cheung in his work The Altas (2010), where he observes the commonness of homonyms and naming in classical Chinese toponymies. Thinking in an interchangeable way, East Asian societies that have been renewing their reappropriation of non-East Asian origin systems of knowledge production, namely from the West in its most comprehensive sense and thus offers, as many other World’s Kulturkreise also do, an alternative of production that deviates from an obedience to orthodox Western-origin categorizing forces. To use their own words, Yipei Lee and her co-curator Winnie Li and fellow artists “are inevitably immersing [them]selves deeper into natural perspectives to convey the relationship between the theme and art practice.” (Chapter 4 Stability & Sustainability9, see annex III) While decentralization is an aspiration, co-centralities are observed as the web of a both simple and complex interrelationship among meanings merging into each other. In “Flaneur in the insular cities”, when this aspired decentralibility still functions like a complex of hierarchical co-centralities with a gravity that aims at its all-encompassment, the umbrella theme of island ecology is enriched by its art practice that is in turn materialized through several webs of merging-and-multifying meanings provided by the curators and artists. It is observed that meanings are largely merging in a mutual way and thus constitutes an intensifying juxtaposition of conceptual networks. This subsequently reaches some sense of decentralization as well.

Furthermore, borrowing Joseph Doubtfire’s and Giulia Ranchetti’s title of their article, “Curator as Artist as Curator” (2015), it is noteworthy to look into the process of the available presentations online as the project is an internet-based artist residency. It has further blurred the boundaries between the curator and the artist and turned them into a single whole, if not ensemble, of creators. The constantly renewed technological aspects easily distract us from the essential fact that art making is essential to humanity since antiquity.

Continuing in the same line of thoughts, and echoing Stephanos Stephanides’s and Susan Bassnett’s “Islands, Literature, and Cultural Translatability” (2008), the fact that the insularity of this project has been so flexible that it sheds light on how diverse it can be of the island’s life, no matter if it is a true one in a most conventional sense or it is a fictive one. In the framework of “Flaneur in the insular cities”, Ivan Juarez’s research on La Milpa and its artistic materialization challenge the hierarchy between insularity and continentality, while x:x’s exploration of the binary of borders and non-borders of a Chinese island questions exactly what Gang Hong (2017) from Mainland China has researched into: the contrast of mainlandness and islandness of the Chinese island-city of Zhuhai. Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee, herself coming from an island-state, gives, in her turn, an important insight into decolonial photography, while conducting her artistic research on Christmas Island.

A final note as conclusion

Although some pure decentralization may sound too much like a utopian ambition, at least when it is driven as a gravitational and (co-)centre-generating whole of co-centralities with delegated powers within Western-origin forces of categorization, it is observed in the artist residency “Flaneur in the insular cities” as a deviating alternative, diverging from and even reinventing meanings from a meaning in such a specific curatorial background and artistic research process. Borrowing Walter Benjamin’s (1974) philosophication of Charles Baudalaire’s word “flâneur,” Yipei Lee’s idea of flâneurie is not only observed in the artist’s exploration of a specific topic in their research, but also very much in a sense of how an all-encompassment is somehow materialized through a wandering and playful, merging and multifying network or networks of blurred and blurring meanings, functioning as some kind of complex organic expansion and reduction of concepts. As both the authors -the co-curator and the third-party observer- come from a similar cultural background, this essay itself is very much inspired and constrained both by some East-Asian logics and Western-origin categorizing forces in a similar way. These two sides compete with, escape from and at the same time also merge into each other. By regrouping and reappropriating Western-origin categories and meanings while not obeying them in an orthodox way, “Flaneur in the insular cities” has become at once a gravitational and centrifugal whole. In this sense, some decentralization, even in its utopian sense, seems to have been achieved.

The authors thank Jessica Strauck for her kind suggestions to improve the text in English while nevertheless assuming the whole responsibility.

Notes

1Official event page of “Flaneur in the insular cities: island ecology”, which has been featured and updated in Insular City Zine. https://insularcityzine.blog/residency-flaneur-in-the-insular-cities-island-ecology/ Last access on 7 June 2021.

