Tidal Relations
By
Sidi Chen
BFA, University of the Fraser Valley, 2018

A THESIS SUPPORT PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF FINE ARTS

EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY OF ART + DESIGN
2023

©Sidi Chen, 2023

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... i

List of Figures ................................................................................................................................................................................................... ii
Abstract ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. ii
留白 .................................................................................................................................................................................................................. iv

Preface

1

Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 2
Tidal Relations ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 3
To Dwell in the Blankness .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 8
On Sites ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 15
Media Embodiment ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 21
Reflections and Future Developments ...................................................................................................................................................................... 26
Work Cited ................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 29

i

Acknowledgement
I am grateful and fortunate to be able to conduct my research on the ancestral and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh
(Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations (Vancouver, BC), the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples’ unceded territories
(Burnaby, BC), the Shíshálh territories (Sechelt, BC), the traditional territories of Nehiyaw (Cree), Denesuliné (Dene), Nakota Sioux (Stoney),
Anishinaabe (Saulteaux) and Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) and the Métis homelands and Métis Nation of Alberta Region 4 (Edmonton, AB, Treaty 6 Territory),
the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut'ina, the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations, the Métis Nation of Alberta
Region 3 (Calgary, AB, Treaty 7 Territory), and traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the
Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples (Toronto, ON, Treaty 13), where I have had the opportunities to engage with the local indigenous
individuals and communities in various conversations, both difficult and hilarious kinds.
I am thankful to the following organizations who have supported my
research at a professional and personal levels:

I am blessed to have the following people who have been generously
supporting and investing in my practice and growth:

Vancouver and Greater Vancouver Region, BC:
Aboriginal Gathering Place, Emily Carr University of Art + Design,
The Only Animal Theatre Society,
Vancouver Improvised Arts Society (Listen Listen Festival)
EartHand Gleaners Society,
VIVO Media Art Centre,
Peter Wall Institute of Advanced Studies, University of British Columbia
New Media Gallery

Randy Lee Cutler, MFA supervisor
Peter Bussigel, the Internal Thesis Defence Committee member
Godfre Leung, the Extern Thesis Defence Committee member
Mimi Gellman, MFA professor
Alla Gadassik, MFA professor
Lauren Marsden, MFA professor
Anita Kovacs, Administrative Assistant to the Dean, Graduate Studies
Sean Arden, Research Technician in Advanced Media
Kevin Romaniuk, Exhibition Technician, Libby Leshgold Gallery

Calgary, AB:
Mountain Standard Time Performative Art
Toronto, ON:
Trinity Square Video
Lakeshore Arts

Brigitte Potter-Mael, artist
Brenda Crabtree, artist
Lou Sheppard, artist
My Family
Antonio Minichilli & Vonnegut, cat.

ii

List of Figures
Figure 1 Distance between the shorelines of Vancouver, Canada and Jinjing, China, about 9785 km. ©Google Map Image
Figure 2 Sechelt Inlet at full tide, September 9th, 2022
Figure 3 Where I Am When I Land Between the Waves, Sidi Chen, ink, charcoal, pastel, water, oil on raw canvas with mylar installation, 2023
Figure 4 Vancouver Tidal Chart, Feb. 14, 2023, Government of Canada:: https://www.tides.gc.ca/en/stations/7735, accessed on February 14th, 2023.
Figure 5 Plume, from the series of Ocean Drawing, Ed Pien, white ink and ocean water on paper, 2017-2018. ©Ed Pien
Figure 6 Infra/Supra, Finnbogi Pétursson, multimedia installation, 2014-2023. © Finnbogi Pétursson
Figure 7 On-site research at Wreck Beach, Vancouver, August 12, 2022, low tide
Figure 8 Reflections of Where I Am When I Land Between the Waves in the mylar layer

Figure 9 Pondering (Until It's Water on both Sides), Sidi Chen, image still, 2022
Figure 10 Wreck Beach Breakwater Vancouver, BC, March 16, 2022, rising tide
Figure 11 Pondering (Until It's Water on Both Sides), Sidi Chen, image stills, 2022
Figure 12 When Faith Moves Mountains, Francis Alÿs in collaboration with Cuauhtémoc Medina and Rafael Ortega, image still, 2002, creative common
liscense © Francis Alÿs
Figure 13 Mirage Raft (The Dream Talking Oyster), Sidi Chen, image still, 2022-2023
Figure 14 With/Holding, Sidi Chen in collaboration with Anthony Minichilli, image still, 2022
Figure 15 Installation view of Mirage Raft (The Dream Talking Oyster) at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, 2023
Figure 16 Turning Time (Pacific Flyways), Jin-me Yoon, multiple video installation at Vancouver Art Gallery, 2022. © Jin-me Yoon

Figure 17 Map of Amasia. Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) © Curtin University

iii

Abstract

This paper is the theoretical component that accompanies Sidi Chen’s Master of Fine Arts
project, Tidal Relations, at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Tidal Relations is a
practice-based relational inquiry from the diasporic perspective of a queer Chinese person.
Based on the artist's positionality, Chen concludes two key characteristics of Tidal Relations
that are entanglement and trans-corporeality. While entanglement informs an interdisciplinary
research methodology, trans-corporeality addresses intersubjectivity as a result of the
kinesthetic empathy of bodies in Tidal Relations that are more than human. And to further
orient and navigate the complexity of Tidal Relations, Chen interprets and utilizes the Chinese
traditional philosophy, 留白, translated as to dwell in the blankness, as a relational principle
and aesthetic strategy. Based on this principle, Chen explores the embodiment of Tidal
Relations in three projects from their MFA studies: Where I Am When I Land Between the
Waves, a contemporary experiment of traditional Chinese painting as a map of navigation;
Pondering (Until It's Water on Both Sides), a site-specific performance drawn on locational
scores and bodily fables as a way of knowing; and Mirage Raft (The dream talking Oyster), a
multimedia performance installation that explores media as extensions of the body and
measurement of diasporic distance.

iv

留
留白, pronounced /liu bai/, is a traditional
Chinese aesthetic philosophy that is widely
used in painting, music, opera, architecture,
poetry, and other creative practices.
“留” - to preserve, to remain, to dwell
“白” - the color white, the void, the
untouched space, the blankness
In my practice, I translate 留白 to a verb
phrase as to dwell in the blankness with the
emphasis on the position, condition, agency,
and affect of the body in relation to the
blankness.

