Qiyuan Wang

I am a life observer, storyteller, communicator and an idler.

My animation background makes me adept at using narrative language to build works, My experiences and feelings determine how I see the world.

I like to search for my own intuitive feelings in daily life and to discover the hidden social problems, historical reasons and influences on us behind these feelings. This is the basis for my communication with the audience.

I view the creative process as a dialogue with myself. As William Wordsworth defined poetry, 'the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.' Poetry is a great way to talk to our past selves, the liberation of our personal voice and a carrier rich in imagery and storytelling. By experimenting with the fusion of different media and poetry, I visualize my dialogue process into scenes and stories, attracting the audience to interpret the stories I build.

My research areas involve human behavior, psychogeography, sociology, my own story, etc.

My work is based on Simmel’s analysis of the Metropolis combined with the ideas presented by Situationist International to explore how capitalism affects the establishment of our values. Taking our attitude towards idling in everyday contexts as a starting point, I describe how I gradually changed my view of idling through my experiments.

I used a Poem Bed to perform near Liverpool Street Station and build a narrative scene for audiences. To tell them the story about me and my idler self and express a kind of resistance to productivity values and the current mainstream lifestyle. I hope to trigger audiences to interpret the scene I build and give them a different perspective to think about how should we behave when we are idle.

In the process of experimenting with my work, I explored the value of idling by exploring poetry and the combination of different media (such as workshops, film, and installation art).

I wrote poetry about the intuitive feeling I had when I was idle. This was the starting point of my project, and it prompted me to explore the reasons for my feelings.

Medium:

text

Inspired by Simmel and Situationist International, I found that the anxiety we feel when we are idle is because we fall into the false desire constructed by capitalism. So in this context, should we rethink what it feels like to be idle? I try to express my thoughts on the Metropolis in research through poetry combining film.

Medium:

film, text

In this capitalist-guided system, we believe that idleness cannot create value, but is idleness really worthless? To explore this, I held an idling workshop. I recorded their behavior by video and poem. This film combines poetry and expresses the uniqueness that idling brings to us.

Medium:

workshop, text

The book How to be Idle has given me some inspiration. it prompted me to convey the idling moment from the perspective of small scenes. I used the poetry combined with illustrations to build an idling scene with different small events, so as to show the spiritual feeling that idling brings to us.

Medium:

illustration, text

When we are idle, we may be more in the process of feeling ourselves and giving ourselves back to ourselves.

Everyone can be an idler. An idler has the courage to accept themselves, the courage to rediscover themselves and the courage to resist the contemporary way of life.

Medium:

text

‘Don't! The lie-in - by which I mean lying in bed awake - is not a selfish indulgence but an essential tool for any student of the art of living, which is what the idler really is. Lying in bed doing nothing is noble and right, pleasurable and productive.’ - Tom Hodgkinson

The bed is not just a tool for us to sleep, it is a scene of leisure and solitude. For me, the bed carries most of my idle time. So In the form of poetry and illustrations, I designed a Poem Bed that represents my idleness, so as to tell the story of me, an unashamed idler.

Medium:

text, textiles, mixed media

For the Metropolis, there are no items, such as beds, that represent 'idling' near the workplace. I choose to perform a series of idle behaviors near Liverpool Street Station, such as sleeping, being in a daze and writing poetry. This performance reinforces the ritual sense of my conversation with my idle self. The performance in a place that represents 'productivity' creates a contradictory scene, expressing an attitude of accepting my idle self and a kind of resistance to the contemporary lifestyle and productivity values.

Medium:

performance, film, text

Qiyuan Wang

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Royal College of Art