2https://www.instagram.com/elizabethgabriellelee/ Last access on 7 June 2021.

3https://insularcityzine.blog/residency-flaneur-in-the-insular-cities-island-ecology/ Last access on 7 June 2021.

4https://youtu.be/itCAvup2QQk Last access on 7 June 2021.

5https://youtu.be/V9jAgONMUkk Last access on 7 June 2021.

6https://youtu.be/_B-RRu8OpNs Last access on 7 June 2021.

7http://www.rockbundartmuseum.org/en/event/overview/0b2 csvu Last access on 7 June 2021.

8In Chinese-Mandarin, one reads:“搭乘飞机时，我们经常望着窗外，看着土地面积随高度上升而渺小，对土地界线的感知，也在短短数分钟内从二维角度提升为上帝视角。从城市平原到蜿蜒曲折的河流、从山丘纵谷到雄伟壮阔的山脉，渐渐变成汪洋大海中一座座耸立的岛屿。恍然大悟，岛屿其实就是微型的大陆，而大陆是非常非常巨大的岛屿。看似边界分明的土地和海洋，世界既有关联又好似没有关系。正是这种美丽的虚无，让我们想去探索。” http://www.rockbundartmuseum.org/cn/event/overview/0b2csvu Last access on 7 June 2021.

9https://www.facebook.com/events/755769981795244/ Last access on 7 June 2021.

References

Benjamin, Walter. 1974. Charles Baudelaire: Ein Lyriker im Zeitalter des Hochkapitalismus. Berlin: Suhrkamp.

Baudelaire, Charles. Ca. 1868-1870. Oeuvres complètes de Charles Baudelaire. Tome 3. Paris. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k10732385/f72.double# Last access on 7 June 2021.

Brizi, Eleonora, Chiara Braidotti and Serena Tabacchi. 2020. “Curating Digital Art in URL.” SuperRare. https://editorial.superrare.co/2020/05/28/curating-digital-art-in-url/ Last access on 7 June 2021.

Doubtfire, Joseph and Giulia Ranchetti. 2015. “Curator as Artist as Curator.” Curating the Contemporary (CtC). https://curatingthecontemporary.org/2015/04/30/curator-as-artist-as-curator/ Last access on 7 June 2021.

Dung Kai Cheung. 2010. The Altas. New Taipei: Linking Publishing Co.

Gang Hong. 2017. “Locating Zhuhai between land and sea: a relational production of Zhuhai, China, as an island city.” In Island Studies Journal 12(2): 7-24. https://islandstudies.ca/sites/default/files/ISJHong ZhuhaiLandSea.pdf Last access on 7 June 2021.

Grydehøj, Adam. 2017. “A future of island studies.” In Island Studies Journal 12(1): 3-16.

Leake, Maria D. 2014. “Social Engagements With Contemporary Art: Connecting Theory With Practice.” In Art Education, September 2014, Vol. 67, No. 5: 23-30. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24766118 Last access on 7 June 2021.

Schalansky, Judith. 2019. Atlas der abgelegenen Inseln. Hamburg: mare-Verlag.

Stephanides, Stephanos and Susan Bassnett. 2008. “Islands, Literature, and Cultural Translatability.” In Transtext(e)s Transcultures - Journal of Global Cultural Studies, Hors série 2008: 5-21. https://journals.openedition.org/transtexts/212 Last access on 7 June 2021.

Sweeny, Robert W. 2015. Dysfunction and Decentralization in New Media Art and Education. Bristol: Intellect.

Annex I: Artists’ and co-curator’s biographies - original texts

Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee | Singapore

Graduated from BA (Hons) Creative Direction and MA photography at the University of the Arts London, Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee is based between Singapore and London. Her art practice is guided by the iterations of slow violence and the dynamic between the ‘near’ and ‘elsewhere’.