白

1

Preface
About Language and Vocabulary

Due to the nature of interdisciplinary research, I have encountered many terms from diverse
disciplines and utilized their definitions through a conceptual and artistic method, especially
how terms resonate with my bodily experience:
Trans-corporeality – This is a concept developed from New Materialism theories and adapted
by Posthuman Feminist theorist, Astrida Neimanis1 (See page 6 in this paper). I understand it
as the physical and phenomenological connections between material bodies at different scales.
Interpermeation – This is a material phenomenon in Physics and Engineering. This term has
also been interpreted by Astrida Neimanis2 (See page 6 in this paper). I utilize this term to
describe the process and impact of the relational exchanges amongst various bodies.
Kinesthetic Empathy – This term is associated with the dance critic, John Martin3. I adapt this
concept to explain how trans-corporeality can occur amongst different bodies and be
experienced through multiple sensory perceptions, such as hearing, touching, and smelling.

1

Writing in English as my third language, I
interpret and even transform the fundamental
logics of different languages (Mandarin,
Hokkien, English), venture into the
unspeakable space between them, and
recognize that they impact my experiences
in different contexts. Understanding some of
the terms might be literal and easy to adapt
in one language but abstract and difficult to
grasp in another, even for native speakers, I
anchor my writing and research through
intuitive responses to specific terms and
allow them to open up the possibilities to
interact with broader disciplines and studies.

Astrida Neimanis, Bodies of Water Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 95.
Ibid., page 95
3
Stanton B. Garner, Kinesthetic Spectatorship in the Theatre: Phenomenology, Cognition, Movement (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 151.
2

2

Introduction

My interest in exploring a movement-based
relationship comes from my ten-year lived
experience as a Chinese queer diaspora.
Finding empathies from the tidal movements
of the Pacific Ocean that connect the two
continents, I anchor my focus of research on
the tides, and name such a movement-based
relationship as Tidal Relations.
Following my diaspora journey that it is still
continuous through my MFA study, I have
been engaging in site-specific research to
interrogate how Tidal Relations can be, how
they are formulated, how they indicate, and
what to do with them. Therefore, in this
essay, I will introduce my main research
activities, creative practice, and thesis
installation in the four main chapters.

In Tidal Relations, I reflect how my
positionality informs the languages and
methodologies that allows me to
contextualize the idea of Tidal Relations.
In Dwell in the Blankness, I explore a
traditional Chinese aesthetic concept as the
organizing principle for my investigation of
Tidal Relations.
In On Sites, I write about my site-specific
enquiry of I generate the scores for
performance to tell the locational fables as a
research method.
In Media Embodiment, I experiment how
media installations embody the research
process and create a space of relational
inquiry.

At the end of the essay, I reflect on the
limitations of my research due to the
pandemic and the geographical and
linguistic barriers, as well as the future
directions where I would like to further my
research of Tidal Relations.

3

Figure 1 Distance between the shorelines of Vancouver, Canada, and Jinjing, China, my hometown, about 9785 km. Copyright: Google Map Image, under fair use

4

Tidal Relations
Tidal Land
My Master of Fine Arts study consists of
many on-site interrogations at the space
between the land and water that took place
over the Vancouver coastlines and the
Sunshine Coast in B.C., the prairies and
fields in Alberta, as well as the communities
along the Lake Ontario, O.N.

my gaze beyond the horizon and wonder
where the tides came from and headed back
to beyond the horizon. And now on the other
side of the Pacific Ocean, I embed my feet in
the sands and feel the ground drifting away
beneath again. When I gaze onto the Pacific
Ocean towards the horizon my hometown, I
wonder the same just as when I was a child:

watery perspective that emphasizes on the
sexuate difference as the possibility of
existence, Neimanis proposes to reconsider
liquid ground as the logics of difference and
connection that “water is at once the
originary condition of all possibility, but also
its force of differentiation and wellspring of
unknowability5”.

Depending on the point of entry, the
intersection of land and water has many
names – it is the foreshore if approached
from the land; it is the shallow if accessed
from the water. The name of the
intersectional space reflects my relations to
the lands and waters that I have traversed, as
well as my positions where I situate my
research.

Where do the tides come from?
Where do the tides return to?

Inspired by Neimanis, I don’t see queer and
diaspora as two separate incidents of my
journey; rather, they unite in my relational
enquiry of a movement-based connection.
For me, queer is not only the sexual and
social constructions that refers to sexual
orientation and gender identity; relationally,
queer is to unbind the conventional
definition of kinships that are restricted by
the bloodlines. And diaspora has thus
become the condition of queering through
body movements that trespass the artificial
border lines on the lands and waters and stop
in the in-between, just like the tides.

The intersection between land and water
marks my journey across the Pacific Ocean
as a Chinese queer diaspora (Figure 1).
When I was a child, I used to go to the beach
in my hometown. I enjoyed planting my feet
in sands and letting the receding tides take
4
5

I liken the diaspora journey of my queer
body across the Pacific Ocean to the tides –
a travelling body of water that rises and
recedes between continents, cultures, and
languages that cultivate an identity that
changes every time I cross a geographical
border or a customs gate. It is an identity of
uncertainties and possibilities and I echo
such a queer diaspora identity to how
Astrida Neimanis interprets Luce Irigaray’s
idea of liquid ground – “both essential to life
and also always shifting4”. While Irigaray
originally approaches this term from a

Astrida Neimanis, Bodies of Water Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 69.
Ibid., page 69-78.

