With-Slowness: Natural Dyes and the Aesthetics of Care

Talk Description

Intra-action and more-than human perspectives suggest that entities are constituted by their relationships and entanglements "acting-with" other entities. This talk will discuss personal research on applying natural dye processes and material impermanence to fine art and social practice, exploring how technology can be used to physicalize and emphasize temporal entanglements. This work focuses on both the chemical processes that indicate these relationships and fragments of cultural knowledge that are imbedded in material and technology.

About the Speaker

Cat Liu (they/any) is an artist who uses kinetic sculpture, book forms, printing, and handmade paper to explore invisibility, escapism, and secret identities. Their work is grounded in material-based research, with a particular focus on surface, ecological processes, embedded forms of communication, and how materials become carriers of cultural, chemical, and environmental specificity.

Cat received a Master of Fine Arts in Book Arts at the University of Iowa Center for the Book in 2019. They also receive two University of Iowa Graduate College Summer Fellowship grants, a University of Iowa Stanley Graduate Research Grant, and a Fulbright research grant to study dyeing, printing, papermaking practices in China and Japan. Through these experiences, they became interested in how visible reactions of natural dyes form the basis of a sensory language.

Currently, Cat is based in Tokyo, Japan, researching tangible computing with Keio University Graduate School of Media Design’s Future Crafts Lab. There, they are exploring how combining aizome, papermaking, speculative design, and cultural nostalgia can be means of reskilling and regaining cultural agency.

Info

• The Talk will be in English
• Participation is free of cost
• Please join us in person at BioClub Tokyo or online at the BioClub Zoom