In attempting to disarm instruments of knowledge production, her practice shies away from reduction and completion. Steering away from essentialism, she is interested in once-forgotten micro and muted narratives. By revisioning fractured traditions, she engages with visual and textual interventions to navigate the nuances of perception and retention.

As an extension to Elizabeth’s practice, she runs XING, a research and curatorial platform centered on Southeast and East Asian art practices’ poetics and politics. She has exhibited and participated widely, including V&A Museum (UK), DECK (SG), The Arts House (SG), GextoPhoto (ES), Unseen (NL), Photo London (UK) and Guest Projects (UK). She is an associate lecturer in the School of Fine Art & Photography, University for the Creative Arts in Rochester in the United Kingdom.’

Ivan Juarez | Mexico City

Ivan Juarez was born in Mexico. He is a practicing artist and landscape architect. Currently, he is a Ph.D. candidate in Artistic Research at the Doctoral School of the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław, Poland. He has conceived a body of work in diverse landscapes and cartographies, from the tropical forest and marine ecosystem in Brazil to the Andean cultivate terraces in Peru. He traveled from the coastal coniferous forest in the Norwegian fjords, to the Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard. From the native eucalyptus bushlands in Australia to the forest ecosystems and agricultural rice fields in Japan.

Ivan is the founder of x-studio, a multidisciplinary research practice that focuses on exploring different disciplines through the dialogue between ecological, biological, and cultural systems. He is dedicated to sensing the landscape through the conceptualization and findings of innovative methodologies. The project “The Seed Cultures Archive” brings together projects from environmental artists who place seeds in their focus, honoring the fertile bonds between biological and cultural diversity in agri-food systems.

Ivan Juarez has obtained the following grants and awards: Jørn Utzon’s Can Lis House Art Grant given by the Utzon Foundation and the Danish Arts Foundation; Environmental Award BigCi, Australia; Latin American Biennial of Landscape Architecture; Grand Prix Award, given by the Serbian Association of Landscape Architects, The Architectural League Prize of New York. He has obtained honors from the Mexican Biennial of Landscape Architecture and the Architectural Review for Emerging Architects in London.

x:x (Xiong Yu-Xiu & Xue Yu-Xuan) | Chengdu

x:x is represented by Xiong Yu-Xiu and Xue Yu-Xuan as the Chinese collective. They studied at the University of Arts London. At the same time, Xue Yu-Xuan holds the photography profession, and Xiong Yu-Xiu focuses on cognitive and decision sciences.

Xue Yu-Xuan is good at image creation. She comes from Dongying, located in the Shandong Peninsula, facing the sea and connecting the inland. The famous Shengli Oilfield in the region is in an isolated, autonomous economic system. On the other hand, it is related to people from mainland China. There are inseparable intersections. She has participated in exhibitions such as the Taipei International Photography Festival, London Academy of Art Photography Exhibition, Beijing Women’s Film Festival, and received the London Photobox Nomination Award.

Before engaging in art, Xiong Yu-Xiu focuses on the study of free will from biology and cognitive science perspectives. The unknown field of small fluctuations between the peaks of human brain waves is considered by many to be the space where God exists. She understands it as an “interval of areas,” which is an infinite concept beyond human thinking and can only be felt with the heart. They will unfold a series of fictitious narratives between imagination, time, and space to explore the mysteries. Analyze the ambiguous space of the opposite relationship, and respond to the endless land, body, and thought in which they are located.

Yipei Lee | Taipei

Yipei Lee was born in Taipei. Currently is studying for an MBA at École d’Arts et de Culture. As an independent curator and writer, she pays attention to contemporary art in the Asia region and especially in Southeast Asia for a long time. Artistic research, residency, curation, and international exchanges are carried out with support from industry links, art consultants, and communities.

She is the founder of SUAVEART and Insular City Zine to rethink cultural boundaries and artistic impact. The main programs include “Seeding Future -Tropical Rainforest Research” and “Flaneur in the insular cities” in the island topology and natural environment to achieve humanistic care, cultural literacy accumulation, and art without borders.

