Becoming Myth-Publication

RUYUN XIAO

Ruyun Xiao is an artist, writer, researcher, exhibition designer, and illustrator from China. She explores the concept of bodily knowledge through performative form. Her imaginative process embodies herself in first-person memories, stories, and myths. She produces frameworks, and instruments to choreograph experiences of the unknown. Using writing as the foundation, she engages with performance, design, publication, and sound to communicate sensorium ways of knowing and unknowing.

Xiao is currently based in London, United Kingdom. She recently graduated from the Critical Curatorial Cybernetics research master program at Haute école d’art et de design(HEAD), Geneva, Switzerland. She worked as a 2D designer at Ralph Appelbaum Associates in New York City for six years. She received an MFA in Communications Design from Pratt Institute in 2018, a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from the Maryland Institute College of Arts in 2016, and a BA in Advertising from the Beijing University of Technology in 2015.

performances, exhibitions

Design

Writing, Publishing

Becoming Myth

2023
PUblication

Becoming Myth is written, designed, and published by Xiao as a materialization of the writing, performance, and research during the two years of studying at a master research program in Geneva, Switzerland. The publication was developed alongside her performance, and research process. It explores a different way of storytelling, mixing scientific research and fictional story, and aiming to mystify our understanding of the process of knowing. The publication exists in various editions with her performance practice and her performance practice also evolves from the writing of this publication. The performance is an enaction of the publication.

Becoming Myth is a story about a floating ghost who carries generations of memories and sensations into a new cosmos. The concept is set in this unknown cosmos that has been conceptualized my research of quantum physics and Chinese Daoist thinking through writing. This writing practice is situated in my experience of a generation growing up in the acceleration developing China. It reflects the dissonance and uncanniness in the ways of knowing. This writing translates the experience into a mythical narration. The fictional story discovers human bodily knowledge and spiritual ways of knowing. The performative body and its sensations are dominant in the story, which communicates the effects and creates new sensations.

This publication is an attempt to make the dissonance between Western scientific knowledge and Eastern culture perceivable. The publication starts with the diagrams and then with the story. Each spread starts with the story on the left-hand side and after flipping the page on the left are notes and personal stories. Serving as the footnotes, the notes take up more and more space. The notes and story are both written as individual pieces and also reflections on each other. This boundary of personal and academic research is blurred and uncertain.