to be a bird, not a feather

Junying Wu

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MIVC Graduation Research Hub 2024 (Day II)

Junying Wu (b.1999. Guangdong, CN) is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher currently based in Den Haag, the Netherlands. His current practices anchor the coordinates in sensory ecology and affective ecology, with a more particular interest in finding alternative access to the neglected earth of other-than-human species and methods of sensation attunement. He attempts to transpose what they encounter into synesthetic interfaces by emerging the sound, image and materials on-site. The point of departure of his works does not intend to persuade another individual narrative but to facilitate and encourage plural understanding of certain ecological emergencies and perception shifting. He conducts his research by embodied ethnographic approaches and allows the encounters to do their magic.

Stay tuning, walk around, lie down, sit,

step into the forest floor or head on the wood.

Last summer, during a nighttime forest research in Salzburg, Austria, I encountered an unforeseen storm. The storm plunged me into chaos, and the physical loss of control forced my senses to become more “sensitive.” Instinctively, I tried to find an escape route through active observation. The nocturnal forest turned the familiar into the unfamiliar; relationships and entanglements that are usually neglected spoke out themselves in a radical, unfamiliar way. I was overwhelmed, and I had to confront it. I seemed to lose control over my body. Dense rain formed towering pillars, fragmenting the space into sharp elements. Individual voices were amplified, becoming visible and unavoidable.

My dirty bodies,

intertwined with the mud of trees,

I fell into the river.

process of making