Pondering (Until It's Water on Both Sides)

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.