5

Therefore, I call such an intersection the
tidal land - a between space, a spaciousness
informed by the endless tidal movement – it
is both my port of departure and bay of
arrival, where my unforsaken histories with
the lands and waters anchor my relations on
the shifting tides.
Tidal Relations
If through the tides my journey proceeds, on
the tidal land my practice and research
situate, then it is in Tidal Relations where I
find the umbilical cord connecting the
bodies that are human, ecological, and
planetary.
Tidal Relations take forms via various
bodies. At the planetary scale, it is the
gravity tension between the Earth and the
moon; in the ecological term, it is the living
condition of many tidal species’ habitation;
at a personal level, it is the elasticity of
distance in space and time, through which I
negotiate and navigate the connections
between my body and the others.
An important reminder while traversing the
tidal land is that Tidal Relations are not a
6

Figure 2 Sechelt Inlet, Sechelt, BC, September 9th, 2022, full tide. Image Credit: Sidi Chen

binary perspective. Jonathan Pugh and
David Chandler’s criticism on modernist
imaginaries suggests that we are not
“existing in a flat, two-dimensional space,
side-by-side, tracing continuities in relation
across linear time into the ever more
efficient self- regulation of Resilience6”;
therefore, in our contemporary moment, to
simply observe and engage in the tidal land
from either the perspective of the water or
the land will inevitably create isolation and
tear apart the intersectionality that is at core

J. Pugh, and D. Chandler. 2021. Anthropocene Islands: Entangled Worlds. London: Ubiquity Press. 70.

of Tidal Relations. In this case, I am
understanding intersectionality as the
simultaneous rooting on the land and water,
Tidal Relations are the embodiment of
planetary rotations, the merging of diverse
ecosystems, and the collision of human
histories. From such a figuring of
intersectionality, Tidal Relations indicates
two key characters of entanglement and
trans-corporeality.

6

To understand and research the complex and
entangled issues in Tidal Relations requires
an interdisciplinary approach and knowledge
because of the interdependence of the bodies
(e.g., human, more than human, marine) in
the tidal land. For example, from the case of
the submerged land bridge in my hometown,
I explored the issue of shoreline erosion at
Sechelt, BC, a land bridge community on the
Sunshine Coast separating the Sechelt Inlet
and the Strait of Georgia (Figure 2). Erosion
issues are not simply the result of tidal
waves; instead, they are the outcome of
compounded elements, including city
planning, environmental conservation,
raising sea levels, and marine economic
development. It further is entangled with the
indigenous histories and the self-governance
model of the Shíshálh Nation as well as
colonial legacies on the Sunshine Coast.
Therefore, the erosion of the Sechelt land
bridge has not only resulted in the conflict
between community safety and living space
for wildlife (I even ran into a black bear at
the Sechelt Marsh during a research trip.)
7

but also the fluctuation of property values
and the rising cost of living, especially for
the local indigenous community and the
low-income population.
The interdisciplinary methods not only
bridge the knowledge gaps between the
artificial boundaries of disciplines (e.g., Art,
Ecology, Sociology) but also allow me to be
in a present moment of the entanglements
that are intergenerational and trans-spatial,
as how Pugh and Chandler put in
Anthropocene Islands: Entangled Worlds
that a researcher in such entanglements is
not in the directing position but as a part of
the processes of creative emergence at the
local and micro levels to “shift the focus to
concrete interactions in specific moments …
that enable us to see the creativity in the
everyday7”.
To understand the trans-corporeality of Tidal
Relations, I’d like to refer to Neimanis’s
exploration through the watery phenomenon
of interpermeation. Contradicting the

Western post-Enlightenment epistemological
viewpoints that suggest the bodies as
separate discrete, Neimanis see that water
not only “digging stealth channels through
us all” in the hydrological cycle, immediate
or delayed, but to see from a more complex
logic of interpermeation other than simply
flowing, water changes the bodies connected
through it and becomes the difference that
facilitates a new kind of bodies and
formulates relations that are inextricably
interdependence8. Thus, through the
perspective of interpermeation, in Tidal
Relations, the trans-corporeality is not the
antidote to entanglement, but rather, it
transcends the entanglement to empower the
bodies in Tidal Relations to differentiate and
reciprocate, becoming the otherness of
relativity, the alterities with intersubjectivity.
Specifically, such intersubjectivity, as an
embodiment of the trans-corporeality, comes
from the kinesthetic empathy9 amongst the
bodies in Tidal Relations. Originally,
kinesthetic empathy is a term used in the

J. Pugh, and D. Chandler. 2021. Anthropocene Islands: Entangled Worlds. London: Ubiquity Press. 76-77.
Astrida Neimanis, Bodies of Water Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 95.
9
Karan Barad’s concept of Intra-action frames a similar concept of constant exchanging and influencing within a system with an emphasis on the materiality.
My current research focuses on the coordination of the movements - my immigration journey, my research processes, the tidal movements, and the planetary
rotations – from the lens of kinesthetic empathy as a part of the diaspora study. I would like to explore Barad’s idea in my future research.
8

7

practices of dance, theatre, and other
creative formats with speculations.
According to the summaries by Dee Reynold
and Matthew Reason, kinesthetic empathy
refers to the experience of empathy that can
be felt and resonated in the audience by
simply observing the performers’
movements10. With the emphasis on the
migration of emotions, this concept has thus
widely applied in various interdisciplinary
research from education to sociology, from
media to cultural practices. In Tidal
Relations, for my queer diaspora body, I
would like to expand the boundary of the
term to find kinesthetic empathy from the
realms of more than human, such as the
migrating animals, the travelling ocean
currents, the drifting plate tectonics, and the
ever-rotating celestial bodies.
Moreover, kinesthetic empathy is not only a
way of relating but it also proposes a nonlinear method of knowing. Like what
Reynolds describes in the book, Kinesthetic
Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices
(2012), this form of knowing through the
practiced-based research process advanced
10
11

the notions of embodied knowledge by
proposing a non-conventional language and
a discursive learning trajectory that allow the
bodies, in presence or absence, to be in an
active synchronization through
movements11. And in Tidal Relations, the
kinesthetic empathy with the more-thanhuman becomes the rationale of transcorporeality and it takes shapes through
various embodiments from my research
process, project production, to the
presentation of the artworks, such as the
scores generated through the bodily response
to the tidal schedule, the interpermeation of
the ink and water on canvas, and the media
application that offers inter-species
attunements.

unravelled through the dynamic bodily
negotiations and navigations.

The trans-corporeality is an inevitable result
of the entanglements within Tidal Relations,
and like the umbilical cord, transcorporeality joins the bodies that are more
than human and reciprocates the
nourishments through the kinesthetic
empathy. It is an instrumental notion to
proceed Tidal Relation not as enclosed
systems but how the entanglements are

Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason, Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices (Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2012), 248.
Ibid., page 195-196.

