Choi Sin Yi, Emilie
#GEOLOGICAL & SOCIOTECHNICAL IMAGINARIES
#CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE STUDIES
#ENVIRONMENTAL MEDIA
#DIGITAL MATERIALISM
#SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
CHOI Sin-yi (Emilie) is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. Her doctoral research centers on the elemental and environmental dimensions of media technology by exploring the interplay of geological and sociotechnical imaginaries of water across Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South China. Her study scrutinizes the historical account and the myriad discourses entangled in the material-making and mediation processes of water, encompassing film and media artworks, architectural designs, government policies, major tech corporations, scientists, environmentalists, and emerging economies. The primary objective of her research is to prompt a reevaluation of the water crisis and its techno-biopolitical implications in the context of ecological and extractive politics while contributing to the broader scholarship on the symbiotic relationships between humans and nature in the realms of the posthuman, environmental media, and digital materialism.
Learn more via: www.emiliesy.com/
Relevant Experience
- 16/3/2024 [Presenter] “Video Art or Video Activism: A Comparative Study of Participatory Media and Collective Formation in Hong Kong and Taiwan in the 1980s”, in the panel of Revolutionizing The Screens: Emerging Media and Everyday Activism in Chinese Societies across the Pacific, organized by the annual conference of the Society For Cinema and Media Studies 2024, Boston, US.
- 3/2/2024 [Presenter] “The Infrastructure and Technology of Media Art in East Asia: Kao Chung Li as an example”, in the PhD research workshop Content/Form at transmediale 2024, co-organized by SHAPE Digital Citizenship and Digital Aesthetics Research Center (Aarhus University), and the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image (London South Bank University), Berlin, Germany.
- Contact Zoning (art exhibition), co-curator: 10 Nov - 15 Dec 2024, 海馬迴 光畫館 Fotoaura Institute of Photography (Tainan)
- Curatorial Program for Research (CPR) 2023: (Re) Presentation in the Nordics (fellowship with remuneration): August 20–September 4, 2023, Norway, Sweden, and Finland.
- External assessor, Hong Kong Arts Development Council (Streams: Film and Media Arts, Art Criticism): Aug 2020 - Present
- Board member, Videotage: Sep 2020 - Present
Output
- (Peer-reviewed research paper) “Investigating Hong Kong Alternative Cinema: The Formation of Cinephilias in the late 1960s”, Modernism/modernity, special issue: Global South Cinephilias, ed. Rielle Navitski, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, (Mar 2024).
- (Peer-reviewed book chapter) “A Critical Study of The 70’s Biweekly and Its Political Cinematic Practices”, in The 70’s Biweekly: Social Activism and Alternative Cultural Production in 1970s Hong Kong, ed. Pan Lu, published by HKU Press (Jul 2023).
Interest in Digital Care
My interest in "digital care making" focuses on the embedded relationality of human-nature symbiosis, which is interconnected with human-machine relations. My study contends that digital mediation functions as an extractive process and challenges the notion of justice owed to nature within a digital environment heavily influenced by techno-capitalism. By examining these dynamics, the research seeks to highlight the techno-biopolitical implications of our digital interactions with the natural world and the material considerations that arise from them.