Weaving Jungle

Weaving Jungle
China


Weaving Jungle was established in 2021, and it is run by professor and artist Ying Xinxun from the Department of Fiber Arts, China Academy of Art; the group was formed by five key members including Luo Shilin, Mao Yu, Yao Wanqing, Wang Shuyi, and Huang Rong - all are graduate students - and other artists, cross-border designers and scholars. By using fiber and perception as the source of idea formation, Weaving Jungle investigates the interaction between fiber and body to capture the first experience of perception. It launched events through the perspective supplied by fiber, attempting to organize and construct a series of interactive art projects in an open, experimental condition with a "fiber-like" method of thinking and working where interweaving coexists with chaos.
The UN&ON project included many other artists such as Chen Bingsheng, Chen Wanyue, Gong Ziqing, Han Yining, Huang Rong, Liu Tiantong, Luo Shilin, Li Wen, Mao Yu, Tang Chenkai, Wang Haoyu, Wang Jingxuan, Wang Shuyi, Wu Fengxi, Wu Yiquan, Xie Shaofeng, Yang Yumeng, Yao Wanqing, Ma Siqi, Zhang Bin, Zhang Xinli, and Zhu Chenxi.
The project also assembled the design team led by Ma Chuan, Xiang Yi, Li Danlin, Chen Yue, Huang Ying from China Academy of Art's School of Design & Innovation. Simultaneously, other performance artists (including Tao Xinqi, Xu Xinyi, Xiao Dan, Gong Xiao, Wu Wenfang, Daniel Rojasant and Liu Xiaoling) were expressly invited to explore another narrative of fiber art with Weaving Jungle.

Un&On

Fiber materials mainly

Variable size

2022


This project takes UN & ON as its point of origin, as the naming implies, we seek to explore the immaterial existence between the "not" and "no" represented by UN- as a prefix and the "yes" and "on" represented by ON. As the ending of the narrative, “ON” implies that “UN-” is happening and continuing to encounter and collide with each other under the existing rules. As the beginning of the unknown, "ON" implies the creation of an existence that predates the inaugural field and the theoretical framework. The unification of "UN-" and "ON" signifies infinite possibilities, creates a state of chaos that precedes theory, and allows the human body to savor the first experiences of perception introspectively.
Perceptions of things are frequently formed prior to thinking and are, to some part, the result of experience. Visual-centered cognition is gradually driving people's experiences to overlook the perceptive capacities of other senses. Perception, however, is the beginning of human understanding of the world and self as well as the form of chaos in the subconscious. And the sense of touch is one of the most basic ways that people perceive the world; it first appeared in infancy when people were unable to yet express their five senses verbally.
We wanted to bring the perceptive and living body back to the beginning of everything, to reshape the monotonous and solidified consciousness, thus we tried to create a unique transformative, permeable and participatory mode of interaction between people and the exhibits, using tactile perception as the primary mode of interaction, complemented by other perceptions, to reveal a state of uncontrollability, openness and chaos, and providing an alternative narrative and possibility during the process of continuous discovery and interpretation.

 

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