8

Figure 3 Where I Am When I Land Between the Waves, Sidi Chen, ink, charcoal, pastel, water, oil on raw canvas with mylar installation, 2023. Image Credit: Michael Love

9

To Dwell in the Blankness
Based on my cultural upbringing and the my
contemporary practice of the traditional
Chinese painting12, my approach the concept
of 留白 began from a visual perspective. In
order to navigate and negotiate the
entanglement and trans-corporeality of Tidal
Relations, I translate the concept of 留白 as
to dwell in the blankness, and utilize it as the
relational principle and aesthetic strategy
with the example of the painting13
installation, Where I Am When I Land
Between Waves (Figure 3), as a map of
networks.
The Blankness and Dwelling
Deeply rooted in the Daoism philosophy, 白
in traditional Chinese painting refers to the
untouched surface of the paper, silk, or
canvas. It often represents water, clouds,
mist, or sky, erasing or blurring the
boundaries of forms within the painting. And

12

in the enquiry of Tidal Relations, I translate
the concept of 白 as the blankness.
Visually, the blankness resides where the
water dries clear, the ink dilutes thin, and the
brushes leave area -intentionally and
unintentionally - uncovered, just like the
patches of bear ground in the tidal land. I see
the blankness as a space for water and ink to
infuse and expand upon the surface. As
Nathalie Trouveroy interprets in her book,
Landscape of the Soul: Ethics and
Spirituality in Chinese Painting (2003),
while the materials of ink and water are seen
as Ying and Yang, the blankness is an
essential element where the interactions
between Ying and Yang take place14 - it is
both Ying and Yang at the same time and
neither of them; it is a third dimension that
bypasses the binary boundaries; it is the
embodiment the material states as well as
the their own processes of making.

This resonates with the line in DaoDeJing15,
the Daoist classical text, “the greatest music
takes faintest notes, the most sublime image
takes no forms16”, phenomenologically, the
blankness can be experienced as the
abundance of experience and the absence or
impossibility in expression; it creates a
synaesthesia of sensuousness coupled with
the otherness of the recognition. To
understand such a complex and paradoxical
position in Tidal Relations requires a bodily
annotation.
One example is what Kathleen Stewart
describes as ordinary affect, which “can be
experienced as a pleasure and a shock, as an
empty pause or a dragging undertow, as a
sensibility that snaps into place or a
profound disorientation … Rooted not in
fixed conditions of possibility but in the
actual lines of potential that a something

There are many different schools within the traditional Chinese painting. In my practice and writing, I specifically refer to the school of 写意, or Freehand.
The work is created using both drawing and painting techniques, but considering the root of my practice, I will use the term “painting” to describe it.
14
Nathalie, Trouveroy. “Landscape of the Soul: Ethics and Spirituality in Chinese Painting.” India International Centre Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2003): 5–19.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/23005838. Page 7
15
《道德经》, the Daoist classical text that is said written by Laozi (571 BC – 471 BC ?), a philosopher and writer in the Spring and Autumn period.
16
大音希声，大象无形。DaoDeJing Chapter 41. Translated by writer.
13

10

coming together calls to mind and sets in
motion17”. And such affects as a format of
the blankness can be experienced in the
mundane moments in Tidal Relations. From
my diaspora experience, the blankness is the
waiting time between connecting flights, the
expiration dates of identity documents, the
pending periods of visa applications, the
time differences of on the calendars, and the
moments of aphasia when speaking my
mother tongue.
Those moments may be seemingly transient
and temporary, yet they linger within the
bodies of Tidal Relations as well as the
bodily interactions. And to navigate the
Blankness created through these processes, I
want to use the concept of 留 to understand
the agencies of the bodies in Tidal Relations.
When people approach the concept of 留白,
the word 留 is often overlooked, such as
Trouveroy’s translation - “the middle
17

void18”. Grammatically, it is the adjective
that describes 白, meaning the remained,
the reversed, the clear, the left, indicating an
impartial position. However when
researching Tidal Relations from the queer
diasporic position, I want to refer to the
property of 留 as a verb – to stay, to leave,
to dwell.
Thus, based on the linguistical and
conceptual roots, to dwell suggests an
assimilation of a duality: on one hand, to
dwell is the process of navigating the
blankness; on the other hand, to dwell is also
the process of becoming the blankness.
From such a duality, to dwell is to navigate
from within.
What actions does dwelling entail?
Trouveroy offers an exercisable experience
where she compares the process of
mediating on the blankness to “the yogic
practice of pranayama: breathe in, retain,

breathe out – the suspension of breath is the
Void19 where meditation occurs20”. In this
case, breathing is the act of dwelling that
creates, enters, and becomes the blankness
itself.
Dwelling is not a sedentary pose, rather it is
the action that mediates the position. It is not
meant to be comfortable nor constructive.
To dwell is to walk, to stand; to listen, to
speak; to exchange, to gift; to nurture, to
harvest; to land, to migrate; to distance and
relate, to lose and navigate.
The duality of such dwelling grants and
contextualizes the agencies of the bodies in
Tidal Relations, in Stewart’s articulation, it
navigates the blankness through the
explorations of “what potential modes of
knowing, relating, and attending to things
[that] are already somehow present in them
in a state of potentiality and resonance21”.

Kathleen, Stewart. Ordinary Affects. (Durham: Duke University Press), 2007. 3.
Nathalie, Trouveroy. “Landscape of the Soul: Ethics and Spirituality in Chinese Painting.” India International Centre Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2003): 5–19.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/23005838. Page 7
19
Trouveroy’s translation of 留白, “Middle Void”, Stressing the 白.
20
Nathalie, Trouveroy. “Landscape of the Soul: Ethics and Spirituality in Chinese Painting.” India International Centre Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2003): 5–19.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/23005838. Page 7
21
Ibid., page 3.
18

11

Through my MFA research, I have
conducted several investigations on various
locations to interrogate different
embodiments of Tidal Relations with site
specificities. And at the end of my MFA
study, I created a contemporary experiment
of traditional Chinese painting as the map
and archive the archive of Tidal Relations.

Figure 4 Vancouver Tidal Chart, Feb. 14, 2023

The blankness could be understood as a state
of overwhelming affects and relations, but to
dwell in such a blankness is not to remain
overwhelmed nor to jump to solution. Thus,
in my inquiry of Tidal Relations, dwelling in
the blankness embeds in the navigation and
negotiation in the network of the vast
relations and ideally nurtures a social
22
23

becoming that makes sense not through
overt meaning but rather the bodily
encounters.
Map of Networks
If the blankness of Tidal Relations lies in the
woven networks, to dwell is the orientation
informed by the kinesthetic empathies of the
bodies in Tidal Relations.