She is invited to curate the exhibition “Life Dimension in art” in 2020 Poznan Art Week. Curated projects are included Ex-tension: The Dislocation of culture and pattern (PL), A touch for the now – Taiwan and Southeast Asian ART Exhibition (PL), The glimmer that we see / Vietnam (TW), Dinh project – Taqetaq (VN). She also participated in the residency project at Muong Culture Museum near Hanoi in Vietnam, the Batik story project in Surabaya, Indonesia, and contributed articles in Xinrui Weekly, Artist, hiart, and REVOLVE Artco, and other publications.

http://www.rockbundartmuseum.org/en/event/overview/0b2csvu

关于嘉宾:

Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee | 新加坡

具有伦敦艺术大学文学背景和摄影学硕士的艺术家 Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee 经常往返新加坡与伦敦之间，以“邻近 near”和“他处 elsewhere”相互迭代的慢性暴力和多样性形成艺术实践。

在试图消弭知识生产手段的武装时，她避开了削减和完善。抛开本质主义，Elizabeth 对曾经被遗忘的微观和无聊叙事感兴趣，而进行视觉和文本的介入，表现感知和保留之间的细微差别。

Elizabeth 经营了诗学和政治学为中心的研究策展平台 XING，尝试从非主流角度探索相关矩阵。她曾参与过英国 V&A 博物馆、Photo London、Guest Projects、新加坡 DECK、Arts House、荷兰 Unseen 等国际展览。目前为英国罗切斯特创意艺术大学美术与摄影学院的副讲师。

Ivan Juarez | 墨西哥城

出生于墨西哥的 Ivan Juarez，是一位实践艺术家和景观设计师。他现为波兰弗罗茨瓦夫艺术与设计学院博士学位学校艺术研究教育博士学位候选人。从巴西热带雨林到秘鲁安第斯山脉梯田、从挪威峡湾针叶林到斯瓦尔巴群岛的北极群岛、从澳洲桉树丛林到日本稻田，都有他的足迹。

Ivan 创办了 x-studio 致力于通过生态、生物和文化系统间的对话，从跨学科研究角度探索自然和建筑环境，试图通过概念化和创新方法的发现来感知景观。在《种子文化档案 The Seed Cultures Archive》项目，汇集了环境地景艺术家将种子作为出发点，以纪念农业食品系统中生物和文化多样性之间的肥沃纽带。

Ivan Juarez 曾参与过丹麦艺术基金会 Jørn Utzon 的 Can Lis House 项目、奥地利建筑论坛、拉丁美洲地景建筑双年展，获得纽约建筑联盟奖、Venice Arte Laguna 特别奖、奥地利 BigCi 环境艺术奖，并获得了墨西哥地景建筑双年展和伦敦新兴建筑师的建筑评论等国际殊荣。

x:x (熊彧秀 & 薛雨璇) | 成都

来自中国的双人组艺术家 x:x由毕业于伦敦艺术大学传媒学院摄影硕士的薛雨璇，以及伦敦艺术大学认知与决策科学背景的熊彧秀组成。

擅长影像创作的薛雨璇来自位于山东半岛，既面向大海又衔接内陆的东营；在当地著名的胜利油田，处于封闭的自治状态和自给自足的经济体系中，另一方面，却与中国各地的人有着密不可分的交集。她曾参与过台北国际摄影节、伦敦艺术学院摄影展、北京女性影展等展览，以及获伦敦 Photobox 提名奖。

从事艺术之前，熊彧秀从生物和认知科学角度切入自由意志的研究；关于人的脑电波峰值之间微小波动的未知领域，被许多人认为是神存在的空间，她将其理解为“区间之间的空隙”是超越人的思维、只能用心去感受的无限概念。她们将展开了一场介于想像力与时空之间的虚构环形叙事探索解谜，试图从对立关系的暧昧空间层层剖析，回应着所处的绵延不绝的土地、身体与思想。

