Yixiong Cui

WaterWays: an invitation to re-imagine the ecology of Regent’s Canal restores and regenerates broken relationships between humans and the living organisms of the Regent’s Canal.

The project explores the canal’s biodiversity and lived histories to understand and challenge the way we generate, collect and store environmental data. At the core of the project is Canal Observatory, a commission by the artist collectives AusBlau and Applied Logic that have co-created a digital game for environmental data collection. By looking at the biodiversity of Camley Street Natural Park and recognising it through “canal emojis”, Canal Observatory reflects on who can collect data, how this is accessible as well as how we can reimagine our relationships with our surroundings.

Behind the scenes, WaterWays creates an ecosystem of alliances recognising agency to those who have been working with water and data for much longer than the curatorial team; the project involves scientists and botanists, Central Saint Martins students working on projects to protect the ecosystem, local inhabitants closely linked to the aquatic environment, as well as artists and creative practitioners.

WaterWays: an invitation to re-imagine the ecology of the Regent’s Canal was curated by Chiara Famengo, Fergus Wiltshire, Jiaqi Liu, Kylee Kim, Marjorier Ding, Yixiong Cui from the MA Curating Contemporary Art Programme as part of the Graduate Projects 2022, Royal College of Art in partnership with the Open Data Institute (ODI)’s Data as Culture.

Yixiong is a curator based in London, Harbin, and Chongqing.

Focusing on experience, gamify, and interaction, Yixiong explore ways to share and deliver the first-person perspective and narrative. He believes subjective perspectives have strong emotional and experiential potentials that need to be delivered via creating resonance with the audience and linking the visitors' emotions with the creators', and only by fully understanding both the art piece and the space the power of subjective experience could be found and revealed. He believes that it is significant to constantly change positions in building such a relationship, thus curators like him are able to put their perspectives on themselves, the creators, the visitors, and the broad public, so the subjective narratives could be found in common experiences of humans, the visitors' first-person experience could be provoked, and could be effectively shared and internalized with the audience. Yixiong believes that these subjective ideas are exactly who we are, he is exploring methods to help people understand others' thoughts and concepts better. His dissertation has explored the sense of touch in understanding an object from a perspective of empiricism, suggesting that it is the mechanisms behind the interactions that made them understandable, therefore recreating experiences, interaction, and gamify are pathways he currently working on.

Launch Project

Photograph by Lyu Leyan

Photograph by Kylee Kim

Photograph by Kylee Kim

Photograph by Lyu Leyan

WaterWays is an art project that connects humans to other living organisms of the Regent’s Canal. Through Canal Observatory, a newly commissioned digital game for data collection codesigned by artist collectives AusBlau and Applied Logic, interviews, stories, ecological findings. WaterWays seeks to understand the health of this ecosystem in the hope of remedying and rebuilding relationships. The research is presented in the form of three chapters: Voices of Water; (Un)learning Canal Ecosystems; and Archiving Futures.

In Collaboration with:

Ausblau

They are Christoph Dichmann and Elissa Brunato. Together they form AusBlau. They are a creative design studio based in London, leading playful investigations into materiality, ecosystems and the human experience. Throughout their work they collate diverse opinions, uncover systemic challenges and imagine resilient futures, to inspire an active engagement with our rapidly changing world.

Applied Logic

Applied Logic is a collective focused on design and innovation. Exploring the significant societal changes that are transforming everyday life, they experiment with emerging technologies to develop speculations and solutions that aim to help build a better future for people and the planet.

Photograph by Luo Kaihao

It's all fun until... is a curatorial practice happened at the Safehouse 1 & 2, London, Yixiong has co-curated with two curators and collaborated with over 30 young artists. Focusing on Chinese artists, the practice reimagined the deep link between the entertainment value of artistic creation, the conceptual expression of art motivation, and the social engagement of a common shared first-personal perspective.

Yixiong Cui

In Collaboration with:

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Royal College of Art