In the composition of my painting, I take
references and inspirations from my field
notes, live sketches, maps, tidal charts
(Figure 422), soundwave patterns of waves
and seasonal winds, as well as histories and
stories of specific locations. I don’t intend to
construct replicas of the data nor to represent
a moment of reality. From the perspective of
traditional Chinese painting, especially the
school of Freehand Landscape23, a painting
is composed from the inner realm of the
artist’s spirit informed by their engagement
with the landscape, instead of a
representation of the physical location. In
the painting, I manifest a network of
gestures through my bodily experience with

th

The tidal chart information is obtained on the Canadian Government website: https://www.tides.gc.ca/en/stations/7735, on February 14 , 2023.
写意山水，directly translated “depict the sense of the mountains and water”, emphasizes taking the world inward to understand the essence of a landscape.

12

selected locations (i.e., traces of footprints
on the beach and ripples on the water) and
my embodied learning from the
interdisciplinary, intersectional research.
Such a network is not a meticulously
categorized database, but where the
blankness takes shape in the entangled
bodies of Tidal Relations, and an
engagement with research that is individual,
communal, and ecological.
For the technical execution, I combined
traditional Chinese painting skills and crosshatching to render this woven network. To
prepare the surface for the crosshatching, I
apply techniques of traditional Chinese
painting, such as the wet painting method to moisturize the surface materials first and
apply ink after, allowing an interpermeation
to unfold through the capillarity of the
material. This method blurs the intention and
gestures of the artist, visually and
conceptually, and allows the agency of
materials to transform the shapes and
boundaries of the composition. For instance,
in Canadian artist, Ed Pien’s drawing series,
Ocean Drawing (2017-2018) (Figure 5), he
uses white ink to respond to the traces of the
24

Figure 5 Plume, from the series of Ocean Drawing, Ed Pien, white ink and ocean water on
paper, 2017-2018.Used by permission of the artist.

ocean water as it expands upon and
evaporates from the paper. Through this
approach, Pien sees water as a collaborative
body and celebrates the sentience, creativity,
liveliness, and the agency of the water24.
Furthermore, for me, cross-hatching
resembles the ripples on the water. For
example, in Icelandic artist, Finnbogi

Ed Pien, “Ocean Drawing,” ED PIEN, accessed February 14, 2023, https://www.edpien.com/oceandrawing.

Pétursson’s installation, Infra-Supra (20142023) (Figure 6), the artist uses three
speakers and low-frequency sound to create
patterns of concentric ripples in a large and
shallow pool of water. Through the
strategical lighting, these ripples are then
reflected onto a wall to form lines and
patterns that dance to the sound design. The
artist allows the audience to hear and

13

appreciate the sound through a fourth, highfrequency, speaker that is located outside the
pool. Although working with multiple
media, Pétursson refers to his installation as
drawings with the seemingly intangible
elements of lights, sounds, and water25.

In my painting, as a result of the combined
techniques of cross-hatching and the wet
painting method, the creative process is
steered by a bodily collective – myself, the
ink, the water, and the canvas, where
droplets and bleedings stain the surface
discrete areas offer up beautiful accidents

amidst the blankness. From the perspectives
of trans-corporeality, the materials
interpermeation becomes more than a
physical reaction but a relational
phenomenon – an embodiment of collective
agencies and imaginations. Such
collectivities transform the material relations
where the process of painting becomes the
blankness itself.
And for dwelling, I utilize the installation of
a mylar layer that offers a new dimension to
orient of the blankness.

Figure 6 Infra/Supra, Finnbogi Pétursson, multimedia installation at New Media Gallery, 2023.

Since my on-site research Wreck Beach,
Vancouver, at the low tide hours, I have been
fascinated by the illuminating and reflective
surfaces of the tidal pools (Figure 7). For
me, the tidal pools become portals to travel
through time and spaces measured by the
element of water. Therefore, I install a layer
of reflective and semi-transparent mylar film
through three locations in my thesis
installation, which include a projection, a
monitor screen, and the painting, as a
reference to the tidal pools.

Used by permission of New Media Gallery
25

Donald Brackett, “Earwitness: Looking at Sound with Finnbogi Pétursson,” Earwitness: Looking at Sound with Finnbogi Pétursson (Critics at Large, November
10, 2016), https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2016/11/earwitness-looking-at-sound-with.html.

14

Physically, the mylar layer not only serves as
a visual indication that links the installations
in three locations but also offers a physical
barrier and channel for the painting to be
seen through another perspective, where a
barrier that distances the audiences from the
painting creates a more immersive
engagement in return (Figure 8).
Conceptually, the reflection becomes a
portal to engage the blankness through a
new perspective that disorients and reorients
the viewer’s position, action, and direction.
like Pétursson’s installation where the
reflection “chart(s) he trajectories of time
through the experience of light, shadow and
silence26”. In this installation, the exterior
reflection embodies the duality of the
dwelling that is the making and the
navigating of the blankness.
Together with the juxtaposition of the
painting as well as its mirrored images in the
mylar installation, I intend to create a space
between physicality and affects to inquire
the attunements and transitions between the
presence and absence of the bodies in Tidal
Relations.
26

Figure 7 Onsite research at
Wreck Beach,
Vancouver,
August 12,
2022, low tide.
Image Credit:
Sidi Chen.

Figure 8
Reflections of

Where I Am
When I Land
Between the
Waves in the
mylar layer.
Image credit:
Michael Love.

Donald Brackett, “Earwitness: Looking at Sound with Finnbogi Pétursson,” Earwitness: Looking at Sound with Finnbogi Pétursson (Critics at Large, November
10, 2016), https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2016/11/earwitness-looking-at-sound-with.html.

15

Figure 9 Pondering (Until It's Water on both Sides), Sidi Chen, image still, 2022. Copyright: Sidi Chen.

16

On Sites
I produced several site-specific works during
the MFA program. Each one allowed for
experimentations through themes,
performative gestures, and navigating the
challenges of working with the tidal
movements. While conducting on-site
research, I often work with locational
specificities to generate scores for bodily
movements that fabricate fables for the
body-site relations.

Scores
In researching Tidal Relations, I use the tidal
movements to inform the scoring or
scripting of a piece. The tidal movements are
not only what can be calculated and
predicted through the tidal charts27; they are
imbued with characteristics and sensorial
qualities of the site.

