Super-short Bio
Yifan Gong, a PhD candidate in theatre and performance studies at the University of Edinburgh, holds a BFA degree with distinction in Theatre and Visual Arts from the University of the Fraser Valley, Canada. He learned filmmaking at Shanghai Vancouver Film School and is now active as a versatile artist, actor, director and academic researcher.
Short Biography
I am Yifan Gong, a current PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies at Edinburgh College of Art, the University of Edinburgh. My PhD is on the theme of strategising the Theatre of One Emancipated Spect-actor using accumulating methods. It is led by the accumulative aesthetics and the political and practical aesthetics of the emancipated spect-actor referencing Augusto Boal and Jacques Rancière. As a practitioner in the flesh, I conduct performative (practice-led), phenomenological and hermeneutic research methods to produce intermedial performances and to research this theme.
I hold a BFA degree with distinction in Theatre and Visual Arts from the University of the Fraser Valley, Canada. I started to take theatre and visual arts courses (painting and analogue photography) in January 2017 and learned filmmaking at Shanghai Vancouver Film School in 2020/21.
My artistic practices so far span devised theatre, digital performance, filmmaking, directing and acting for theatre/screen, analogue and digital photography, acrylic painting, songwriting, post-modern dance and choreography. My research areas include but are not limited to: phenomenology, hermeneutics, theatre and performance aesthetics, philosophy of art, intermediality and intermedial art, XR media and technologies, volumetric capture and volumetric film, practice-led/based research, digital humanism, immersive theatre, devised theatre and psychology of personality traits.
Digging deeper into trans/interdisciplinary art research with the rapid development of science and technology is a necessity for this generation, so I am passionate about integrating new technologies within contemporary art-making. In terms of genres, I often manipulate non-linear storytelling, abstract expressionism and improvisation.
As well as an E-portfolio, this personal website consists of collections of my significant artworks made so far, including digital documents, showreels and video recordings of live/mediatised performances. Please explore the navigation bars to view more details and descriptions of my art practices.
Artist Statement
I have been studying overseas and living alone for 9 years. Besides the fact that the four countries, China, Canada, the UK and the US have shaped me culturally, the long-term single life leads my art research and practices to focus on myself: my solitude, independence, soliloquy, self-doubt, self-assurance, and self-growth. This results in perpetual internal communications within and between my artworks, where I consistently self-question and self-answer by means of performance, film, painting, photography and music. The reflexive circle of questioning-answering makes my acting and creating retrospective and spirally develops my art skills. This circle is open to any future while being the vehicle to convey my inner and individualistic power, which promotes the beauty of aloneness.
For my pursuit of self-revealing and returning to true nature, with physical actions, I squeeze acrylic paints from the tubes directly and apply them onto the canvas baldly. My colour mixing usually happens afterwards. This reductive attitude and technique has been extended and applied in my embodied drawing and embodied painting. I take out solid or liquid pigments directly and throw/splash them onto the paper/canvas with my whole performing body. My directing style and producing strategy for films and live performances also reflect this intuitive wildness. I improvisationally dance and act with my actors in sync, in response or contrast when directing. I first learned filmmaking by audaciously taking on multiple roles and intuitively using my theatre-making knowledge. The choreography and body movements of my filmed and live performances similarly feature improvisation, in line with my intrinsic understanding of physicality and dance.
During my practice-led PhD, wisely adopting varied digital media, I create streams of layered physical or theatrical performances about or for myself, where I continuously retrospect and reflect on myself. These productions are both live performances and recorded videos, where I traverse the boundaries between reality and virtuality, past and present, the digital and the physical. Similar to what I did in one photograph where I superimposed many of my doppelgängers, via constant self-reflection and performance accumulation, these projects accumulate multiple performative contents overlooking the spatial-temporal barricades and provide examples of creating performances for/by a single one to enhance self-awareness.
Whatever media I employ, I keep asking myself - if nobody loves me, how can I love myself? I argue that the last step to emancipation is self-love, recognising that one was born and will die alone. This is realistic and individualistic but not bourgeois or capitalist as taking care of oneself is the priority. My artistic productions aim to awaken self-awareness and the desire to self-explore and self-care from various perspectives. My art research aims to address that an individual can save themselves before rescuing the group or being rescued by the group. Yet nothing is absolute as we are not absolute minds — my art is not absolute but ambiguous, complex and exploratory likewise.
CV
Please click here to read or download Yifan Gong's CV