李依佩 | 台北

出生于台北，现正就读法国 EAC 艺术文化管理学院工商管理硕士。作为独立策展人和文字工作者，关注亚洲整体与当代艺术趋势，自2008年长期关注东南亚地区文化与艺术环境，通过展览策划、驻村、文化研究等国际交流，进行跨地及跨领域项目。相继成立细着艺术和创办岛屿城志 (Insular City Zine)，重新思考文化边界和艺术影响力。主要项目包括关注自然环境与艺术的「未来种子：热带雨林研究计画」以及岛屿作为文化研究的「漫游岛城」系列。

她是2020 波兹南艺术周策展人之一，策划展览「解方- 生命维数」。其他项目包含「触见今日－台湾与东南亚当代艺术现况联展」、「延/伸:文化与媒材的移动关系−亚洲当代艺术群展」、「微光真实/越南」、「Dinh project－Taqetaq」等展览。曾于北越芒族博物馆、印尼泗水 Alam Batik 驻村，文章散见信睿周报、艺术家、hiart、REVOLVE、Artco 等刊物。

http://www.rockbundartmuseum.org/cn/event/overview/0b2csvu

Annex II: Chapter 1’s textual introduction in “Flaneur in the insular cities” 

Taking off an airplane, we often look out of the window and see that the land area diminishes with the height. Our perception has been raised from a two-dimensional perspective to the perspective of God in just a few minutes. From urban plains to winding rivers, from hills and valleys to magnificent mountains, they gradually become towering islands in the vast ocean. It suddenly became clear that islands are miniature continents, and continents are very, very huge islands. It seems that the land and the sea are connected, but the world is both formed and unconnected. It is this beautiful emptiness that makes us want to explore.

Robert Louis Stevenson is best known as the author of the children’s classic Treasure Island. A map of an imaginary island gave Stevenson the idea for the story. When Stevenson recalled in his [“]Essays in the Art of Writing[”] that [...] “On one of these occasions, I made the map of an island; it was elaborately and (I thought) beautifully colored; the shape of it took my fancy beyond expression; it contained harbors that pleased me like sonnets.”

Flaneur in The Insular Cities: Island Ecology is an internet-based residency project. It explores the topic of islands collectivity as artistic experimentation with Island Ecologies as a point of departure.

Using the notion of the island as a foundation, from the ports to the islands, from land to the sea, in a dream state, these seemingly unrelated points break away from the continuity of time and space in this project. The project demystifies reality with the fictional; it explores the spooky state that connects and divides the binaries. It is a journey along the state lines, a journey without borders: Surrounded by the ocean on every point on this land is a starting point, every mountain [has] points of opposition, [...] yet they connect each other to the borders.

People are breathing on the passage, while fate plays on the flute.

Randomly dispersed on-site on this earth, we explore the different worlds within. At the same time, we use different lenses to look at the converted myth and the people, the culture, the ecological system, as well as every other matter under the same sky, like inside of a peculiar prism. In this network, regardless of geographical and spiritual disintegration, the borders we are situated on are like the room of (non)existence, as we are pandering on our imagination of the island, with every thought in our mind throughout the journey: will the island be aligned with our vision when we actually arrive, how different will it be?

2020 is a unique year. We are deeply affected by the Covid-pandemic, cross-cultural exchange, and traveling might never return to the status [it] had before. With increasingly strict national boundaries and quarantine conditions imposed on a global scale, we want to explore the possibility of island network and topology, by extension its limitations, boundaries, modes of co-existence, and the zones between such demarcations, hybridization, and vibrations within its locale.