Figure 10 Wreck Beach Breakwater Vancouver, BC, March 16, 2022, rising tide. Image Credit:

For example, in the work, Pondering (Until
It’s Water on Both Sides) (Figure 9), I
conducted on-site research at Wreck Beach,
Vancouver, BC. Separated from the
investigation on the ecological conditions of
the cliff slides and social histories of the
queer28, my attention was drawn to the
breakwater that separated the beach and
water into two sections. This phenomenon
created differences in the water level – one
side always had water and the other exposed
the seabed at the low tide point (Figure 10).
The breakwater also changed the schedule
and heights of the tides. Together with the
cliff harbor geography, which slowed down
the wind waves approaching from the sea,
this manmade structure delayed the tidal
currents for approximately 15 minutes and
lowered the tides’ heights compared to other
beaches on the Vancouver coast.
This manmade structure functions not only
as a safety design but also serves a

Sidi Chen.
27

Such as the 八分算潮法, roughly translated as “Eight Divisions of Tidal Calculation”, a method to calculate the high tide hours on the east coast of China
based on the lunisolar calendar, known as the traditional Chinese calendar, a combination of the Gregorian calendar and the lunar calendar. It is the first
method that I’ve learned to engage with the tides.
28
Wreck Beach is a clothing optional beach, before the legalization of homosexuality in Canada, Wreck Beach was not only the cruising location for the queer
population but also a gathering place for queer community development in Vancouver.

17

commercial purpose. By separating the
water and creating a high-water pool, the
commercial logging companies use it to float
and store logs before they are transported by
cargo boats. In this way, Wreck Beach is a
site that entangles queer histories, marine
economies, and environmental challenges.
The tidal movements here reflect the
interpenetration of human interventions, the
ecological phenomena, and my own
subjective connections to this particular tidal
land.
Through observations of the tidal
movements and water levels in the moon
cycles alongside interdisciplinary research
on this location from my positionality as a
queer diasporic person, I found a kinesthetic
empathy formulate inside my body, calling
for re-connection. All these elements
informed the score for Pondering (Until It’s
Water on Both Sides).
The scores I composed through the tidal
movements were instructions to transport
29

water from the high-water pool over and
across a rock jetty to the bare seabed on the
other side as low tide approached and until
there was water on both sides. My actions
included scooping water with a pail,
carrying it while climbing up and down the
breakwater, pouring it on the other side of
the structure, and repeating these gestures
until the seabed was submerged (Figure 11).
With all of my work, what I hope to discover
through Tidal Relations is not a simple
solution or representation of these
entanglements. These scores do not aim to
perform a savior miracle and aid the
progress of the tides although my efforts
may be read a such. Instead, the performance
based on the tide-generated scores becomes
my research method and process to
experientially interrogate Tidal Relations. In
this process, it empowers a mytho-poetic
navigation within a larger arc of bodily
encounters with land and water. My desire is
to embody and navigate an intersectional
path of the entangled tidal bodies as a means

of re-joining, re-attuning, and re-worlding
through my own bodily knowledge.
Fables
To interpret and understand the purpose of
the scores, I utilize the idea of fables as
vehicles of relational enquiry. I encountered
this word in a published email
correspondence (2005) between Belgian
artist, Francis Alÿs, and American writer and
critic, Saul Anton, while discussing Alÿs’s
site-engaged performance work, When Faith
Moves Mountains29. Created for the Third
Ibero-American Biennial of Lima in 2002,
Alÿs organized five hundred local volunteers
to form a line and shovel a 500-meter sand
dune in Ventanilla (near Lima), and
effectively moved the sand dune a few feet
away from its original location (Figure 12)30.
Through this action, Alÿs’s intention was to
stage a social allegory that might translate
and infiltrate the social tension and anxieties
that permeated the country at the time31.

Alÿs Francis and Medina Cuauhtémoc, When Faith Moves Mountains = Cuando La Fe Mueve montañas (Madrid, Madrid provincia: Turner, 2005),
http://francisalys.com/ebooks/FrancisAlys_WhenFaithMovesMountains_Turner_2005/#page=1, 12-27.
30
For the video reference, please visit Alÿs’s website: https://francisalys.com/when-faith-moves-mountains/.
31
Ibid., page 18-24

18

Figure 11 Pondering (Until It's Water on Both Sides), Sidi Chen, image stills, 2022. Copyright: Sidi Chen.

19

Figure 12 When Faith Moves Mountains, Francis Alÿs in collaboration with Cuauhtémoc Medina and Rafael Ortega, image still, 2002. Used
by creative common liscense © Francis Alÿs

20

Alÿs used the term “fables” to describe how
the social allegories created through the
community engagement with the site were
elevated and then transcendent into an urban
myth through an “almost alchemical process
that turns a script into an action, an action
into a fable and a fable into a rumor by the
multiplication of its storytellers32”.
Inspired by Alÿs’s concept, I see fables as
the relational aspect of my art scores. They
are a mythical and ethereal translation of the
language of coded sounds and patterns. In
this way, fables accrue their own language
and meanings through the collective
choreographies of the bodies in conversation
with the site. And such collective
movements are the fabrication, transcription,
and becoming of the fables themselves.
As described by Alÿs, fables are “not
validated by a physical trace or an addition
to the landscape33”. Building on this, I see
the fable in Pondering (Until It’s Water on
Both Sides) not the outcome of whether or
not the course of the tides has been altered
32

due to my actions, rather, it resides in the
relationships that were created, negotiated,
and navigated through the collective
movement between my body, the water, the
rocks, the wind, and the angles of the sun. I
understand that my own actions made little
difference to the movements of the tidal
waters, and yet they changed how my body
experienced and remembered the site. And
like the interpermeation of the ink and water
on the canvas, the trans-corporeality of the
fable reciprocates my intervention to the site
to the site’s intervention to me. It is an
exchange of intimacy and a binding of
kinship emergent between tidal bodies that
can only be felt, not translated.
Admittedly, the fable generating for
Pondering (Until It’s Water on Both Sides)
projects a certain exclusivity as it can be
read as puzzling and futile gestures for the
viewer, which I hope to accommodate
through media production and installation as
means to translate this bodily knowledge.

Alÿs Francis and Medina Cuauhtémoc, When Faith Moves Mountains = Cuando La Fe Mueve montañas (Madrid, Madrid provincia: Turner, 2005),
http://francisalys.com/ebooks/FrancisAlys_WhenFaithMovesMountains_Turner_2005/#page=1, 24
33
Ibid., page 24

21

Figure 13 Mirage Raft (The Dream Talking Oyster), Sidi Chen, image still, 2022-2023. Copyright: Sidi Chen.

