O, Engrave You New (2024)

Two-channel moving still installation. Performance Lecture. 

Presented at the British Council’s SPARK FESTIVAL joinly commissioned by Videotage, Film London and G39 Cardiff, Hong Kong, October 2024.

The dual-channel snippets document the process of peripheral stem cell transplantation, as the artist’s family member has their blood type coincidentally matched with a last-stage cancer patient. During the process, the donor’s body is connected to a separator, where stem cells are extracted, with remaining blood being returned to the donor.

The work’s title recalls the historical case of the Japanese nuclear fuel plant worker Hisashi Ouchi, known as “the world’s most radioactive man”, who was an early recipient of the transplantation in 1999. Ouchi, however, did not survive due to a high amount of radioactivity that ultimately killed the newly planted stem cells. The title also quotes Sonnet 15 of William Shakespeare, in which the poet compared the mortality of humans to plants, and their unavoidable decay with time. The title hints at a layered reading of this medical operation from historical and botanical perspectives: flown, grown, optimised.

These relationships were further unpacked in a performance lecture weaving spoken words and projected archival images from multidisciplinary sources, and were jointly presented with artists Zillah Bowes and Roanna Holmes-Frodsham.