We hope that through this talk, we can create a new platform that makes these connections in contemporary art. We hope to share our experiences and learn from each other and extend the possibility of artistic development. The residency project starts from December 2020 to May 2021. If you are situated within the World Wide Web, feel free to join the discussions with us.

http://www.rockbundartmuseum.org/en/event/overview/0b2csvu

搭乘飞机时，我们经常望着窗外，看着土地面积随高度上升而渺小，对土地界线的感知，也在短短数分钟内从二维角度提升为上帝视角。从城市平原到蜿蜒曲折的河流、从山丘纵谷到雄伟壮阔的山脉，渐渐变成汪洋大海中一座座耸立的岛屿。恍然大悟，岛屿其实就是微型的大陆，而大陆是非常非常巨大的岛屿。看似边界分明的土地和海洋，世界既有关联又好似没有关系。正是这种美丽的虚无，让我们想去探索。

一张岛屿地图曾带给儿童经典故事金银岛的作者斯蒂文森 （Robert Louis Stevenson）灵感。他曾在《写作技巧论述》中说到：“某种情况下，我绘制了一座岛屿地图，这座岛屿的色彩外型激发了我的想像力。那里的港口仿佛十四行诗般让我心醉神迷。”

“漫游岛城 - 岛屿生态学”是个基于网络的驻村发展计划，将透过人文科学基础探索岛屿集合形成作为艺术实验形式的可能性。

我们以岛屿拓扑学为基础，从港口到岛屿，从大陆到湖泊，看似不关联的点，在一场虚构的梦里，打破时间与空间的连续性，通过虚构解谜真实，探索隔离和连接的⼆元对⽴之间的模糊地带。这是⼀段沿着国境线的旅程、这是一场没有边界的航行：被海洋包围的陆地任何一处都是起点，每个⼭头都是对⽴的点，但是它们⼜彼此连接着边境。

⼈在管道上呼吸，命运在⻓笛上奏曲。

散落在现场的我们，探索不同世界的同时，共同的太阳和对存在于不同角落的神话⺠族、人类与万物、生态资源系统等事件，犹如置身奇异稜镜。在这片网络中，无论是地理或精神上解体，我们所处的边界犹如虚无间的生存空间，当我们乘着交通工具和思想航行最终到达⼀个岛屿的时候，此刻所⻅的岛屿会与出发前我们对岛屿的看法有何不同呢？

http://www.rockbundartmuseum.org/cn/event/overview/0b2csvu

Annex II: Chapter 4’s textual introduction

In this chapter, we are inevitably immersing ourselves deeper into natural perspectives to convey the relationship between the theme and art practice. Via the implementation of Ivan Juarez, “La Milpa” is the most representative icon in Mexico, showing the spiritual circulation of corn life.

In X:X’s journey from the border to the island, they search for stories in the gaps of quotidian experiences, through which they take a glimpse at borders and non-borders. This time they will share the story of two trees: two trees in different places, different forms, different life cycles, and how they transcend the time scale of human beings.

Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee’s ongoing research on Christmas Island transverses the invisible forces of astronomy and astrology. Drawing from the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn lines, the research speculates the missed connections and departures between native red crabs and a British colonial magistrate.

Ivan Juarez’s artistic research explores and pays homage to -La Milpa-, a traditional and historical agricultural system from Mexico that produces maize, beans, squash, and chile in a symbiotic dialogue. A series of artworks that appeal to Milpa´s symbolic and cultural significance, increasing the imaginary of its cycles, stages, interactions, biodiversity, and cosmovision.

在本章節中，我們無可避免地將自己更沈浸於自然的角度，傳達主題與藝術實踐之間的關係。 通過 Ivan Juarez 的攝影紀錄，傳達 “La Milpa” 墨西哥最具代表性的標誌，展現了玉米生命的精神循環。

在 x:x 開始邊界到島嶼的旅程時，她們通過邊界和非邊界，開始審視日常生活體驗的各種故事。這次她們將分享兩棵樹的故事：兩棵樹在不同的地方，不同的形式，不同的生命週期，以及它們如何超越人類的時間尺度。

Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee 持續研究聖誕節島，天文學和占星術的隱形力量橫渡了世界。該研究從北迴歸線和摩羯座的線條中得出，推測了當地的紅蟹與英國殖民地方法官之間錯過的聯繫和偏離。

https://www.facebook.com/events/云栖小镇/chapter-4-stability-sustainability2050-presentation-by-residency-artists/755769981795244/