22

Media Embodiment
The interrogation of Tidal Relations not only
addresses the subject but is also embodied
through the media production and
installation.
Media Production
As a result of my interdisciplinary research,
I often apply several media devices to
conduct and document on-site research,

including the digital camera, contact
microphones, binaural recorder, as well as a
device call ©TouchMe, produced by the
company Playtronica34. ©TouchMe is an
electrical musical instrument that generates
sounds through the electric circuits of
various conducting mediums, such as flesh,
water, and metal.

The variety of the media appliances offer the
possibilities to connect, extend, and
transform the bodily sensory experiences.
For example, in my mixed media
performance, With/Holding (Figure 14)35, I
experimented ©TouchMe with Canadian
musician, Anthony Minichilli, to transform
the invisible connections that took place
through the physical touch into an audible
experience. And the audio is not simply a
transcription of the visual information; it
also provides an alternative dimension for
bodies to reside, navigate, and negotiate.
Similarly, in my research for Tidal Relations,
the various media devices offer channels for
me to connect with other tidal bodies that are
often more than human. In my multimedia
performance installation, Mirage Raft (The
Dreaming Talking Oyster) (Figure 13), such
connections are layered through materials,
music, scores, and projection.

Figure 14 With/Holding, Sidi Chen in collaboration with Anthony Minichilli, image still, 2022.
Copyright: Sidi Chen.
34

More information about the company and product can be found in the link: https://shop.playtronica.com/products/touchme. This essay does not
commercially endorse the company or product nor is financially supported by the said company.
35
For the audio experience, please visit: https://www.sidichen.com/video/with-holding.

23

To start with, I chose an oyster shell that I
found in the tidal land of my hometown and
held onto during the last 10 years of my
diasporic journey. My fascination with
oysters is not only their hermaphroditic body
but also for their behaviors that respond to
tidal cycles and the planetary rotations.
Working with, I generated sounds by
caressing the oyster shell submerged in
ocean water with the extended sensors.
Together with the water, the sensors, and my
motions completed the electronic circuits
that sent signals to ©TouchMe, through
which the information was transcoded in
software to various musical notes. The audio
produced through this process reflect my
physical touch against the texture of the
oyster shell. Added to this, the
nonconductivity of the shell makes the
sounds an acoustic cast of the negative space
of the oyster shell, where the body of the
oyster once resided36.
I translated the sounds generated by the
shape of the oyster shell into scores for my
body movements. By responding to the
36

audio scores, the choreography became
embodiments of the shell’s textures as well
as translations of the absent oyster body.
Lastly, in media installation, I overlapped
the imageries of the oyster and my bodily
movements together to create a translucent
projection where the floating oyster shell
became a raft that cradled for my
gesticulating/dancing body.
The layered media applications stimulate the
kinesthetic empathy connecting my body in
presence and the oyster in absence, through
which I encountered the ontological
questions expressed in the fable of Chuang
Chou dreaming of a butterfly37 - Am I the
embodiment of the oyster through electronic
transformation, or did the oyster have a
digital phantom that haunted and
transformed me?
Media Installation
Apart from the applications of multiple
media, media installations are where and
how I imagine an audience navigating and
negotiating their own Tidal Relations

through their physical distance and
proximity to each installation.
In the installation Mirage Raft (The Dream
Talking Oyster) (Figure 15), I specifically
chose to project the work from the Michael
O’Brien Exhibition Commons atrium across
the open space above the staircase onto the
opposite wall. I find this particularly
fascinating as there is no way of accessing
the open and empty space. Its inaccessibility
indicates a certain distance that can not be
physically broached.
It is in this expanse of space, present yet
absent that the entanglement of Tidal
Relations resides. I am inspired by Jin-me
Yoon’s Turning Time (Pacific Flyways)
(Figure 16), where multiple screens were
suspended in the rotunda of the Vancouver
Art Gallery. The videos explore a
coexistence of the human and non-human
via traditional knowledge of the land and
water that are entangled with the colonial

For the audio reference, please visit: https://www.sidichen.com/video/mirage-raft-dream-talking-oyster.
庄周梦蝶, a Daoist classical story that Chuang Chou had a dream where he became a butterfly, and after he woke up, he asked if it was him who dreamt of
the butterfly or it was the butterfly who dreamt of him.
37

24

Figure 15 Installation view of Mirage Raft (The Dream Talking Oyster) at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, 2023. Image credit: Michael Love.

and diasporic histories as well as climate
catastrophe38. In Jin-me Yoon’s work, the
open space around the hanging monitors,
fenced off by the circular railing creates a
sanctuary.

38

I think that working with space and distance
as artistic materials are perhaps a symbolic
representation of the diaspora, a tearing apart
between the body and its birthland. Writing
from the perspective of colonial legacies,
French scholar, Édouard Glissant in Poetics

Jin-me Yoon, “Turning Time (Pacific Flyways), 2022,” vanartgallery.vag.yourcultureconnect.com, 2022,
https://vanartgallery.vag.yourcultureconnect.com/e/jin-me-yoon-didactics/turning-time.
39
Edouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation (Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 2010), 6-7.

of Relations (2010), describes such a
distance as the open boat of the slave trade.
The openness at the belly of the boat and the
openness of the vast ocean outside of the
boat are both abysmal volumes that vanish
the world of one’s origin via deportation39.

25

The installation of Mirage Raft (The
Dreaming Talking Oyster) is different from
Yoon’s installation. In her work, the monitor
screens stand in for the inhabitants within
the expansive space. In my piece, the
projected imagery of a diasporic body
standing in the tidal land resembles a mirage
on the ocean, a ghostly body that exists as a
phenomenon as well as a physical entity.

Through the unreachable distance between
the viewer and the imagery projected, there
are no amendments to be made to close the
distance. While the only reconciliations to be
found are through the distanced gaze
whether of longing or inaccessibility, the
unreachable distance also offers an antidote
to itself by hosting viewers’ gaze as witness
in the space to the circle of bodies that
appear, rotate, fade, and reincarnate.

Figure 16 Turning Time (Pacific Flyways), Jin-me Yoon, multiple video installation at Vancouver Art Gallery, 2022. Used by permission of the artist.

26

Figure 17 Map of Amasia. Image credit: Curtin University.

27

Reflections and Future Developments
Reflections
Over the course of the thesis exhibition,
especially the planning and the installation
of the three projects at separate locations
across the Michael O’Brien Exhibition
Commons, I have come to realize that the
installation created a triptych-like structure
that further interrogates the relational
component of the space. Following the
pathway of the Exhibition Commons, the
projection of Mirage Raft (The Dream
Talking Oyster) leads to the painting
installation of Where I Am When I Land
Between the Waves and further extends to
the 90-inch monitor where Pondering (Until
It’s Water on Both Sides) screens, with the
mylar installation connecting three locations.
This arrangement collaborates with the
physicality of the architecture by utilizing
the Exhibition Commons pathway and the
space between each installation to maintain
the necessary distances between the viewer
and the artworks. It also provides the resting
space between different aesthetic
experiences and emphasizes dwelling in the
blankness as relational principle. The watery
reflections from the mylar layer also offers a

poetic and ethereal experience to linger
across the three works.
There were also many limitations presented
for the research. Due to the travelling
restriction over the COVID pandemic, the
part of the research to be conducted in my
homeland in the original plan was not able to
be realized. The pandemic also limited the
possibility of community engagement in
researching Tidal Relations.
Many of the theories I engaged with in this
essay are from the perspectives of feminist
psychoanalysis, especially from the
Caribbean region. I am humbled and
inspired to deepen my understanding of
those perspectives, especially the gendered
knowledges and positions that draw
references to the female anatomy and the
gestation process.
While writing from a queer diasporic
perspective, I recognize the shortfalls of my
research over past two years in the limited
exploration of queerness and its implications
in Tidal Relations. These gaps will inform
the directions of future research.

Future Developments
While I have not been able to thoroughly
engage in and deepen the relationships with
the people, ecosystems, and the land and
water that were developed over the course of
my research process, many of those
relationships were born out of brief yet
unforgettable exchanges. How can I describe
them? Are they friendship, mentorship,
fellowship, or a type of kinship that is alien
to categorical definitions. I would like to
further my relational interrogation on this
emergent kinship from the collision of
worldviews, cultures, languages, memories,
and emotions through the interactions of the
tidal bodies, a transformation of the world,
bypassing the normative narratives.
With my current research focused on the
negotiation and navigation of the distance
via bodies in Tidal Relations, as a
component of diaspora study, I would like to
continue utilizing the interdisciplinary
research method and the concept kinesthetic
empathy to develop an artistic strategy to
interrogate how to communicate with the
more-than-human.

28

I will continue developing my
interdisciplinary methodology vis a vis Tidal
Relations that are human, ecological, and
planetary as it enables me to understand and
research a variety of viewpoints within their
own ecosystems.

ecologies (linguistic, social, cultural, natural,
and spiritual) and to bridge the discourses
via a diasporic perspective. With this model,
I imagine Queer Worlding as a means to
nurture alternative perspectives and an
Earthly kinship through a sustained
engagement with land and water.

Through the research on Tidal Relations, I
am building the theoretical foundation for
the concept of Queer Worlding, a relational
enquiry that intersects Queer Ecology and
Diasporic Futurism.
I would like to utilize Amasia (Figure 17) as
a model to envision an alternative future of
diasporic relations, especially in the panPacific region. Amasia is a speculative
future supercontinent born from the
reorganization of the Pacific Ocean and the
merging of Asian, Australian, and North
American continents, based on the Plate
Drift Theory40. Through this model, I want
to engage a wide range of discourses, such
as ecological catastrophes and
intergenerational traumas, in their own

40

Chuan Huang, Zheng-Xiang Li, and Nan Zhang, “Will Earth's next Supercontinent Assemble through the Closure of the Pacific Ocean?,” National Science

Review 9, no. 12 (2022), https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwac205.

29

Work Cited
Alÿs Francis, and Medina Cuauhtémoc. When Faith Moves Mountains = Cuando La Fe Mueve montañas. Francis Alÿ
s . Madrid, Madrid
provincia: Turner, 2005. http://francisalys.com/ebooks/FrancisAlys_WhenFaithMovesMountains_Turner_2005/#page=1.
Brackett, Donald. “Earwitness: Looking at Sound with Finnbogi Pétursson.” Earwitness: Looking at Sound with Finnbogi Pétursson. Critics at
Large, November 10, 2016. https://www.criticsatlarge.ca/2016/11/earwitness-looking-at-sound-with.html.
De Vos, Ruby. Protection and Reflection: The Ambiguities of Trans-Corporeality in Thilde Jensen’s The Canaries (2013), ISLE:
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 2021; isab034, https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isab034
Garner, Stanton B. Kinesthetic Spectatorship in the Theatre: Phenomenology, Cognition, Movement. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2018.
Glissant, Edouard. Poetics of Relation. Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 2010. Translated by Betsy Wing.
Huang, Chuan, Zheng-Xiang Li, and Nan Zhang. “Will Earth's next Supercontinent Assemble through the Closure of the Pacific Ocean?”
National Science Review 9, no. 12 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwac205.
Neimanis, Astrida. Bodies of Water Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.
Pétursson, Finnbogi. “Infra-Supra, 2012-2023.” Photograph of multimedia installation at New Media Gallery. https://newmediagallery.ca/wpcontent/uploads/2023/03/NMG_a-B-I-O-T-I-C_02.jpg.
Pien, Ed. “Plume – from the series of Ocean Drawing, 2017-2018.” Artist website.
https://dvqlxo2m2q99q.cloudfront.net/000_clients/723253/page/723253gycPHin3.jpg.
Pugh, J. and Chandler, D. 2021. Anthropocene Islands: Entangled Worlds. Pp. 69-108. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.16997/book52.c. License: CC-BY 4.0

30

Reynolds, Dee, and Matthew Reason. Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices. Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2012.
Stewart, Kathleen. Ordinary Affects. (Durham: Duke University Press), 2007.
Trouveroy, Nathalie. “Landscape of the Soul: Ethics and Spirituality in Chinese Painting.” India International Centre Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2003):
5–19. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23005838.
Yoon, Jin-me. “Turning Time (Pacific Flyways), 2022.” vanartgallery.vag.yourcultureconnect.com, 2022.
https://vanartgallery.vag.yourcultureconnect.com/e/jin-me-yoon-didactics/turning-time.